Behind the stage at Abhinav Theatre, the screen showed a man bent over a santoor. In front of it, the same man — curls, white kurta, prayer beads — stood holding a framed citation while the Divisional Commissioner and a row of elders applauded. That was the evening of Tuesday, 1 September, when Pandit (Dr) Abhay Rustum Sopori received the Ravi Misri Award 2026, described by its organisers as their first Community Cash Award, and with it a title: 'Vitasta Ratna', jewel of the Vitasta, the old name for the Jhelum.
The award came from the Saraswathi Educational, Cultural Charitable Trust of Chennai, managed by Dr C.K. Garyali, a former secretary to the Governor of Tamil Nadu, together with Helpline Humanity, the Jammu organisation that for three decades has run book distributions and scholarships for students from single-parent homes. Divisional Commissioner Jammu Ramesh Kumar was chief guest; former DGP Dr Ashok Bhan and Relief and Rehabilitation Commissioner Arvind Karwani were on the dais. Sopori shared the Ravi Misri award with Ankur Bagati, and the same evening the trust's Ravi Garyali award went to Dr Agni Shekhar and Vikram Koul, and its Indra Garyali award to Sandhya Dhar and Dr Adividvadani Kaul. The cash component was not disclosed.
Nine generations, one instrument
If the name sounds familiar, it should. Sopori, born in Srinagar in 1979, is the son of Pandit Bhajan Sopori — the 'Saint of Santoor', who died in 2022 — and grandson of Pandit Shamboo Nath Sopori, the man J&K's musicians still call the father of classical music in the state. The family traces the Sopori Sufiana Gharana through nine generations and more than 300 years of Kashmir's Sufiana tradition, the court-and-shrine music that grew out of the valley's shared Shaivite and Sufi practice, and that the trapezoid, hundred-string santoor was built to play.
Abhay learned first from his grandfather and father, then formalised it — bachelor's and master's degrees in music from Pracheen Kala Kendra in Chandigarh, plus, unusually for a hereditary musician, a commerce degree from Delhi University and a computing degree from IGNOU. The honours arrived early: the Sangeet Natak Akademi's Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar in 2006, the Bharat Shiromani Award in 2010, All India Radio's Top Grade in 2019. In 2004 he built a 30-string variant he calls the Sur-Santoor; in 2013 he composed Haftrang for the Bavarian State Orchestra; in 2020 he scored Vidhu Vinod Chopra's Shikara.
Why a young Jammu reader should care
The part of Sopori's work that touches this city most directly is not on a concert programme. Through SaMaPa — the Sopori Academy of Music and Performing Arts he founded in 2005 — he has spent two decades pushing music education into J&K's institutions: the citation at Abhinav Theatre credited him with expanding music teaching across the UT's districts and with helping set up the first postgraduate programme in Hindustani music in Kashmir. His Wikipedia entry records him as the person who got music introduced as a formal school subject in J&K. For a student in Jammu who has ever sat a music paper, or found a santoor in a school store-room, that is his fingerprint.
There is also the matter of where this happened. Abhinav Theatre on Canal Road is the city's working stage — the venue for JKAACL's weekly theatre series, the Jammu Film Festival at the end of this month, and most evenings in between. An award ceremony for a Srinagar-born musician, given by a Chennai trust and a Jammu charity, is a fair picture of what the hall is for: the place where the region's arts, wherever they started, come to be seen.
What 'Vitasta Ratna' commits him to
Titles like this one are informal — there is no state register of Vitasta Ratnas — but they tend to stick, and they come with expectations. Sopori's answer, on the evidence of the past twenty years, is more of the same: the annual SaMaPa festivals, the folk-ensemble work that has taken Kashmiri and Dogri music to orchestral stages, and the slow institutional work of getting a raga onto a syllabus. For young musicians in Jammu, the practical takeaway is that the santoor's most decorated living exponent is, by his own long record, unusually interested in teaching.
Sources: Kashmir Despatch — Pandit Abhay Rustum Sopori honoured with 'Ravi Misri Award 2026'; bestowed title 'Vitasta Ratna' (1 Sept 2026); The Publish — Div Com Jammu hails KPs for thriving in diverse fields (Sept 2026); Daily Excelsior — Div Com Jammu hails KPs for thriving in diverse fields; Wikipedia — Abhay Sopori; Morning Kashmir — Helpline Humanity's 30th year. Portrait: Wikimedia Commons, "Abhay at SaMaPa" by Poorinjava, CC BY-SA 4.0.
