Do we like A. R. Rahman?
Our score: 8 out of 10. No harmful words or company turned up, and there's a long run of public giving, with one tangled copyright dispute still before the courts.
Rahman was born Dileep Kumar in Madras (now Chennai) into a film-music family. His father, a composer and conductor, died when he was nine, and money trouble kept interrupting school. He was playing in orchestras by 11 and writing ad jingles in the late 1980s, then took the name Allah Rakha Rahman after his family converted to Islam in 1989.
The film that changed everything was Roja in 1992, and the global breakthrough was Slumdog Millionaire, which won him two Oscars. He has scored well over 150 films. He also launched Katraar, a platform for independent artists, which fits a man who keeps opening doors behind him.
His rough patch this year started in January with a BBC Asian Network interview. Talking about getting less Hindi film work, he said it “might have been a communal thing also, but not in my face.” The Vishwa Hindu Parishad's Vinod Bansal demanded an apology, right-wing commentators questioned his patriotism, and Al Jazeera reported that few industry colleagues publicly backed him.
Within days he posted an Instagram video saying he had “never wished to cause pain”. He called India his “inspiration” and “teacher”. Whether you read that as a sincere clarification or as backing down under pressure depends on where you stand. It's a row about how he was heard, not about him hurting anyone.
The legal stoush is over Veera Raja Veera from Ponniyin Selvan II. Dhrupad vocalist Faiyaz Wasifuddin Dagar alleged it drew on a Dagar family composition. In February the Supreme Court said there should be “some acknowledgment” of the Dagar tradition, then disposed of the appeal after Rahman agreed to a revised credit line. His lawyer said that was without prejudice to his position. The suit is still pending in the Delhi High Court, so nothing is decided.
On the harm check, we found nothing: no words against LGBTQ+ people, women or migrants, no climate or vaccine nonsense, and no conspiracy slide. His big current job is scoring the Ramayana films with Hans Zimmer. He has talked about it as a story “coming from India to the whole world, with love”. That's a mainstream collaboration, not a worrying one. The gap is that our searches turned up very little on his views either way.