Some time back the makers of Ishaan Khatter and Ananya Panday-starrer Khaali Peeli tweaked the lyrics of a song from the film, Beyonce Sharma Jayegi to Duniya Sharma Jayegi following a huge backlash. Many people claimed that the word 'goriya' used alongside American pop singer Beyonce reeked of racism.
Speaking about the controversy to Mumbai Mirror, director Maqbool Khan said that the intention was not to offend anyone.
"We did not imagine that people would think along those lines. Since 'goriya' is a word that has been used for ages, we were ignorant that it would result in backlash. We did not intend to offend anyone and we apologise if people were hurt. We would be the last ones to promote racism".Maqbool Khan, Director
The director also spoke about rumours of Beyonce's team reaching out to them threatening legal action. "Beyonce's team never reached out to us. After we realised that the song was taken out of context, we tweaked the lyrics ourselves", Khan clarified.
The song was called out for its racist lyrics. A Change.org petition had stated, "It's humiliating they didn't see anything wrong with this and went ahead and produced the song. And we would believe that in the 21st century they would have raised their standards on lyrics and not define a woman's beauty to being fair or not".
(With inputs from Mumbai Mirror)
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)