“Messages Get Corrupted”- AR Rahman Breaks Silence After Communal Remark Row

Music maestro AR Rahman recently stirred a hornet’s nest with his remarks on communalism in the industry. Now, during his appearance on The Great Indian Kapil Sharma show, he spoke about how the show’s whisper game perfectly demonstrated the way messages often get distorted as they pass on the way.

He appeared on the show to promote the film Gandhi Talks along with Vijay Sethupathi, Aditi Rao Hydari and Siddharth Jadhav. Reflecting on the show’s whisper game, he said, “This is a good exercise to see how information gets misunderstood. Different states, different cultures. The problem with the world is this: how messages get corrupted on the way.”

Gandhi Talks is a silent film with music elevating the scenes and emotions. Talking about it, he said, “If there are no dialogues, it’s such a celebration of music. Because you have all the real estate to do music, but also terrifying because people will be judging. Every note will be exposed. He (Kishor Pandurang Belekar) is the first director who never came and told me anything negative and said, ‘I don’t like this.’ Whatever I give, he takes it. Even if I play ‘tang’, he would say yes.”

During an interview with BBC Asian Network, AR Rahman was asked whether he felt any bias in Bollywood as a Tamil composer, to which he replied, “Maybe I never got to know of this, maybe it was concealed by God, but I didn’t feel any of this. The past eight years, maybe, because a power shift has happened, and people who are not creative have the power now. It might be a communal thing also… but it is not in my face.”