Religious segregation has happened to me: Hansal Mehta
Mumbai
May 6, 2018
There is a harrowing sequence in Hansal Mehta's
"Omerta" where the leading man Rajkummar Rao's car was stopped at a check-post
and he was called to step out by a burly policeman who wanted to know if he was
a Muslim or married to a Muslim.
Mehta said he too had faced such
cultural discrimination once.
"It is the beard. There was a time when I
used to keep a beard. My music guru Ghulam Mustafa Khan asked me not to keep a
beard because it made me look like a Muslim. None of his sons were allowed by
him to keep a beard as he didn't want his children to be identified by their
beard as Muslims. That experience stayed with me. I used it in 'Omerta'," Mehta
said.
"It's a frightening situation where the young Muslim men would not
want to keep a beard for the fear of religious identification whereas Hindus
would also shun the beard for the same reason. The beard may eventually become a
thing of the past," he said.
"Omerta" with its hard-hitting chronicle on
the evolution of a terrorist's mind, has opened poorly across the country.
"Thanks to the ongoing success of "Avengers" we were given very poor show
timings. There was not a show that suited the conventional audience. Plus there
is the 'Adults' censor certification. That automatically puts off a major chunk
of the audience," says Mehta.
Mumbai
May 6, 2018
There is a harrowing sequence in Hansal Mehta's
"Omerta" where the leading man Rajkummar Rao's car was stopped at a check-post
and he was called to step out by a burly policeman who wanted to know if he was
a Muslim or married to a Muslim.
Mehta said he too had faced such
cultural discrimination once.
"It is the beard. There was a time when I
used to keep a beard. My music guru Ghulam Mustafa Khan asked me not to keep a
beard because it made me look like a Muslim. None of his sons were allowed by
him to keep a beard as he didn't want his children to be identified by their
beard as Muslims. That experience stayed with me. I used it in 'Omerta'," Mehta
said.
"It's a frightening situation where the young Muslim men would not
want to keep a beard for the fear of religious identification whereas Hindus
would also shun the beard for the same reason. The beard may eventually become a
thing of the past," he said.
"Omerta" with its hard-hitting chronicle on
the evolution of a terrorist's mind, has opened poorly across the country.
"Thanks to the ongoing success of "Avengers" we were given very poor show
timings. There was not a show that suited the conventional audience. Plus there
is the 'Adults' censor certification. That automatically puts off a major chunk
of the audience," says Mehta.
Tags: Hansal MehtaRajkummar RaoOmerta