When Vishal Dadlani got it horribly wrong

'Politics and religion is a dangerous mix in India and anybody even remotely seen crossing the line is taken to task.'
Viveat Susan Pinto reports.

On August 27, Vishal Dadlani, one half of the popular Vishal-Shekhar music duo, crossed an invisible line.

The 43-year-old composer, now a former member and supporter of the Aam Aadmi Party, found himself at the receiving end of jibes that he was mixing 'politics and religion'.

This was after he commented on the micro blogging site Twitter about the address by a Jain monk in the Haryana assembly the day before.

His contention: A secular nation and its citizens should not be subjected to something like this, describing the address as 'absurd nonsense.'

Ironically, while Dadlani, an outspoken man, highlighted the need to keep 'religion and governance' away from each other, the impact of the message was the opposite.

The drama that unfolded, which saw Twitter users largely divided on the issue, indicated how intertwined politics and religion were in India.

Inevitably, the police stepped in and a First Information Report was filed against Dadlani for hurting religious sentiment.

Was the composer's tweet an error of judgement or was he indeed seeking political mileage, as some suggested?

Friends believe Dadlani is a man who has his heart in the right place.

"I don't think there was anything politically motivated about what he was saying," a Bollywood executive, who has known Dadlani for long, said.

"It was miscontrued and blown out of proportion. The sad part is that politics and religion is a dangerous mix in India and anybody even remotely seen crossing the line is taken to task," the executive said, opting not to be named, owing to the sensitivity of the matter.

In the past week, Dadlani has apologised profusely for his tweet, even writing an open letter that he had no intention of hurting the Jain community's feelings.

His former party and its boss Arvind Kejriwal, have already apologised for Dadlani's comments, with one minister, Satyendra Jain, personally meeting the monk to express his party's views.

A singer-songwriter, beside being a composer and music producer, Dadlani, a commerce graduate from Mumbai, began his journey as an artiste right after college in 1994.

He founded a rock music band that year, Pentagram, considered among the early pioneers of indie or independent music in India, rapidly emerging as a force to reckon with on the music scene.

With Shekhar Ravjiani, he entered Bollywood in 1999. He has composed music for a string of hits like Shah Rukh Khan starrers Om Shanti Om, Chennai Express and Happy New Year, the Ranbir Kapoor-starrer Bachna Ae Haseeno and the Salman Khan-starrer Sultan.

Since the controversy broke out, Dadlani, considered an avid talent scout, judging music reality shows at regular intervals, says he'd sworn off politics altogether.

'I am not a religious man, but I know how much religion means to believers,' he said in his open letter.

Said to be close to Kejriwal, he's learnt a lesson the hard way: There are no permanent friends or foes in politics.

Photograph: Pradeep Bandekar