Hare Krishna!

I had no idea about Leonard Bernstein until I came to the US for graduate school.  I watched West Side Story on a rickety old television set, and was hooked.

Bernstein, whose centenary was this year, was a music giant, and a public intellectual and a social activist, who spoke up on important issues of the day.   A deep thinker he was, as much as he was a musician.  When artists like him, with their broad and deep knowledge, speak, society listens.  Even when they point out to the uncomfortable truths.

Back in the old country, TM Krishna continues with such a tradition of the public-intellectual-musician.  He is not new to this blog, of course.

As a musician, Krishna is one of the best; even my father, who after listening to the jambhavans of old the days rarely ever elevates any of the contemporary young artistes to the stratosphere, has a favorite story about how Krishna moved him to tears at a homage to Musiri.

As a public intellectual, Krishna is turning out to be equally accomplished.  From the other side of the world, it seems to me that Krishna's activism are about injustice, of which there is plenty in India.  The latest incident was no exception; he has pumped up his activism:

Performing today at 6.30 pm at the Garden of Five Senses, New Delhi with RK Shriramkumar, Praven Sparsh and Anirudh Athreya. pic.twitter.com/ZFicBCuaVp

— T M Krishna (@tmkrishna) November 17, 2018

"Krishna sings, Krishna is heard", reports The Indian Express.  "A soiree on the art of politics," reports another outlet.

The political overtones of this musical soiree are surely difficult to miss. Ranged on one side are dogged opponents of the values and politics Krishna and AAP stand for. This fusion of politics and music – Carnatic music and north Indian politics – sends out a signal of the political direction that could take place in the days and months ahead. ...
The 2019 Lok Sabha elections are just five months away. If the routine silence of the ruling BJP is a way of endorsing the intimidation and threats made by right-wing social media trolls, swift retaliatory tactics by its opponents are also a way of getting back at the party.

Critics telling Krishna to shut up and simply focus on his music are no different from the right-wing nutcases here in the US who tell football players to shut up and simply play ball.  Krishna is ballsy; a lesser man would have quit being an activist a long time ago.

Again, one can learn from Bernstein's life:

Bernstein was named in Red Channels, a publication from 1950 that targeted people in the entertainment industry who were suspected of having Communist affiliations. Since he was prominent, and a lot of people around him had leftist affiliations, the FBI paid attention to him. He kind of slid past the McCarthy hearings. Copland and Robbins were called to testify, but he was not. He lost his passport for a time in the 1950s, but that was it.

I am thankful that there have been, and are, people fighting these good fights.