melodiousness in classical vocal music

I think that our hindustani classical vocal music became not only unpopular with the masses but became a laughing stock for being caricatured in comedies only. And the main reason behind this has been a total indifference towards melodiousness on the part of traditional 'gharana' singers, who were so myopic with the grammer and fine technical peculiarities of their respective'gharanas' styles, that they gave more importence to the'craft' aspect rather than the 'arts' aspect of their renditions. This tendency was given big boost by the AIR over which listeners were bored to death by a surfiet of vocal classical by most non-melodious, and often jarring male voices, whose selection in the otherwise strict auditions by the AIR boards, was made mainly on the basis of the standing of their 'gharna' tradition and the lineage of their 'ustads'.
In a recent comment that i wrote on the web site 'indianraga', about the mesmerizing melodiousness of Kaushiki Chakrabarty, an anonymous remark on my comments expressed disagreement saying that old maestroes like Abdul Karim Khan were more melodious. And i cold not help writing a retort, that Abdul Karim khan's life is the biggest proof of the non-melodiousness experienced by audiences in those days.