Imagine an opera sung entirely in Sanskrit in the heart of New York! ‘Satyagraha’ is composer Philip Glass’s landmark work, set to text from the Bhagavad Gita, and revolves around Mahatma Gandhi’s years in South Africa and his experiments with civil disobedience. This dramatic event at the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center uses giant puppets created out of newspapers and powerful special effects combined with Philip Glass’s all-encompassing music. Tenor Richard Croft stars as Gandhi in this must-see opera.
Indeed, the high drama and simple truth of Mahatma Gandhi’s Satya Graha or non violent movement came to New York with scores of remembrances across the city from screenings of the Richard Attenborough film ‘Gandhi’ to discussions of nonviolent strategies at the Japan Society to ‘Satya Graha in the age of Climate Change at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. Over a dozen events had been organized by the Satya Graha Forum, a collaboration of leading New York arts, educational and spiritual institutions.
One of the most visual was ‘Gandhi: The Legacy’ – a photo exhibit of rare images, some of them never before seen in a public space – and to walk through the Tamarind Arts Council was to journey into the past. With the amazing old images of Gandhiji’s life and times all around, the gallery also hosted a talk by noted photographer Ram Rahman who discussed contemporary Indian photography in the post-independence era. Viewers got to see a slide show of works by photographers like Margaret Bourke-White, Cecil Beaton and Sunil Janah, as well as Rahman’s images, creating a diverse view of a disappearing world.
