4 min readMay 15, 2026 04:54 PM IST First published on: May 15, 2026 at 04:54 PM ISTWeeks before his 90th birthday on April 29, India-born conductor Zubin Mehta cancelled his artistic commitments and scheduled performances in Israel for 2026. As the devastation in Palestine escalated, Mehta — music director emeritus of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra — expressed discomfort with the Benjamin Netanyahu government’s treatment of Palestinians, ultimately deciding he could no longer conduct in Israel.Yet last week, the Embassy of Israel in India unveiled a mural of Mehta in Delhi’s Lodhi Art District. It was presented as a tribute to Mehta and a celebration of the “India-Israel partnership. The ambassador invoked the founding of the Israel Philharmonic during the extermination of Jews under Nazi Germany. But at a time when Israel is at war with Iran and continues military strikes in Gaza, the imagery appeared jarring.AdvertisementMehta, celebrated for his interpretations of Romantic composers such as Gustav Mahler, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Johannes Brahms and Ludwig van Beethoven, has long spoken candidly about politics, war and Israel. He has also made mistakes — including once echoing the common sexism of elite classical music circles when he remarked that women conductors were “not as good” at 60 as men.Also Read | From NEET to CUET: How India’s exam system is breaking Gen ZMehta’s decision is significant because it’s not the criticism of an outsider. He calls Israel his second home, speaks fluent Yiddish, apologises for not knowing Hebrew well and has spent more than half a century shaping the sound and identity of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.During the Six-Day War in 1967 between Israel and a coalition of Arab states, Mehta boarded an ammunition-filled plane from the US to Tel Aviv to show solidarity with Israel. He conducted concerts in Jerusalem and stayed through the conflict. When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, he took the orchestra to a tobacco field near the border and performed for audiences on both sides in an attempt to foster unity. During the 1991 Gulf War, when Israelis spent nights in bomb shelters, he conducted daytime concerts attended by an audience wearing gas masks.AdvertisementHe also defended his friend, the Argentine-Israeli conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim, when Israeli lawmakers banned him for performing music by Richard Wagner, whose work remains associated with Nazism. Before the latest Israel-Palestine conflict, Mehta regularly visited Ramallah (Israeli artists couldn’t teach beyond the West Bank) and worked with Arab musicians, hoping one day the Israel Philharmonic would include artists from both communities. “My dream is to have an Israeli-Arab track in the Israel Philharmonic,” he once said.One of the most striking moments of Mehta’s career came in 1971, when he conducted the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in Berlin. After a concert dedicated to Jewish composers, he returned to the podium and led the orchestra in playing Israel’s national anthem. The performance took place less than a kilometre from the Reichstag, the parliament of Nazi Germany. The gesture transformed the concert into a political statement. Many in the audience wept.you may likeFor India, Mehta — who grew up in Bombay, as he still calls Mumbai, and trained first under his father, violinist Mehli Mehta, before studying in Vienna — is a major cultural figure. But the larger lesson India and its artists can draw from him is that cultural stature carries moral responsibility. An artist’s role is not just to entertain and retreat in the face of political discomfort or the threat of backlash. For, silence too is a political choice.As human suffering becomes harder to ignore, the moral positions artists take will shape their legacies as much as their art. The discomfort many still feel toward Wagner demonstrates precisely that point. Music never exists in a vacuum. Neither do those who create.The writer is Senior Assistant Editor, Indian Express. suanshu.khurana@expressindia.com