M. S. Subbulakshmi Gave a Recital in the UN General Assembly Hall on 23 October 1966 and in 1998 Became the First Musician to Receive the Bharat Ratna

On 23 October 1966, M. S. Subbulakshmi gave a recital of Indian songs in the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations in New York. The UN’s own photo caption says five other musicians accompanied her and that a reception followed, with Secretary-General U Thant at the centre of the group photograph. Thirty-two years later, in 1998, India made her the first musician to receive the Bharat Ratna, its highest civilian honour.

The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation had honoured her in 1974 for her devotional singing and for the public causes her concerts paid for. Where the sources give different dates, this piece says so.

A veena player’s daughter from Madurai

Madurai Shanmukhavadivu Subbulakshmi was born on 16 September 1916 in Madurai, then in the Madras Presidency. A Press Information Bureau (PIB) feature by the Carnatic music critic V. Srinivasan names her father as Subramania Iyer, a practising advocate, and her mother as Shanmugavadivu, a veena player. At home she was called Kunjamma. The Magsaysay citation says she began accompanying her mother’s singing and veena playing at ten and was a soloist in her own right by 17.

On 1 January 1932, the feature says, she sang at the Madras Music Academy as a substitute for the vocalist Ariyakkudi Ramanuja Aiyangar, who could not attend, and became the first woman performer at its annual conference. Karaikadu Sambasiva Iyer, it reports, felt she had a hidden veena in her throat.

Accounts differ on her first public performance. According to the PIB feature she was barely eight and sang a Marathi bhajan at one of her mother’s veena recitals. Google Arts & Culture dates it to 1927, at 11, in a temple hall in Tiruchirappalli, and India Post’s stamp note says she was 13.

Sevasadanam, a husband and the film Meera

Her first film, Sevasadanam, came out in 1938, according to PIB’s feature, on a social-reform theme, a favourite of its director K. Subramanyam. On 10 July 1940 she married T. Sadasivam (1902 to 1997), a freedom fighter and journalist 14 years older than her. He was, the Magsaysay citation says, the publisher of the Tamil weekly Kalki.

In 1943, PIB’s feature says, she sang at the Vikramaditya Festival in Mumbai, and Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan called her Suswara Lakshmi, the goddess of melodious voice. Then came the Tamil film Meera in 1945, based on the life of the 16th-century devotee Mirabai and directed by Ellis Duncan. It ran for more than 25 weeks, the feature says, and the Magsaysay citation says wider audiences first heard her in it.

T. J. S. George’s biography of her, excerpted by Live History India, records that Sadasivam promoted the film with “a public relations extravaganza such as the country had rarely seen”, using his political connections that reached Gandhi and C. Rajagopalachari. Of the Hindi version’s Delhi screening, PIB gives the date as 5 December 1947, at the Plaza Theatre, with Lord and Lady Mountbatten, Jawaharlal Nehru and Sarojini Naidu present. George’s excerpt places that premiere in November 1947. Afterwards, PIB says, Naidu said she was handing the title Nightingale of India to Subbulakshmi. Tuput’s profile of Sarojini Naidu records two accounts of how Naidu came to hold that title.

Gandhi, Nehru and a bhajan sent by courier

For his birthday on 2 October 1947, Mahatma Gandhi asked to hear the Meera bhajan Hari Tum Haro. In PIB’s text of the Vice President’s 2017 address, she recorded it overnight and sent it to him. George writes in DailyO that she sent a specially made recording by family courier rather than travelling to Delhi, and that All India Radio broadcast it after Gandhi was assassinated on 30 January 1948.

The Magsaysay citation quotes Nehru: “Who am I, a mere Prime Minister, before a Queen of Song?” George adds that Nehru repeated the compliment at her concerts in 1949, 1953 and 1956.

Five benefit concerts and a Magsaysay Award

In April 1944, the citation says, after five successful benefit performances for the memorial fund honouring Kasturba Gandhi, her voice became an instrument for public causes. George’s excerpt lists the five concerts as falling between July and September 1944, in Madras, Tiruchirappalli, Madurai, Coimbatore and Thanjavur, after Rajagopalachari committed her to them. Both accounts agree on the year and the fund.

Halls were filled, the citation says, and open amphitheatres were often packed with tens of thousands of people paying four annas each, about three US cents. It puts her contributions at the equivalent of more than one million US dollars, with poor-relief foundations, hospitals, orphanages, schools, and music and journalism institutes among the beneficiaries. In the Vice President’s 2017 address, as PIB published it, she gave more than 200 charity concerts and donated the royalties from her devotional albums to the Tirumala temple.

The Foundation gave her the 1974 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, saying its trustees recognised “her exalting rendition of devotional song and magnanimous support of numerous public causes in India over four decades”.

Edinburgh in 1963, then an invitation from U Thant

The Britten-Pears Archive catalogue lists a programme book for the Indian music events at the Edinburgh Festival from 20 August to 4 September 1963, with Subbulakshmi among the performers beside Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan and T. Viswanathan.

The News Minute reports that U Thant first invited her to sing at the UN in 1965, for International Co-operation Year, and that the Indo-Pakistan war that year stopped the trip. She accepted the 1966 invitation, it says, and Sadasivam, as master of ceremonies, planned the concert minute by minute. The Better India instead places the invitation after Edinburgh, says her seven-week tour opened in Europe on 19 September 1966 with stops in Geneva, Bonn, Paris and London, and also names Sadasivam as master of ceremonies.

What was sung on 23 October 1966

The UN caption describes “a recital of Indian songs” in the General Assembly Hall as part of the 1966 United Nations Day celebrations. UN Day itself is 24 October. At the reception afterwards, the caption names Abdul Rahman Pazhwak of Afghanistan, President of the 21st session of the General Assembly, G. Parthasarathi, India’s ambassador to the UN, and C. V. Narasimhan, the UN’s chef de cabinet.

The Better India names the accompanists as V. V. Subramaniam on the violin, T. K. Murthy on the mridangam and T. H. Vinayakaram on the ghatam, and says Narasimhan introduced her. She opened with a Sanskrit Guru Vandana, the article says, and closed with Maitreem Bhajata, a hymn of friendship and peace. U Thant praised the music, it reports, and India’s President, S. Radhakrishnan, congratulated her in a telegram to Sadasivam.

The News Minute says she first sang that hymn, Maithreem, at the UN, and that Vasant Desai set the words to a tune. The Prime Minister’s Office, which published a note on the hymn in 2017, says the Kanchi acharya Chandrashekharendra Saraswati composed it in Sanskrit, calls it an anthem for universal friendship and world peace, and says she sang it in most of her later concerts. Its translation of the closing line reads “Let grace and happiness abound for all mankind.”

PIB’s text of the Vice President’s address calls her the first Indian musician to have performed at the UN General Assembly. The UN’s caption does not use that wording.

The honours, in order

For the Padma awards, the PIB feature gives the Bhushan in 1954 and the Vibhushan in 1975. The Daily Star’s 2007 profile adds the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1956 and the Madras Music Academy’s Sangita Kalanidhi in 1968, which it calls the first given to a woman. The Magsaysay Award followed in 1974.

The Home Ministry’s list of Bharat Ratna recipients shows her as the 33rd name, awarded in 1998. Both the Magsaysay Foundation and PIB call her the first musician to receive it. President K. R. Narayanan conferred it on 14 January 1998 at Rashtrapati Bhavan, the PIB feature says. Lata Mangeshkar, whom PIB’s 2017 text quotes as calling her Tapaswini (renunciate), received her own Bharat Ratna in 2001.

Two published records carry slips. The Tribune’s 2004 obituary gives 1996 for the Bharat Ratna, where the Home Ministry’s list, PIB and the Magsaysay Foundation say 1998. The Home Ministry’s list prints 2005 as her year of death, where the Tribune, PIB and India Post say 2004.

After the hall

Sadasivam died in 1997, and PIB’s feature says she reduced her singing afterwards. She died in Chennai on 11 December 2004, aged 88. The Tribune, citing PTI, gives the time as 11.45 p.m. and says she had been admitted to a private hospital on 2 December with a viral infection and bronchopneumonia.

India Post issued a stamp for her on 18 December 2005. On 2 October 2016, in the year of her birth centenary, the UN issued a $1.20 stamp showing her portrait beside the UN emblem, The News Minute reported. The ceremony at UN headquarters also marked India’s ratification of the Paris climate agreement, and the singer Sudha Raghunathan performed.

A Finance Ministry release carried by PIB on 13 September 2017 says the government notified commemorative coins of Rs 100 and Rs 10 for her birth centenary, to be minted by the Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India. On 19 September 2017 Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu inaugurated an exhibition on her and released a commemorative coin. That day two of her great-granddaughters, S. Aishwarya and S. Saundarya, called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and performed Maithreem Bhajatha, the hymn she sang at the United Nations in 1966.