Trolls descended upon Rahman with predictable fury, accusing him of bias and disloyalty,
Algorithms amplify anger because it keeps us engaged.
TV debates reward the shrillest voice: harmony seems bland, and complexity exhausting
A. R. Rahman’s observation on the growing religious polarisation within the Mumbai film industry, echoing the larger churn in Indian society, should have served as a moment of national introspection. It was neither incendiary nor partisan but a quiet, reflective remark from an artist whose life’s work has consistently transcended boundaries of faith, language, and nation. Yet, the response was swift and vicious. Trolls descended upon him with predictable fury, accusing him of bias and disloyalty, as though even naming the problem had become an act of betrayal. While some attacked him with the filthiest invective, even a few supposedly liberal voices condemned him with sophisticated wordplay. In doing so, they inadvertently vindicated the very anxiety he articulated.
What this episode reveals are not Rahman’s “politics” but our shrinking capacity to listen. In a climate where identity is weaponised, truth itself begins to sound subversive. Polarisation thrives not merely because it is orchestrated from above, but because it is rewarded below by outrage economies, algorithmic amplification, and a public sphere that increasingly prefers spectacle over substance.
Rahman’s music has taught generations that harmony is not sameness; it is the art of making differences resonate. To hound such a voice is to confess how deeply discord has entered our civic soul. A society secure in itself does not fear reflection but embraces it. The real disloyalty lies not in speaking of division, but in denying its existence and in mistaking silence for unity.
When a plea for harmony is read as hostility, when a reminder of pluralism is treated as an attack, it signals how deeply intolerance has seeped into public consciousness. Divisive arguments today travel faster, attract louder applause, and command greater emotional energy than calls for unity. Hate has become performative; where outrage becomes a badge of belonging. In this ecosystem, moderation appears timid, nuance suspicious, and empathy almost subversive.
Rahman’s words were not a manifesto. They were closer to a sigh; a gentle recognition that the world he inhabits, and the country he loves, is changing in ways that trouble him. That such a statement could provoke an avalanche of abuse tells us something more unsettling- we are increasingly unwilling to listen to discomforting truths unless they flatter our prejudices. The messenger becomes the enemy, not because he is wrong, but because he disrupts the comfort of certainty which has become the hallmark of living in New India.
This reflex is not confined to social media mobs but mirrors a broader cultural shift in which identity is hardened into a weapon, and difference is framed as threat. Cinema, once celebrated as India’s most pluralistic art form, has not remained immune. The Mumbai film industry grew out of collaboration across communities; writers, lyricists, musicians, actors, technicians—many of them migrants, many of them minorities, all bound by the shared language of imagination. Its magic lay in this confluence. Songs, stories, and characters crossed religious and linguistic borders with ease, shaping a popular culture that was far more inclusive than our politics ever managed to be.
Rahman embodies that inheritance. From Vande Mataram to Jai Ho, from Sufi-inflected ballads to techno-folk experiments, his compositions have stitched together diverse cultural strands into a shared emotional fabric. His music does not ask who you are before it moves you. It assumes a common humanity. That such a voice now invites suspicion reveals less about him and more about us.
However, the backlash against Rahman is part of a larger pattern: artists, writers, academics, and journalists who speak of pluralism or warn against polarisation are increasingly cast as “anti-national”, “elitist”, or “biased”. The language varies, but the impulse is the same. They all wish to delegitimise any narrative that challenges a monolithic idea of the nation. In this worldview, unity is confused with uniformity, and difference with disloyalty. The nation is imagined as a chorus singing in a single pitch; any other note is treated as discord; and you cannot expect everyone to join that regressive chorus.
What we have learnt to forget that India’s genius has never been in sameness but in the ability to hold contradictions, to allow many identities to coexist without demanding that they dissolve into one. Our Constitution does not merely talk of accommodating diversity but celebrates it. Secularism in the Indian sense was never about erasing faith from public life, but about ensuring that no faith dominates it. Pluralism was not meant to be a concession for a country which was partitioned on religious lines but was the foundational value.
What we are witnessing today is the erosion of that moral imagination, where politics has discovered that fear mobilises more effectively than hope. Algorithms amplify anger because it keeps us engaged. Television debates reward the shrillest voice and thus in such a climate, harmony seems bland, and complexity exhausting. The simple story—of “us” versus “them”—is easier to sell than the ‘messy truth’ of shared lives.
Rahman’s critics accuse him of painting a bleak picture. But it is not pessimism to name a wound; it is the first step toward healing. Denial, on the other hand, allows the infection to spread. When artists retreat into silence out of fear, a society loses its most sensitive antennae. Culture becomes propaganda, and art mere decoration depending upon the vote-catching narrative.
There is a deeper tragedy here. Those who attack voices like Rahman’s often claim to defend the nation’s pride. Yet, by reducing patriotism to conformity, they impoverish it. A confident nation does not fear introspection. It does not require perpetual affirmation from anybody and everybody. It can listen to its poets and musicians, teachers and students without assuming treachery. In fact, it is precisely through such voices that a nation learns to speak to itself honestly. History offers ample warning signals that when societies that turn on their artists rarely emerge stronger but become brittle, unable to accommodate doubt or dissent. Creativity withers under surveillance and what remains is noise; loud, repetitive, and ultimately empty.
Rahman’s music has always suggested another possibility: that beauty emerges from confluence, not conflict; that harmony is not the absence of difference, but its orchestration. The question this episode poses is not whether Rahman is right or wrong. Can any of us honestly deny how difficult it remains for Muslims or Dalits to rent or buy a home in large parts of urban India? Can we pretend that everyday discrimination has vanished simply because acknowledging it is uncomfortable? To deny the existence of these realities is not optimism; it is abdication. It raises deeper questions about us as a society. Why have we become so fragile that even a gentle observation feels like an assault? At what point did we decide that the nation must be defended not by widening hearts, but by narrowing them?
A mature democracy does not collapse under the weight of self-examination. Patriotism, at its finest, is not the reflex to shout down criticism, but the courage to confront what diminishes us. When artists, writers, or ordinary citizens are punished for holding up a mirror, the mirror is not the problem. The cracks were already there. What has changed is not reality, but our conditioning. We are being trained by a new politics to look away, to pretend the fractures do not exist, to treat acknowledgment itself as an act of betrayal. Mirrors do not create wounds; they reveal them. To smash the mirror is to choose comfort over cure with compassion. And a nation that cannot bear to see its own face, with all its scars and contradictions, risks mistaking silence for harmony and obedience for unity. Real strength lies not in denying the cracks, but in having the courage to repair them.
We all know in our heart that Rahman did not ask for division; he merely named it what he has seen millions like us in recent times. The fury directed at him suggests that what unsettles us is not falsehood, but truth. And a nation that treats truth as treachery risks losing both. The answer lies not in silencing him or anybody else for that matter but in confronting our own discomfort with truth. We must ask why divisive narratives feel so reassuring, why anger feels more authentic than compassion, why we so readily trade the hard work of coexistence for the easy thrill of demonisation and exclusion.
The writer is a Rajya Sabha MP.
(Views expressed are personal)
