Why A R Rahman and His Music Are Symbols of India

Pandit Ravi Shankar, Ustad Zakir Hussain, A R Rahman. There are a few Indian musicians who have instant name recall among music lovers, no matter where you are in the world. And with all due respect to both the classical musicians, virtuosos at their instrument of choice, there has been no Indian musician as versatile as Rahman. He has created music for nearly all the major languages of the Indian subcontinent and beyond. Even in Mandarin and Persian, and you know how much those populaces love us!

There has also been no one else who has bagged as many awards, whether it’s a Grammy or an Oscar or a Golden Globe, in some instances more than once and put India back on the world map of music. One could argue that before a Jai Ho!, Indian music was stereotyped as the sitar strains in a Beatles number or some fooling around with a shehnai. Rahman assimilated digitized beats and other electronica, enlarged the dusty orchestra from the same old instruments to an eclectic medley of sounds, and sought inspiration from beyond our borders to make music that transcended cultural boundaries.

He wasn’t the only Indian composer doing it, of course, but he was certainly the most influential. The new stable of talented artistes who are crafting the soundscapes of Indian films today have all grown up on Rahman, who’s been playing for a quarter of a century now.

As for slurs on his patriotism, his religious leanings, his very Indian-ness, they are, each and every one of them, sheer sophistries. This is a man who has breathed new life into nationalist songs as well as composed new ones that have become ingrained into our national identity, whether it’s a Maa Tujhe Salaam or a Yeh Jo Desh Hai Tera, and of course Bharat Humko Jaan Se Pyaara Hai. His patriotism is right there in the title, for gods’ sake (please note the placing of the apostrophe in the G word).

And it’s not just the tricolor waving masses he’s catering to; the man has composed bhajans as well as Sufi songs, hymns and chants, and even worked on films based on Sikh films. So when some reprobate tweets accuse the man of not being Indian enough or not sticking to one language, it beggars belief.

Indeed, if India -- with all its diversities and divisions, its peaks and plains, it flooded fields and arid lands, its languages and lingos – had to have a theme song, A R Rahman would be the one who’d compose it, no questions asked. That this needs to be reiterated, well, it just makes us want to rant on Twitter.