Zubin Mehta’s Message On Peace For Indian Muslims Deleted By Times of India
Zubin Mehta with students at the Mehli Mehta Foundation, Mumbai, he set up to honor his father
August 22, 2023
“Well, I speak to a lot of Indian friends, and I get my reports from them. I hope my Muslim friends in India will live in peace forever,” Zubin Mehta told The Times of India recently, when the interviewer asked him for a message to Indians.
This week, in a video interview with Karan Thapar of The Wire, Mehta said The Times of India took out what he said: “I hope my Muslim friends can live in peace forever in India.…It was cut off, and the writer couldn’t give me a reason why.”
Mehta, 87-years-old, is the Conductor Emeritus of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. He earlier conducted these and other orchestras around the world, including the New York Philharmonic. While he lives in Los Angeles, United States, he is an Indian citizen.
The Times of India, with more than three million copies sold each day, is India’s largest circulating English daily. It is owned by the Mumbai based Times of India Group a private company owned by members of the Sahu Jain family.
The group also owns other newspapers and magazines, including in Hindi, Marathi, and other Indian languages; web businesses including SimplyMarry.com, for matrimonial advertisements, as well as others for jobs and real estate listings; Radio Mirchi, India's largest FM radio network and other radio and TV channels; outdoor advertising billboards; and other businesses.
The Times Group, also known as Bennett, Coleman and Company, has roughly 8,200 employees and reportedly had $930 million in revenues in 2022.
On its LinkedIn profile, the group states that the “Hallmark of our leadership team” is that it has the “Finest minds who inspire & drive innovative initiatives, build trust & encourage employees to achieve optimal performance.”
“Trust is not acquired easily,” the Times Group’s website notes. “In our case, it requires an unrelenting commitment towards truth, well researched facts and credible news…our core philosophy has remained unchanged – to deliver nothing but the truth to millions of readers every day.”
On August 18, the print copies of The Times of India carried Mehta’s interview, titled “Don’t underestimate the power of music”, but deleted his comment on peace for Muslims in India. Three days later, The Wire found that the quote was included in the online version of the interview.
The “interview with Mr Mehta was long and had to be trimmed to fit the page,” The Times of India noted on X, formerly Twitter. “The line being referred to was towards the end of the interview and got left out in that process. Subsequently, Mr Mehta spoke to the interviewer about its omission and it was restored online.”
The 33 words cut by the newspaper come in the middle of the interview, not “towards the end”, and seem to be the only words cut “for reasons of space”, The Wire noted.
In 2009, Zubin Mehta published his autobiography, The Score of My Life. He was born in Bombay in 1936. He received his first musical education under his father Mehli Mehta. In 1954, after briefly trying out pre-medical studies in Bombay, Zubin left for Vienna. There he studied in the conducting program under Hans Swarowsky at the Akademie für Musik. In 1958, Zubin won the Liverpool International Conducting Competition and, three years later, was a prize-winner of the summer academy at Tanglewood, United States.
By 1961 Zubin had already conducted the Vienna, Berlin and Israel Philharmonic Orchestras; he recently celebrated 50 years of musical collaboration with all three ensembles.
Zubin was the Music Director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, 1961 to 1967. In 1962, he also took over as the Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, a post he retained until 1978. In 2019, he celebrated his farewell with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, which he served for 50 years.
In 1978 Zubin took over as the Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, commencing a tenure lasting 13 years, the longest in the orchestra's history. From 1985 to 2017 he has been chief conductor of the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence.
He made his debut as an opera conductor with Tosca in Montreal in 1963. Since then, he has conducted at numerous opera houses including the Metropolitan Opera New York, the Vienna State Opera, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, La Scala Milano, and the opera houses of Chicago and Florence as well as at the Salzburg Festival. Between 1998 and 2006 he was Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich.
Zubin is an honorary citizen of both Florence and Tel Aviv and was made an honorary member of the Vienna State Opera in 1997 and the Bavarian State Opera in 2006. In 2013, while an Honorary Conductor with the Bavarian State Orchestra, he performed in Srinagar, Kashmir. Mehta has conducted several performances in India by other renowned orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic in Mumbai.
Together with his brother Zarin, Zubin is co-chairman of the Mehli Mehta Music Foundation in Mumbai, set up to honor their father. The foundation trains more than 200 children in Western Classical Music.
“It was always my father’s dream to create an environment in Bombay which would enable talented young Indians to study Western Classical music and to perform it professionally in their country,” Zubin notes on the foundation’s website.
Mehli Mehta (1908 – 2002) was a conductor and violinist. Between 1930 and 1954, he mentored aspiring musicians in Bombay and founded the Bombay String Quartet and the Bombay Symphony Orchestra. In 1954, he emigrated to the United Kingdom. Subsequently, moving to the US, Mehli was the conductor of the American Symphony for 33 years.
Zubin set up The Buchmann-Mehta School of Music in Tel Aviv, to develop young talent in Israel. Also, along with local teachers and members of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, he founded a project for teaching young Arab Israelis.
In June, the Times Group organized the Network India Economic Conclave, 2023, in New Delhi, with the title, “India: The Emerging Third Superpower.” Speakers at the event included Amit Shah, the Home Minister, Rajnath Singh, Defense Minister, and other officials in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. "As we surge ahead under the stewardship of PM Modi's strong and bold government, it has unlocked opportunities like never before for Indian entrepreneurs," said Vineet Jain, Managing Director of the Times Group, describing the context of the conference.
During his interview with Zubin Mehta, Karan Thapar of The Wire, said that perhaps The Times of India deleted Mehta’s comment on peace for Muslims in India because “They don’t want to offend Mr. Modi and the government.”
“How would that offend anybody?” Mehta asked. “This morning I read that they were burning churches in Pakistan. One has to get over this madness of religious persecution. Hopefully, things will change.”
