Shehnai virtuoso Bismillah Khan dies at 91
(No Ratings Yet)Bismillah Khan, one of India’s greatest musicians whom the country honoured with its highest civilian award, died here early Monday. He was 91.
The shehnai virtuoso was taken ill around 10 days ago and admitted to the Heritage Hospital here Aug 17. His death came at 2.20 a.m. in the Hindu holy town that had been his home for decades.
Doctors attending him said he had been admitted on account of “electrolyte imbalance”, even as all his vital organs were functioning normally. “He had shown improvement over the past two days, but continued to feel very weak,” Khan’s personal secretary Syed Javed Ahmed told IANS.
Said Siddharth Rai, the hospital vice president: “Bismillah Khan’s ailment was simply age-related. He did not suffer from any kind of disease.”
Khan was among the very few Indians who had the distinction of receiving all the national awards - Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan, Padma Vibhushan and the highest civilian honour Bharat Ratna that he got in 2001.
He is survived by five sons, three daughters and a large number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
All government offices and schools in Uttar Pradesh were declared closed Monday as a mark of respect to Khan who the state government announced will be given a state funeral.
Khan, who carried the honorific of an ‘ustad’ (guru), died an unhappy man as he felt that the government did not honour him sufficiently for his services to the arts.
Even last week he said he was grateful to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for releasing a special grant of Rs.250,000 for his treatment, but was pained that the government continued to ignore his request for a cooking gas distributing agency for one of his grandsons.
He said the business would have been useful for him to run his huge family, its members reportedly numbering around 70 that live together in his ancestral house.
The maestro was admitted to the Heritage hospital after he became very weak. He reportedly declined the prime minister’s offer for treatment at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi.
“I had personally explained to then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee-ji how it was becoming increasingly difficult for me to run my huge household of children and grandchildren. I therefore requested him to get a cooking gas agency released in the name of one of my grandsons,” he had said earlier this year.
“A few months later in June 2002 when I met then president K.R. Narayanan, I repeated my request. Mr. Narayanan too assured me that my request would be conceded before the next Independence Day, but now years have passed and I have yet to hear anything in that regard from anyone,” he had lamented.
His personal secretary Syed Javed Ahmed, attending on him at the Heritage Hospital, had told IANS Friday: “Khan-saheb would often share his pain with us in private. What is agonising for him is the apparent apathy of all those who matter. He has begun to suspect that even top leaders of the country are only paying lip service to him.”
According to his family members, he had felt “totally defeated and cheated”. — IANS
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