NEW DELHI/MUMBAI: Two days after musi­cian AR Rah­man men­tioned the ‘C’ word to cite he has been get­ting less work­ing in the Hindi film industry over the past eight years, a num­ber of stal­warts have dis­missed the claim.

Rah­man in an inter­view to BBC Asian Net­work, had said the reas­ons often reach him indir­ectly and tagged it as “Chinese whis­pers”. He went on to say in the inter­view: “People who are not cre­at­ive have the power now to decide things, and this might have been a com­munal thing also, but not in my face.”

“It comes to me as Chinese whis­pers that they booked you, but the music com­pany went ahead and hired their five com­posers. I said, ‘Oh, that’s great, rest for me, I can chill out with my fam­ily.”

Shar­ing his per­spect­ive, vet­eran lyr­i­cist Javed Akhtar firmly ruled out any com­munal angle, say­ing he has never exper­i­enced this sen­ti­ment in Mum­bai and stressed that Rah­man con­tin­ues to com­mand immense respect across the industry. “People may think that he has become very busy in the West. They may think that his shows are very big. He spends a lot of time in those shows.

So, he may not be avail­able for us.”

Dis­miss­ing any com­munal bias, play­back singer Shaan said “it doesn’t hap­pen in music. Our three super­stars have been work­ing for 30 years, their fan base is only grow­ing.”