‘Misperceptions, misdated photos, inaccurate timelines’: Ravi Shankar Institute issues statement on Rishab Rikhiram’s ‘disciple’ status

This Centre was also a home to Shankar whenever he was in Delhi and remains one to his family. The clarification follows growing public discussion over Rishab’s references to Pandit Ravi Shankar as his guru and him being the youngest and last disciple of the sitar giant. The statement mentions that the youngest disciples were Shubhendra Rao and Anoushka Shankar (who were four and seven respectively when they began learning) while the last were Nishad Gadgil and Dr Scott Elsman.

The statement comes in the wake of a public spat after Anoushka Shankar, in an interview to Humans of Bombay said that there was some “misunderstanding about Rishab’s guruship” and that he learned mainly from her father’s senior disciple Parimal Sadaphal, and had a couple of lessons from her father. “We knew him from childhood because he was the son of our instrument maker Sanjay Rikhiram Sharma. So somehow that has got blown up into some story of him being his last disciple or the youngest disciple, which isn’t true.” Her comments prompted a rebuttal from Rishab last week, who maintained that his association with the maestro was deeper than being suggested.

Rishab, on Friday, responded with an official statement, describing, in detail, his Ganda bandhan ceremony (official thread ceremony symbolic of a guru’s acceptance of a formal disciple) from January 2012. Rishab also mentions a session that lasted hours where Pt Ravi Shankar asked him to perform the same raag that his wife Sukanya Shankar had played for him on YouTube in the US.

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In the timeline that the Centre has mentioned, Rishab had an informal string tying “at the persuasion of Rishab’s father” and “due to affection for the young child”. Ghosh writes that no priest was present, as is customary in the Ganda Bandhan ceremony, and no formal announcement was made, no other students or extended family were invited. “Guruji did not conduct a formal initial discourse or several hours of teaching that day. The mentioned ceremony was entirely impromptu. The event has been retrospectively amplified beyond what occurred,” said the statement.

The statement also debunked the claim of prolonged or remotely supervised instruction to Rishab and that Shankar saw no YouTube recording prior to the “string tying”. “And it was not based on the review of the same, did he decide to personally nurture Rishab, conduct an extended evaluation or formally accept Rishab as a disciple,” the statement said. The Centre also refuted a photograph that Rishab had put up, claiming that it was not taken on November 30, 2012. Shankar was in San Diego at the time. “He was critically ill and preparing for hospitalisation at the time before he passed away on 12 December, 2012.

Furthermore, many other photographs are under circulation and misunderstood to be ‘proof’ of a guru-disciple relationship,” said the statement,” which added that it did not seek to “diminish Rishab’s talent or musical efforts” but added that Pt Ravi Shankar’s musical legacy deserved precision and seeks to correct “inaccurate timelines, misperceptions around the nature and amount of instruction and confusion around the word disciple”.