I have often disputed my Goddess Devi Ma Lata Mangeshkar’s assertion that to be a good artiste you need to be a good human being.
Rahat Fateh Ali Khan is a good singer. But he is not a good human being.
The viral video which shows him repeatedly hitting a man, identified as his ‘shagird’ Naveed Hasnain, with a chappal and abusing him , shrieking about where his “bottle” is, Rahat has proven he is not a good man at all.
To make it worse, he now claims this is an attempt to “tarnish” his image.
Tarnish his image??? The video shows him assaulting the whimpering man, a man who is very clearly disempowered and in no position to retaliate or even defend himself. Where is the room to besmirch the great singer’s image when he has stomped and defecated on it(his image)all by himself?
Rahat Fateh Khan needs no help in tarnishing his image. He has done a very good job of it himself.
Explaining the indefensibly unambiguous assault in a video Rahat says, “Whatever you have seen in these videos is about an internal matter(!!) between an ustaad (master) and a shagird (protege). When a protege does a good job, we shower a lot of(on) them and when they make a mistake, we punish them as well… I had apologised to him at the same(sic.) time…”
Rahat also explained that the “bottle” which he kept asking for while assaulting his “shagird” contained “holy water”
Going by the number of structural and ethical errors in the video that he has put out to explain his unacceptable behaviour, it looks like he was drinking from the same holy water while recording the explanatory video.
We have always welcomed Rahat Ali Khan to India. He has sung some of his best songs for Hindi films. But after this discordant incident I am not sure he is welcome here.
