Padma Vibhushan Dr Teejan Bai, widely regarded as the greatest exponent of Pandavani folk music, passed away in the early hours of Sunday, 6 July 2025, at AIIMS Raipur following a prolonged battle with severe lung infection, sepsis, and acute kidney injury. She was 69. Her death ends a performing career that spanned more than five decades and carried an ancient oral tradition from the tribal heartlands of Chhattisgarh to stages across the world.

A Voice That Embodied the Mahabharata

Teejan Bai did not merely sing the Mahabharata — she inhabited it. Seated on the floor with her tambura, she enacted entire episodes from the epic, embodying Arjuna, Krishna, Draupadi, and a cast of gods, warriors, and sages through voice, gesture, and raw theatrical energy. Her performances were less recital and more spiritual invocation, making the dharma of the ancients feel immediate to audiences who had never read a single Sanskrit verse.

She performed her first public rendition at the age of 13 — a feat made more remarkable by the fact that Pandavani was then an almost exclusively male-dominated art form. Her community ostracised her for it. She built a small hut for herself, borrowed utensils and food from neighbours, and refused to abandon her calling.

From Ganiyari to Global Stages

Born on 8 August 1956 in the village of Ganiyari, near Bhilai, Teejan Bai came from the Pardhi scheduled tribe. Her parents, Chunuk Lal Pardhi and Sukhwati, survived by making mats and brooms. Married off at 12 into an abusive union, she faced compounded adversity — poverty, child marriage, and social exile — before carving out a life entirely on her own terms.

She eventually took Pandavani far beyond Chhattisgarh, performing on national and international stages and preserving an oral tradition that, without her advocacy, might have quietly disappeared. In 2018, she received the prestigious Fukuoka Arts and Culture Prize in Japan, one of Asia's most respected honours for contributions to cultural exchange.

Honours and Recognition

The Indian state recognised Teejan Bai's contribution across four decades of awards. She received the Padma Shri in 1987/1988, the Padma Bhushan in 2003, and the Padma Vibhushan — India's second-highest civilian honour — in 2019. The Sangeet Natak Akademi Award followed in 1995, alongside an honorary Doctorate in Literature and numerous other accolades.

Yet those who knew her noted that she remained deeply rooted in her tribal identity and village life, never distancing herself from the soil that had shaped her.

What India Has Lost

Teejan Bai's death comes at a moment when traditional folk arts across India face acute pressures — shrinking audiences, dwindling patronage, and the erosion of oral transmission chains. She was among the last performers who could fill a village square and a concert hall with equal authority, bridging rural heritage and urban curiosity through sheer force of artistry.

Critics and cultural scholars argue that her greatest contribution was not any single performance, but the proof she offered: that a tribal woman from a marginalised community could, through art alone, claim national and international stature. Her life was a rebuke to every orthodoxy that tried to silence her.

As tributes pour in from across the country, the question her passing raises is whether India's institutions of folk-art preservation are equipped to carry forward what she spent a lifetime building.