Though Pt. Ravi Shankar wrote two autobiographies, Oliver Craske’s biography on him is being eagerly awaited by the world of classical music. It took six years to write the voluminous Indian Sun: The Life and Music of Ravi Shankar spread over 650 pages. Extensively covering every aspect of the maestro’s career, in exhaustive detail, the biography also deals with his turbulent personal life and analyses what contributed to making him the man he was. Written with insight and compassion, the book presents the maestro as he was, warts and all. Incidentally, the author has been a family friend of the Shankars for over 18 years and was the editor of Raga Mala , Pt Ravi Shankar’s second book. Engaging and affable, it was a pleasure chatting on the phone with the London-based Oliver.
The book is yet to release in India due to the pandemic but Oliver is optimistic that it will happen soon. Excerpts from an interview:
Oliver Craske, author of Pt. Ravi Shankar’s biography 
Who commissioned this biography?
It was my own decision to write it. After Ravi ji died, I was sure that there was more to say about him. I immediately approached Sukanya Shankar to ask if she would cooperate. Before I had even voiced my request, she said, ‘You must write something more about him.’ I spent about four years doing new interviews and archival research. Sukanya has a wonderful, healthy attitude to the past and she encouraged me to discover whatever I could and make my own judgments. It was a very positive process and I am so grateful for her cooperation. I should make it clear that no money changed hands between us. Both Ravi ji’s daughters, Norah Jones and Anoushka Shankar, also gave me interviews, as well as about 125 other colleagues and acquaintances.
You clearly had access to a lot of private stuff...
While Ravi ji was alive, I had been allowed to see quite a lot of letters, documents, scrapbooks, and photos. But most of the research took place after he died in 2012. Sukanya kindly granted me access to the family collections, which I believe are of international significance — for example, his letters to his disciple, Harihar Rao, give a wonderful insight into his early career in India, those years of turmoil and new possibilities in the late 1940s and 1950s.
Pt. ravi Shankar - From the book
The book starts with your quoting an article of 1997 where he is called “The Sun that rose in the West.” But the book seems to contradict this perspective...
This is a key conclusion of my book. I think India has forgotten Ravi Shankar’s achievements in India before he started touring internationally in the mid-1950s. It’s understandable because it was a long time ago, and his later international fame was on such a stratospheric level. As director of music at All India Radio from 1949 to 1956, Ravi Shankar became a national star just as radio was exploding in its reach and popularity. For the first time, Indian classical musicians became stars on a national level; he was the key musician in that process. By the late 1950s, he was the only classical musician with a profile like a film star.
Many of his later achievements had their roots in his earlier work. He was always fascinated by percussion, a master of taal , and had been inspired by Carnatic rhythms from the late 1940s.
Long before he wrote his first sitar concerto in 1970, he was obsessed with pioneering orchestras of Indian instruments. I discovered an amazing memo from 1961 where he explained that one big reason he wanted to open his Kinnara music school in Mumbai was because there were not enough Indian musicians trained to work in orchestras! Orchestral music was always on his mind.
This book is as much for the West as it is for the East. Do you feel his legacy is as much for the West as for the East?
Very much so. I saw that both sides are key to understanding him. He also charted the map for all the Indian musicians who have gone on to tour the world — he showed them what was possible, opened up audiences, took many of them with him on tour. He is still a wonderful example for Indian musicians, and India should be proud of him.
What, according to you, was his most praiseworthy quality?
It’s impossible to single out one quality for a man of such range and depth but, if pushed, I would identify his open mind — his endlessly curious, childlike, energetic, generous outlook on the world that made everything possible, musically and made him such a magnetic personality.
The enduring legacy
Oliver has divided the book into sections, each dealing with the main focus at the time. Thus the first section is about his joining his brother Uday Shankar’s group and travelling abroad (a period which impacted his subsequent life and music significantly). The next period is equally significant in shaping his life from 1944 to 1956, the period which covers his musical training, marriage and wanting to establish himself in the world of music. The next period deals with the years of struggle, trying to establish himself in the West, and lasts till 1965. The next chapters cover his years of superstardom with George Harrison, ending in 1970. The years of living parallel lives — until his heart attack — extend till 1987. The concluding years are a separate period from 1987 till his death in 2012.
Each period is detailed with almost diary-like details; however the ultimate legacy of Pt Ravi Shankar’s life remains elusive and out of reach, much like the man himself. Was it, as Oliver writes “his life’s mission to spread understanding and love of Indian classical music” or was it “in creating for the first time a mass-market inside India for Indian classical music” (through radio, his record releases, concerts, film scores, and theatrical productions)? No doubt his legacy was a mixed one; he has been accused of Westernising Indian Classical music, of being “lightweight, too showbiz.” In the maestro’s own words “everyone thinks Ravi Shankar has got a lot of roses, but they do not know he was showered with an equal number of thorns.”
But what is without doubt is, as Oliver says, he was “probably India’s most important cultural figure of the era, and certainly its most enduring.”
Also read: Sukanya reminisces on her life with a restless explorer
