Srinagar: PDP president Mehbooba Mufti on Sunday said lyricist and screenwriter Javed Akhtar was contradicting the lived realities of Indian Muslims by dismissing music maestro A R Rahman's concerns about the alleged communalisation of Bollywood, PTI reported.
"When Javed Akhtar dismisses A R Rahman's concerns about the growing communalisation of Bollywood, he contradicts lived and shared realities of Indian Muslims including those of his own wife Shabana Azmi, who has openly spoken about being denied housing for being a Muslim in a cosmopolitan city like Bombay," Mufti said in a post on X.
According to media reports, Akhtar said there was no communal element in Rahman getting reduced work opportunities in Bollywood.
"Bollywood has always been a living mini-India mirroring the country's social realities. Brushing aside such experiences does not change the truth about today's India," the former chief minister of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir said.
AR Rahman told BC Asian Network that he has been getting less work due to a power shift within the Hindi film industry in the last few years and said it could also be due to the "communal thing", according to Hindustan Times.
"I'm not in search of work. I want work to come to me; the sincerity of my work to earn things. I feel it's a jinx when I go on in search of things... People who are not creative have the power now to decide things and this might have been a communal thing also but not in my face. It comes to me as Chinese whispers that ‘they booked you but the music company went ahead and hired their five composers’. I said, 'Oh that's great, rest for me, I can chill out with my family," Rahman told BBC Asian Network.