Pandit Bhimsen Joshi Left Home at Eleven to Find a Guru, Sang the Opening of Mile Sur Mera Tumhara in 1988 and Received the Bharat Ratna Announced on 4 November 2008

Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, a khayal singer of the Kirana gharana, received the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian honour. Rashtrapati Bhavan announced it late on 4 November 2008, and the Gazette notification conferring it is dated 10 February 2009. He had left his home in Gadag district at eleven to find a teacher, trained under Sawai Gandharva, sang the opening of the 1988 national-integration song Mile Sur Mera Tumhara, and led the Pune music festival that now carries his name.

A khayal is the main concert form of Hindustani classical vocal music, and a gharana is a line of teachers and pupils that hands down one way of singing. Published accounts disagree on several of his dates. This piece gives the Gazette and the Sangeet Natak Akademi (the national academy for music, dance and drama) priority and says where others differ.

A schoolteacher’s son who left home at eleven

The Akademi’s profile says he was born in 1922 in Gadag, Karnataka. Karnataka.com, GKToday and the Navras Records chairman Vibhaker Baxi give 4 February 1922. The agency report Daijiworld carried in November 2008 gives 19 February. Cultural India places the birth in the town of Ron, in the same district.

IANS reported in January 2011 that his father, Gururaj Joshi, was a school teacher and his grandfather Bhimacharya Joshi a noted musician. Karnataka.com says the boy was held spellbound by the abhang (a Marathi devotional song) and by the call to prayer, and played his grandfather’s tanpura, the drone instrument that sits under a raga.

He ran away from home in 1933, aged 11, to look for a guru. Karnataka.com says the search took three years, and the 2008 agency report names Gwalior, Lucknow and Rampur as the stops. IANS adds Kolkata and Jalandhar, and says he travelled several times without a ticket. His father found him and brought him home.

The Akademi’s profile says he first studied with several musicians, among them Ustad Mushtaq Hussain Khan of the Rampur-Sahaswan gharana. In 1936 Sawai Gandharva (Rambhau Kundgolkar) agreed to teach him. Under the guru-shishya (teacher and disciple) custom he lived in his teacher’s house as one of the family and did household chores in return for lessons, Karnataka.com says. The 2008 agency report puts his time with Sawai Gandharva at 1936 to 1940.

The Kirana gharana and what he did with it

The Akademi describes Sawai Gandharva as the chief disciple of Ustad Abdul Karim Khan, founder of the Kirana gharana. It says the khayal of that gharana was Joshi’s strength, and that he was equally at home with thumri, pada, devotional songs and stage songs. It credits him with a sonorous voice, systematic raga elaboration in the opening alap, and a large repertoire of devotional compositions by the Kannada saint-poet Purandaradasa.

He gave his first public performance in 1941, at 19, according to Karnataka.com. The same site lists Puriya Dhanashri, Miyan ki Todi, Darbari and Shuddha Kalyan as his trademark ragas. The Arya Sangeet Prasarak Mandal’s festival page names Puriya Dhanashri, Multani and Bhimpalasi as renditions widely regarded as definitive. The two lists overlap on one raga, and both are statements of reputation, not a catalogue.

Baxi wrote in his 2011 tribute that Joshi’s art went beyond gharana definitions and that for many listeners of khayal his voice became the benchmark. That is the view of a record-label chairman, offered in a tribute written on the day of his death.

His reach went past the Hindustani tradition. IANS reported that he sang several jugalbandis (paired concerts) with the Carnatic vocalist M. Balamuralikrishna, which the Carnatic singer said began about twelve years earlier at the request of a governor of Maharashtra. Karnataka.com names disciples including Srinivas Joshi, Madhav Gudi, Ashutosh Bharadwaj and Shrikant Deshpande. Baxi says he performed in public, in India and abroad, until around 2007, and mentions a concert at Mumbai’s Shanmukhananda Hall in October 2001 that Navras released on CD and DVD.

Mile Sur Mera Tumhara, 1988

After the Prime Minister’s Independence Day speech from the Red Fort in 1988, Doordarshan broadcast a six-minute song of national unity, and the opening was sung by Joshi. ThePrint and The Better India both give that account. The Better India dates the broadcast to 15 August 1988.

ThePrint says the lyrics were by Piyush Pandey, then an account manager at the advertising firm Ogilvy and Mather. The Better India says Suresh Mullick of Ogilvy brought in the film producer Kailash Surendranath, and that the song was sung in languages from across the country, with Balamuralikrishna singing the Tamil part. Lata Mangeshkar, who received the Bharat Ratna in 2001, also appears in it.

The Better India reports Surendranath’s account, first given to Campaign India, that Joshi came back within a few days with about 45 minutes of music in Raga Bhairavi, which Surendranath cut to a 30-second core that other composers then adapted for each language. The authorship of the music has been disputed. ThePrint reports that in 2016 Joshi’s son Jayant rejected Ashok Patki’s claim to be one of the composers, writing that the tune was composed in front of him as he accompanied his father on the harmonium. Patki’s own statement is not in the sources this article opened.

The honours, as the Gazette lists them

The Gazette of India shows four civilian honours for Joshi:

• Padma Shri, notification of 26 January 1972, listing “Shri Bhim Sen Joshi, Musician, Poona, Maharashtra”.
• Padma Bhushan, notification of 26 January 1985, listing “Shri Bhimsen Gururaj Joshi, Musician (Khayal, Thumri & Bhajan), Pune”.
• Padma Vibhushan, notification of 26 January 1999, listing Pandit Bhimsen Gururaj Joshi under vocal art, Pune, Maharashtra.
• Bharat Ratna, notification No. 9-Pres/2009 of 10 February 2009, in which the President conferred the award on Pandit Bhimsen Gururaj Joshi.

The announcement came earlier. The President’s release is dated 4 November 2008 and says it was issued at 2240 hours. The agency report in Daijiworld noted that a performing artist had not been chosen for the award in seven years, and named Ustad Bismillah Khan as the last. The Tribune’s report of March 2001 shows Lata Mangeshkar receiving it in the same round as Bismillah Khan. The Carnatic singer M. S. Subbulakshmi was named in a Gazette notification of 1 March 1998.

Accounts differ in two places. The 2008 agency report gives the Padma Vibhushan year as 1991, but the 1999 Gazette lists him and the Akademi also says 1999. The Press Information Bureau’s 2011 condolence release says he received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1976, while the Akademi’s own profile lists a Mysore Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1972 and the Akademi Award in 1975. The Akademi elected him a Fellow in 1998. Its profile also records an honorary doctorate in music from Gulbarga University in 1986 and a chair in his name at the University of Pune, set up in 1998.

January 2011

Joshi died at a hospital in Pune on the morning of Monday, 24 January 2011, aged 88, IANS reported, quoting his doctor. The Culture Minister’s condolence message, issued the same day by the Press Information Bureau, called him a leading exponent of khayal whose bhajans and abhangs had reached several generations of listeners in India and abroad.

Pandit Jasraj, reacting to the news, said he felt as though the sun had set in the morning: “the sun has set on Indian classical music”, in IANS’s translation of his Hindi. Balamuralikrishna said Joshi sang Indian music, and Shyam Benegal called him the finest Indian classical artist of his generation. The playwright Girish Karnad said his life should be celebrated.

The Pune festival

The Arya Sangeet Prasarak Mandal, a Pune music body founded in 1951, says it has hosted the Sawai Gandharva Bhimsen Mahotsav since 1953. Karnataka.com says Joshi organised the first festival as a mark of gratitude to the guru who died in 1952. The Mandal’s page describes the event as marking the birth anniversary of Sawai Gandharva, so the sources differ on whether it was first held for the birth or the death.

A 2007 post on the singer Sudha Ragunathan’s site, written when she performed there, says the Mandal founded the festival and that Joshi led and organised it each year, and calls the 6 to 10 December 2007 meeting its 55th edition. The same post lists Hirabai Badodekar, Ahmedjan Thirakwa, Kumar Gandharva and Kishori Amonkar among past performers. As of 5 November 2026 the Mandal’s page describes it as an annual five-day festival held in Pune, with vocal, instrumental and dance performances, and uses the name that adds his own.