Discordant Notes

A.R. Rahman has spent three decades persuading India and the world that music can transcend identity. Which is why his recent remarks to the BBC Asian Network land not merely as a sour note, but as a dangerous one. In saying that there was a communal bias against him while describing the film ‘Chhaava’ as “divisive” despite himself working on it, Rahman has said something highly corrosive. For an artist of his stature, such a lapse is not trivial.

The interview, conducted by British Pakistani, nudged Rahman towards a familiar grievance: that the present political climate has made life harder for Muslim artists, snidely insinuating that life for minority community artists under the Modi regime had grown ‘intolerable.’ Taking the bait, Rahman went on to speak of a ‘chill’ in opportunities, while gesturing towards majoritarian intolerance and framed the film ‘Chhaava’ – which deals with Chhatrapati Sambhaji’s resistance against the tyrannical Mughal Aurangzeb - as a cultural fault-line.

The implication was that if Rahman’s work is not embraced, it is because the times are communal. This is where his argument collapses under its own weight. Indian popular culture has long been one of the country’s least sectarian arenas. Talent has been its harsh but largely impartial judge. Shah Rukh Khan remains its most bankable star. Aamir Khan still commands audiences. From Zakir Hussain’s tabla to Amjad Ali Khan’s sarod, from A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s presidency to Azim Premji’s boardroom, the evidence stubbornly contradicts the notion of a glass ceiling imposed by faith.

For Rahman to claim otherwise is intellectual vapidity and sheer dishonesty. More damningly, for all his playing the victim card, Rahman’s professional circumstances do not support his case. He continues to be commissioned for marquee projects, including a lavish Ramayana which he is apparently co-scoring with Hans Zimmer.

Does Rahman’s receding star have something to do with his remarks? Like every artist who has dominated an era, is he fearing that his dominance is coming to an end? To dress the natural descent of a career arc as ‘communal discrimination’ is petty and unbecoming.

Voices within the industry have said as much. Author and columnist Shobhaa De, hardly a fellow-traveller of the current disposition, called Rahman’s remarks “very dangerous.” She rightly argued that religion has rarely been the barrier in Bollywood. When a man so successful, so decorated, so globally admired like Rahman plays the victim’s card, the gesture tarnishes his career.

What makes Rahman’s comments truly reckless is not their personal self-pity but their public consequence. India’s cultural ecosystem is already tense, hypersensitive to perceived slights, and prone to turning nuance into ammunition. When a figure of Rahman’s influence implies communal bias without evidence, he legitimises suspicion. He teaches younger artists that failure is always political, never professional.

By reaching for communal alibis, Rahman is trading the dignity of decline for the cheap shelter of grievance. History is rarely kind to such exchanges.