Prayag Sangeet Samiti

Prayag Sangeet Samiti, often written Prayag Sangit Samiti, is a music society in Prayagraj, the city long known as Allahabad. Like the Gandharva Mahavidyalaya Mandal it both teaches and examines, but its centre of gravity is the examination: candidates across north India sit its papers and practicals and carry away its diplomas. It is a registered society under the Indian Societies Registration Act of 1860, not a university, and it should not be confused with the state universities whose degrees its diplomas are treated as comparable to.

The Samiti examines in vocal music, instrumental music and dance, each rising through Junior Diploma, Senior Diploma, Sangit Prabhakar and Praveen Sangeetacharya, across eight years plus a Praveshika entry level. The instrumental list is unusually wide: sitar, sarod, vina, vichitra vina, santoor and guitar under tantra vadya; sarangi, esraj and violin under vitat vadya; flute, shehnai and clarinet under sushir vadya; tabla and pakhawaj under avanaddh vadya; and jal tarang under ghana vadya. On the vocal side, alongside classical it examines bhav sangit, Rabindra Sangit, Nazrul Geet, Bangla kirtan, shabad kirtan and Sufi sangit.

It also runs annual all-India competitions and conferences. Public contact as published: secretary 0532-2408078, registrar 9450628825, prayagsangitsamiti.secretary@gmail.com. Checked September 2026: the Samiti is active, with a December examination timetable and 2026 competition rules posted on its own site.

The Samiti gives its founding as Maha Shivratri 1926, by Deshraj Major (Dr.) Ranjit Singh with Baijnath Sahai and Satyanand Joshi, with the stated aim of popularising Indian classical music. Its own account claims a decisive part in getting music admitted as a subject in the High School and Intermediate curricula of Uttar Pradesh, and credits itself with much of the impetus behind music teaching in government institutions and universities since.

Secondary accounts add that it began awarding diplomas in minor subjects in 2007 and that its diplomas are treated as equivalent to music degrees at a number of institutions, including Bhatkhande in Lucknow and Madhav Sangit Mahavidyalaya in Gwalior; the Wikipedia article carrying those claims is partly uncited, and prospective students should check recognition directly with the Samiti and the receiving institution. Note the city's name: sources before 2018 say Allahabad, later ones Prayagraj, and the Samiti's own pages still use both.

The Samiti owns two buildings in the city: the first at South Malaka, built in 1936, and a second completed in 1955 at Alfred Park, whose hall was named the Mehta Auditorium after the industrialist G. L. Mehta, who paid for its improvement. It seats 2,500, and an open-air theatre in the same grounds, the Muktangan, seats as many again — which is why the city's convocations and conferences have long been held here. The ISME directory of music institutions records a library of over 1,500 rare books on music, dance and drama and a collection of recordings, with teaching offered through the Vishnu Digambar Academy of Music.

Its own list of artists who have performed at its conferences reads as a roll of twentieth-century Hindustani music, from Vishnu Digambar Paluskar and Omkarnath Thakur through Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Amir Khan, Bhimsen Joshi, Girija Devi and Jasraj, and on the instrumental side Allauddin Khan, Bismillah Khan, Ahmed Jan Thirakwa, Ravi Shankar, Nikhil Banerjee, Ram Narayan, Kishan Maharaj and Shivkumar Sharma. The list is undated, and records performance rather than any teaching connection.