The Padma Shri award crisis is turning into a humiliation one after another for the centre as the eminent tabla player Pandit Anindo Chatterjee has now declined to accept the award.
Earlier the veteran singer Sandhya Mukherjee and former Chief Minister of West Bengal Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has turned down Padma Shri award, a crisis hinting at more shoes to drop in the days to come.
While citing a different reason in refusing to accept the award, the Tabla maestro Pandit Anindo Chatterjee is quoted as saying “Many of his contemporaries and juniors were already honored with Padma Shri years ago.”
“At this point of his career, he is not ready to receive the award” he said, adding that, “He would have accepted the same if was given 10 years ago.”
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Pandit Anindo Chatterjee, who have performed ‘Jugal Bandi (duets) entourage with maestros like Pandit Ravi Shankar, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan and Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and received Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in the year 2002, has affirmed on Wednesday that he received a call from Delhi a day earlier asking his consent for the conferment of the honor.
Informing that he declined the nomination very politely, the eminent percussionist said, “I thanked him (the caller from Delhi) saying that I am not ready to accept Padma Shri at this stage of my career as I have already passed the finishing line years ago.
Having refined under the mentorship of Pandit Jnan Prakash Ghosh, he performed at Rastrapti Bhavan and was the youngest tabla player to mesmerize the audience in the British Parliament’s House of Common in 1989.
Earlier, singing legend Sandhya Mukherjee is the first to turn down the Padma Shri Award offered by centre followed by Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the senior CPI (M) leader and former Chief Minister of West Bengal.
With three nominees already turning down the offer, the centre seems to have swept under the carpet and may walk a fine line before making any fresh offer to the nominees as further refusals may fill the centre’s basket with more humiliation.
