Indian film director SS Rajamouli recently gave an interview with the New Yorker. In this interview, SS Rajamouli expressed his views about films, his sources of inspiration, his choices regarding faith, and other things. However, the interview published on 16th February is being discussed for his one statement in which he said that religion is essentially a kind of exploitation.
The director of blockbuster films like Bahubali and RRR was asked in this interview how his films are influenced by Ramayana and Mahabharata. He answered, “I’ve read these stories since I was a child, and in the beginning, they were just nice, engaging stories. As I started growing up, I read different versions of the text, and the story started evolving into something much bigger for me. I could see the characters, the conflicts within the characters, and their motivating emotions. And I started understanding and loving these texts even more. Anything that comes out of me is somehow influenced by these texts. Those texts are like oceans: every time I visit them, I find something new.”
In the next question, the interviewer asked SS Rajamouli, when he first identified himself as an atheist. SS Rajamouli answered, “We have a giant family, and everyone—my father and mother, cousins and aunts, and everyone else—is deeply religious. I remember, as a young kid, I had doubts after reading stories about the Hindu gods. I used to think, This doesn’t seem real. Then I got caught up in my family’s religious fervour. I started reading religious texts, going on pilgrimages, wearing saffron cloth, and living like a sannyasi [ascetic] for a few years. Then I caught onto Christianity, thanks to some friends. I’d read the Bible, go to church, and do all kinds of stuff. Gradually, all these things somehow made me feel that religion is essentially a kind of exploitation.”
SS Rajamouli added, “I worked under a cousin of mine [the Telugu writer Gunnam Gangaraju] for a few months. He introduced me to Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. I read those novels and was greatly inspired by them. I didn’t understand a lot of her philosophy, but I understood the basics of it. It was around that time that I slowly started moving away from religion. Even at that time, my love for stories like the Mahabharata or the Ramayana never diminished. I did start pushing away from those texts’ religious aspects, but what stayed with me was the complexity and the greatness of their drama and storytelling.”
SS Rajamouli said that he respects people’s feelings about God. He said, “They (family) feel very sad for me because I am going away from the path of religion. I don’t say bad things about God, I never do that. I respect people’s feelings because I know a lot of people depend on God a lot. Still, my father used to get angry when I used to say that I don’t believe in religious rituals or that kind of stuff. Now he’s made peace with it and respects my way of life.”
SS Rajamouli’s magnum opus ‘RRR’ bagged the Best Original song trophy for its song ‘Naatu Naatu’ at the 2023 Golden Globes2023 Golden Globes. ‘RRR’ received two nominations at the prestigious award ceremony under the categories Best Non-English Language Film and Best Original Song for ‘Naatu Naatu’. This was Rajamouli’s first project after the 2017 blockbuster ‘Baahubali 2: The Conclusion’, which was released across the globe in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam simultaneously early this year. The film received a huge response in several countries, including the US and Japan.
