“This is an emotional moment for me. I don’t believe in God. My dad came and said, ‘Lord Hanuman is behind me and is guiding me’. Is this how he takes care? Thinking about this, I’m angry. My wife is also fond of Lord Hanuman. She behaves as if he were her friend and converses with him. I got angry at her as well.”—the words that got SS Rajamouli under fire. At the Varanasi launch event, the director revealed his inclination towards atheism. This followed after technical glitches scarred the grand event, and it was then that he expressed his anger towards Lord Hanuman.
Vanarasena and Gow Rakshak Sangh filed a complaint against SS Rajamouli, mentioning that the director intentionally provoked hatred against Hindu deities with his comment at the event.
See, today, we are not here to devalue the sentiments of the pious people who propelled them to file the complaints, because we get it: these outbursts come from deep devotion and love towards the divine. Signalling, which we can also call specific reactions, is therefore viable too, because when emotions run too deep and high, we take almost everything personally.
The attacks soon escalated quickly on social media as well, with SS Rajamouli receiving unkind backlash from netizens. Apparently, his atheism became a problem.
But what we think is that the director doesn’t deserve the rage bait, but he needs some wonder bait, and we should be looking at the Varanasi trailer once again, with wide eyes in awe. Why? Because, is it not wondrous for an atheist to be able to portray something so sacred and divine on the screen? If you watch the trailer, he rather magnifies Lord Hanuman rather than diminish the deity. More so, Varanasi—the land that is so intricately connected to God, he names his film after it. Do we sit back and realise that for a moment?
Well, this is not the first time he has noted his inclination towards atheism, and exclaimed at how religion exploits. However, even with the conflicts that he had within, he never ditched his love for Mahabharata and Ramayana. (We heavily recommend, to revisit these two epics every day, you earn your biggest learnings.)
He said, “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,” he added, “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, all kinds of stuff. Gradually, all these things somehow made me feel that religion is essentially a kind of exploitation,” per India Today. He also mentioned how he wore saffron and lived like a Sanyasi.
Back in 2023, he said in an interview that how he read Ayn Rand’s books ‘The Fountainhead’ and ‘Atlas Shrugged’, and it was the time when he spiralled away from religion.
I recently read somewhere that religion often confines you to one arena, one ideology and one thought—spiritualism expands it a bit. Then consciousness practice gives you a chance to taste infinity. The cosmos reciprocates in a language altogether different—where the ‘isms’ might not matter, only intent.
And SS Rajamouli, therefore, deserves applause for making us experience Lord Hanuman in the most magnificent way possible, as we see in the trailer, followed by a sacred spectacle.
Here take a look at the trailer:
