In The Name Of Gandhi

The American composer Philip Glass acquired cult status after his first opera, the surreal "Einstein on the Beach"—a collaboration with the artist Robert Wilson— appeared internationally. His music is minimalist, repetitive—and not always admired. Now his 1979 opera "Satyagraha," about Mahatma Gandhi's politically formative years in South Africa, is being revived at New York's grand Metropolitan Opera. Glass, a Buddhist and longtime devotee of Gandhi, spoke to NEWSWEEK's Vibhuti Patel. Excerpts:

PATEL: What does satyagraha mean? Why did you choose that word for your title?
GLASS: It's a Sanskrit word, coined by Mahatma Gandhi, meaning truth force, or the power of truth. Gandhi turned an idea into a word. He understood the power of communication: he started a newspaper in South Africa that he mailed to India, so everyone knew who he was when he returned. All modern political movements have borrowed from Gandhi. In America, his legacy reappears in the work of Martin Luther King. It transformed our country.

What inspired you to write this opera?
Having worked with Ravi Shankar, I visited India in 1967 to learn more about its culture. There, in a small-town cinema, I saw a clip of Gandhi's Salt March, when he led a march to the sea to protest the British-imposed tax on salt that was hurting the poor. His charisma came through so clearly that I read his autobiography, and returned to India in 1969 to do extensive research by traveling, collecting material, meeting people who had known Gandhi. I had no idea then about doing an opera. Then, in 1976, when our opera "Einstein on the Beach" made Robert Wilson and me famous, the Netherlands Opera commissioned a new work. I decided it would be about Gandhi.

Why is it in Sanskrit?
That's the language of the sacred Hindu text, the Bhagavad-Gita. It's a discourse on the value of action, which Gandhi memorized by pasting its passages on his shaving mirror. The Gita preaches activism—Gandhi was not passive; he advocated nonviolent resistance. Words in opera are not understood anyway, so we project translations onstage. When I wrote the opera in 1979, I was moved by the violent state of the world. It never occurred to me that 30 years later there could be so much more violence: China's engaged in the genocide of an entire nation, America is in Iraq. The opera is more relevant today than it ever was.

Gandhi was against industrialization. How would he react to today ' s technology and to global warming?
He would have marched! I am of the Vietnam generation, when people marched in protest. Today's young stay home, on the Internet. That has to change. The Garrison Institute in New York is celebrating "Satyagraha" through conferences on ecology. That takes the concept further than I did. The idea of satyagraha applied to ecology is powerful—it's about nonviolence to the environment.

Ironically, Gandhi ' s ideas are rejected in India, where the IT boom and 9 percent economic growth are the result of industrialization. India is adding to greenhouse gases, which create global warming.
Developing countries first develop the technology, then they learn to control it. India is still in the early years of development. It will come to terms with this because protection of nature is part of its tradition. It'll be harder for China, because their political ideology does not include such ideas.