Bengaluru: Carnatic singer T M Krishna and Safai Karmachari Andolan Convener Bezwada Wilson have found place in the list of the Ramon Magsaysay Award, which will be presented on August 31 at a formal ceremony in Manila.
Krishna will receive the award for “social inclusiveness in culture,” while Bezwada Wilson was named as an awardee for “asserting the inalienable right to a life of human dignity.”

The citation of Krishna reads: “He saw that his was a caste-dominated art that fostered an unjust, hierarchic order by effectively excluding the lower classes from sharing in a vital part of India’s cultural legacy. He questioned the politics of art; widened his knowledge about the arts of the dalits (“untouchables”) and non-Brahmin communities; and declared he would no longer sing in ticketed events at a famous, annual music festival in Chennai to protest the lack of inclusiveness. Recognizing that dismantling artistic hierarchies can be a way of changing India’s divisive society, Krishna devoted himself to democratizing the arts as an independent artist, writer, speaker, and activist.”

The citation of Bezwada Wilson reads: “Fifty years old, Bezwada Wilson has spent 32 years on his crusade, leading not only with a sense of moral outrage but also with remarkable skills in mass organizing, and working within India’s complex legal system. SKA has grown into a network of 7,000 members in 500 districts across the country. Of the estimated 600,000 scavengers in India, SKA has liberated around 300,000. While Bezwada has placed at the core of his work the dalits’ self-emancipation, he stresses that manual scavenging is not a sectarian problem.”

Among other Indians to win the award in the past are Sanjiv Chaturvedi (2015), Anshu Gupta (2015), Harish Hande (2012), Deepa Joshi (2009), P. Sainath (2007), V. Shantha (2005), Aruna Roy (2000), Kiran Bedi (1994), Ela Bhatt (1977), Baba Amte (1985) and Vinoba Bhave (1958).