Why Indian Mozart AR Rahman Has Converted From Hindu To Muslim?
Music Director and Singer AR Rahman have already made his mark in Hollywood winning an astonishing Oscar for ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ in 2009. Rahman recently earned another nomination for his contribution in ‘Pele: Birth of a Legend’. Earlier, his ‘Jai Ho’ from Slumdog Millionaire affirmed his stature in International market.
On the Oscar front, we all know that as many as 145 songs have been shortlisted for the race of Oscars, out of which the final list of nominations will be made. Rahman’s song ‘Ginga’ from the movie on Pele has been shortlisted for the Best Original Song award for the upcoming Oscars.
While the success in musical front is quite unanimous, Rahman’s journey in terms of personal life is bit eccentric. Somehow, soon after he has become quite popular, AR Rahman’s past has become the hot topic of the media. Media has become aware of his conversion of religion from Hindu to Muslim and various questions regarding this bothered the Oscar-winning musician. However, there is a clean story behind this and we must know it.
The story was clearly mentioned in Nasreen Munni Kabir’s book ‘A R Rahman: The Spirit of Music’, the music composer tells the writer how he and his family voluntarily converted to Sufi Islam. It was written, “My mother was a practicing Hindu. She had always been spiritually inclined. We had Hindu religious images on the walls of the Habibullah Roadhouse where we grew up. There was also an image of Mother Mary holding Jesus in Her arms and a photograph of the sacred sites of Mecca and Medina”.
Rahman further said, “In 1986, ten years after my father died, we happened to meet Qadri Saheb (Sufi Peer Karimullah Shah Qadri) again. The peer was unwell and my mother looked after him and he regarded her as a daughter. There was a strong connection between us.”
When asked whether the Sufi peer asked him to embrace Islam, Rahman replied “No, he didn’t. Nobody is forced to convert to the path of Sufism. You only follow if it comes from your heart. The Sufi path spiritually lifted both my mother and me, and we felt it was the best path for us, so we embraced Sufi Islam.”
Asked how Sufism affected his attitude to life, the music composer replied, “It has taught me that just as the rain and the sun do not differentiate between people, neither should we. Only when you experience friendship across cultures, you understand there are many good people in all communities.”
Next to that, when questioned whether converting to Islam affected his relations with people, Rahman replied, “No one around us really cared – we were musicians and that allowed us greater social freedom. The important thing for me is that I learned about equality and the oneness of God. Whether you are a winner or loser, king or slave, short or tall, rich or poor, sinner or saint, ugly or beautiful – regardless of what color you are, God showers unlimited love and mercy on us if we choose to receive it. It is because of our inability, our blindness in seeing the unknown that we lose faith.”
Asked why he changed his name to AR Rahman, the music director said: “The truth is I never liked my name. No disrespect to the great actor Dilip Kumar! However, somehow my name didn’t match the image I had to myself.”
“Sometime before we started on our journey on the path of Sufism, we went to an astrologer to show him my younger sister’s horoscope because my mother wanted to get her married. This was at the same time when I was keen to change my name. The astrologer looked at me and said, “This chap is very interesting.”
“He suggested the names: Abdul Rahman and Abdul Rahim and said that either name would be good for me. I instantly loved the name ‘Rahman’. Then my mother had this intuition that I should add Allahrakha [Protected by God], and that’s how I became AR Rahman.”
He then concluded that it was a Hindu astrologer who gave him that Muslim name.