The boy keeping an old drum’s rhythm

The achievement

On 22 January 2024, Arijeet Banerjee received the Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar, India’s national honour for children, in the Art and Culture category. President Droupadi Murmu presented the award at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi, where Arijeet was one of 19 children honoured that year — and, state reporting noted, the only recipient from West Bengal.

An old drum, a young player

The pakhawaj is a barrel-shaped drum with two heads, played with both hands, whose deep rhythms have accompanied Dhrupad — one of the oldest forms of Hindustani classical music — for centuries. According to the Government of India’s award material, Arijeet, who was 13 at the time, has performed at the International Dhrupad Festival, and has received the Bharat Ratna M S Subbulakshmi Fellowship and a place in the Asia Book of Records for his pakhawaj playing.

The pakhawaj is less familiar today than the tabla, and most of its music lives inside the Dhrupad tradition — a teenager from Siliguri carrying it onto national stages is exactly the kind of work this award exists to notice.