Laxman Utekar on why he choose A R Rahamn for Chhaava's music: 'He asked me why do you want to make this film?'

AR Rahman has been one of the biggest music exponent from India, he has won many awards for his work including the Oscar but since Friday he has been in the eye of the storm for his comments about growing divisiveness in the country. He pointed out that his work in Hindi film industry has been slowed reason being the shift in power dynamics over the past 8 years- he was hinting at communal bias. Speaking to BBC Asia network he said, " “Maybe God concealed all this stuff. For me, I never felt any of those. Maybe I never get to know of this, maybe it was concealed. I didn’t feel any of this earlier. Maybe in the past eight years, because the power shift has happened. People who are not creative have the power to decide things now". In the same interview he also mentioned that Chhaava was a divisive film. As those words were uttered by Rahman, social media went abuzz as to what made him compose the music of the film if he found the film to be divisive.

Now in an interview clip that is doing the rounds of the social , director Laxman Utekar opens up as to why did he zero down on Rahman for the music. In an interview with web portal Mamaraazzi he was asked to how come he put together a team of Vicky Kaushal, Rashmika Mandanna, AR Rahman and Irshad Kamil for the film and if they were able to get that Maratha flavour . Talking about it he said , " I did not want them to catch the floavour of Marathas otherwise I would have made this film in Marathi. I wanted to make the film in Hindi so that the world knows about it and I wanted wide approach. I did not want typical Marathi dialgues or Marathi songs.I have been inspired by films like Gladiator and Troy and I wanted to make a film like that on Chhatrapti Sambhaji Maharaj and for international approach who better than Rahman sir."


In the same interview he was also asked as to many felt that Ajay-Atul would have been apt over Rahman to which he said, "It is my dream to work with Ajay- Atul, I love with work. But with Chhaava I wanted to make a film which internationally people will like, in Maharashtra everyone knows about Sambhaji Maharaj outside of Maharastra not many know about him, so to take the word there I wanted Rahamn sir."

He also opened up exactly how Rahman came on board, he said , "We had a great time working on Mimi , my writer and I flew down to Chennai to narrate the script of Chhaava to him and hearing it - the first thing he asked me was why do you want to make this film? But we made the film and then we asked him to see the film, he saw the film and he called me and told me its magical and he started the work on music" .Get the latest entertainment updates from the Times of India, along with the latest Hindi movies, upcoming Hindi movies in 2026 , and Telugu movies.”