Pandit V. G. Karnad

V. G. Karnad was born in 1925 in South Kanara, Karnataka. He played flute and harmonium in his youth and was influenced by the flautist P. Sanjivrao before seeking out Pannalal Ghosh. He came to Bombay at twenty-three and approached Ghosh, who agreed to teach him; a concert programme note records that Ghosh took no fees from his disciples and asked instead to be repaid in pure music.

Karnad broadcast as a radio artist from 1954 and, like his guru, became a staff artist at All India Radio. His playing drew wider notice after an appearance at the Sur-Sringar Samsad's Swami Haridas Sangeet Sammelan in 1958. He toured European countries in 1960 and again in 1982, and in 1960 was the principal instrumentalist in a cultural delegation to the World Eucharistic Congress in West Germany. He also toured the United States.

He remained closely identified with his guru's memory: he played a 1986 concert in Dhaka in Ghosh's honour and performed during the Pannalal Ghosh birth centenary year in 2011. He died on 7 September 2020.

He is described as one of the few flautists recognised as a true representative of Pannalal Ghosh's style, holding to its idiom and unhurried expression rather than developing a separate manner of his own.