Radhika Mohan Maitra — Sarod Maestro & Hindustani Music Legend

Radhika Mohan Maitra (1917-1981)

Shailaja Khanna

Even 45 years after his passing in 1981, Radhika Mohan Maitra’s influence in the world of instrumental music remains. Despite being born into an aristocratic family of patrons rather than performers, the maestro rose to become one of the finest exponents of the sarod. He is also credited with the largest number of All India Radio recordings.

As a prolific teacher, he has shaped several grand disciples, who dominate the world of music. His lineage today includes formidable names­­— Narendra Nath Dhar, who started learning from him in 1968, Debashish Bhattacharya, sitarists Sugato Nag, and Sanjoy Bandhpadhyay, Joydeep Ghosh, Pratyush Bannerji, Soumik Datta, Arnab Chakraborty, Abir Hosain, Joydeep Mukherjee and Debasmita Bhattacharya.

Radhu Babu, as Radhika Mohan Maitra was affectionately known, was born in Rajshahi, now in Bangladesh. In 1915, his father invited the great sarodist Mohammed Ameer Khan, to reside at their estate, and train him. Thus began the young four-year-old Radhu Babu’s tutelage under the great master, and continued his training until his teacher’s death.

The musical lineage of Mohammed Ameer Khan is itself an interesting chapter. In the 19^th century, several Afghani horse traders came to India, and settled in various princely states. Many among them were rabab players, who soon took to playing in the Indian way. They are believed to have learnt from the rabab-playing descendants of Mian Tansen. At that time, there were said to be three—some accounts say four— musically accomplished brothers in that lineage.

One prominent figure among these Afghan-origin musicians was Ghulam Ali Bangash, who was first employed in the court of the Nawab of Awadh, and later Rewa. All three of his sons— Hussein Ali, Murad Ali and Nanhe Khan (grandfather of Amjad Ali Khan)—took to music and became distinguished musicians. It is believed that the Senia rabab players, Jafar Khan and Basat Khan taught this family, and that they also took musical training from Mian Tansen’s veena playing descendants.

Murad Ali Khan later entered the service of the Rampur court, and learnt from the ‘beenkar’ (veena playing) descendants of Mian Tansen, Bahadur Hussain Khan (surshingar) and Amir Khan.

Murad Ali Khan (b 1810-11, Rewa) was childless, and is said to have been deeply distressed by this. By then, the family had moved to Shahjahanpur, Uttar Pradesh from Rewa. Murad Ali vowed to train a child who would be the match of any sarodist of his time. He adopted a boy from the family of vocalists in Shahjahanpur — Abdullah Khan–who indeed went on to become one of the finest sarodists of his time. Both father and son moved to the court of Darbhanga as court musicians.

Mohammed Ameer Khan, inheritor of this lineage, moved to Kolkata, which was the centre of instrumental music, before being invited to Rajshahi. Radhika Mohan Maitra writes about his guru with deep reverence, “Ustad Ameer Khan sahib was made of completely different material…he had real music in him, which was not just different in style and form, but also had an unusually delicate and charming flavour. Within a very short time he was universally acknowledged as a stalwart in his own field and in his own right.”

Ameer Khan was also a prolific composer, and many of his compositions are played even today. 

Sadly, Ameer Khan passed away in 1934 when Radhu Babu was only 17. Thereafter, he started learning from Dabir Khan, the last lineal descendant of Mian Tansen through his daughter’s lineage, and an eminent veena exponent. His mother, too, had musical background, having learnt from Inayat Khan, the great sitarist of the Etawah gharana, and Radhu Babu would sometimes render his compositions. The bond with the guru-gharana remained intact. It is said that, apparently he gifted a beautiful set of ivory-adorned sarod pegs to Wajahat Khan, son of Imrat Khan, the only sarod performer in the family.

The stature of Radhika Mohan Maitra as a repository of rare ragas and compositions can be gauged by an incident, he himself once recounted. During a convivial evening, Radhu babu spoke of a rare raga that he had been taught. Vilayat Khan was instantly intrigued, and requested him to explain. Radhu Babu responded that he would gladly do so when the opportunity arose, casually adding that he would be travelling by night train for an upcoming concert. Vilayat Khan quietly got on the same train, and that very night, during the train journey, the raga was discussed in detail.

As a performer, he was equally lauded. On one occasion in 1934, when Ali Akbar Khan was unable to reach the concert venue to accompany his father, founder of the Maihar gharana Allaudin Khan, invited the young, 17- year-old Radhika Mohan to accompany him on stage, despite his differing musical training. This extraordinary invitation revelas the stature he attained at such a young age.

Radhika Mohan Maitra was a great teacher. In reverence to his guru, he opened a school of instrumental music named after Mohammed Ameer Khan.   Among his prominent disciples were (late) Buddhadev Dasgupta,  Anil Roy Chaudhury, Kalyan Mukherji, Samarendra Shikdhar, Narendra Nath Dhar, Sanjoy Bandhpadhyay, Jaydev Chatterjee, and Bimal Banerjee. Among those who are no more are  Nemai Chand Dhar, Sudhir Mukherji, Himadri Bhushan Bagchi, Pranab Kumar Naha, Harivallabh Das, Rajanikanta Chaturvedi, Sunil Chakravorty, Robi Sen, and Sandhya Ghosh. Their prolific teaching, in turn, has effectively  created a separate gharana within the sarod tradition.

Their style of sarod playing is distinct, and warrants being termed a distinct gharana, described by Prattyush Bannerji, as  the Bengal Senia Shahjahanpur,  and may be termed as the Radhika Mohan Maitra Senia gharana. Narendra Nath Dhar recalled that his guru taught him 12 stages of aalap. Aalap, he explained, was of two types —  anibadh, free flowing and badh, with rhythmic accompaniment on pakhawaj, after the jhala. This was called taar paran— rendering  pakhawaj bols on the strings. Sadly, this has become quite extinct now.

This gharana has retained knowledge of the provenance of compositions. From its repertoire, one can trace how the instrument evolved, and its influence on the type of compositions.  They have a treasure trove of ferozkhani gats, a type of composition created by Feroz Khan (more well-known as Adarang) of the Senia gharana. These medium-speed intricate compositions, often covering two octaves, extending across three or more avartans.

Apart from the compositions, the style of playing is robust with intricate stroke work, distinctly differentiated with precise terms – larr lapet and larant, which are presented by most exponents of this style. The succinct delineation of raga is yet another feature.  

Radhika Mohan Maitra was a purist in the fullest sense of the term. He was taught by masters whose approach to music was different, and he himself embraced this vision of music completely.

In his words, “The old masters believed passionately that excellence in musical performance lay in strict conformity to the orthodox form of the raga. Their approach to music was more of a devotee rather than a creator and they sacrificed their individuality to the sacred altar of raga sangeet. It is in this self- surrender and not in superimposition of their personalities that they found their highest fulfment in art.”

This reverence did not equate to rigidity.  He was creative to have composed several ragas, including Shahi Kanhra, Arun Malhar, but chose rarely to play them in public and formally never taught them to most of his disciples. Narendra Nath Dhar, one of his senior most disciples shared, “I only ever heard him play the ragas he made, at home, never in concert. He never trained me in any of the ragas he made. He valued old ragas, and he had so many rare things that he wanted to pass on.” Such restraint speaks of his humility.

Yet his spontaneous creativity can be gauged by an incident recounted by Narendra Nath Dhar. He recalled that, “Once at Ahmedabad, someone in the audience requested he play Gauri Manjari, a raga composed by Ustad Allaudin Khan. He replied he did not know the raga. But amazingly, he then and there composed and played a raga that he later named Lalita Manjari.”

Radhu Babu was greatly interested in instrument making and in improving its tonal quality. He created three new instruments, of which, one was the Mohan veena, which is played even today. This was a combination of the large surshingar and sarod. While retaining sarod’s metal board, he replaced the skin clad head with a wooden tumba and modified the bridge. This provided the instrument a beautiful, rounded sound.

The second instrument was the Dil bahar, which replaced the wood head of the sitar with a skin cladding. Navadeepa, the final instrument, needs to be played with a bow.

Always the aristocrat, Radhu Babu is said to have remarked with wit, that he must give employment to his instrument maker, Durga Mistri, so that he can experiment with different versions. Today his collection of instruments, along with many other antiques are preserved with care by his disciple, Somjit Dasgupta.

Indeed, Radhika Mohan Maitra remained at heart a patron, organising annual music festivals, to provide an opportunity to youngsters to perform. It was perhaps this attitude of giving back to the art form that distinguished him from other musicians he realised it needed careful preservation as well as propagation. Self-effacing and humble, he enriched the world of music hugely, and that is perhaps the reason he is remembered even today, amongst instrumentalists of all styles.