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AR Rahman’s New Avatar: Defender of Tamil, Troll Supreme

Is AR Rahman the new patron saint of Tamil? Check out his tweets against the imposition of Hindi.

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Whether the Centre tried to impose Hindi on hapless Tamil speaking folk through tweaks in the National Education Policy, is open to debate. What’s crystal clear though, is the ‘Tamil Love’ of the Mozart of Madras, AR Rahman, which blossomed on Twitter owing to the controversy.

Read on for dope, tongue-in-cheek homilies, and a bunch of song references (hyperlinked, in case you don’t get them. Shame on you, if you don’t get them, btw.)

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The Inference Tweet

The ‘Oscar Veeran’ (Oscar Hero) of ‘namma Chennai’ put out this tweet on 2 June, right about when the issue of Hindi-imposition was picking up heat on Twitter. To the lay eye who lays by celebrity twitter accounts when bored, this might seem innocuous. After all, the maestro tweets such cute things all the time. Like this uncle-genre-forward on negative emotions:

But to tweet out a Valentines Day video of a Punjabi crooning a Tamil song (to the best of his abilities), right after M K Stalin blows a gasket, and threatens historic revolt; now that’s what I call a well-timed tweet.  

Kudos to Rahman for the timing, I say! But then I know what he’s say to this. He’ll deny it and simply say what he always says when he receives a Grammy award or a compliment; #ellapugazhumiraivanukke (all praise be unto Him).

As early as 1995, Rahman made bollywood go ‘Ayyayyo’ with this sizzling number from Rangeela. And then followed suit with a number of multilingual and illingual openings to some of his biggest hits. But when the intention is to have a ‘Mukkala Muqabla’ with a supposed imposition of a certain language, one can only go ‘Jai Ho’ ARR, for the timing and the tweet.

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The Mother (-Tongue) of All Tweets

Beautiful verdict; ‘Hindi not compulsory on Tamil Nadu...draft modified.’
Thus spake AR Rahman, in a tweet, on the changed draft National Education Policy.

He may be a Mozart,
but he is also of Madras!
He may have won a Grammy,
but his relatives are all Chennai’s Maamis!
He may only talk on Twitter
But he tweets like CSK’s hitter!
He may be-

This limerick has been brought to an abrupt end. Since someone reading this over my shoulder has threatened violence.

Anyway the point I’m making, is that the Grammy awardee has hit a whammy in support of the anti-Hindi-imposition movement, and established his Tamil roots once and for all. His tweet last week, where he congratulated PM Narendra Modi on his win in the Lok Sabha elections may not have gone down well in Tamil Nadu.

But some followers seem to find even that congratulatory tweet to have a subtle sly tweak to it:

Is AR Rahman the new patron saint of Tamil? Check out his tweets against the imposition of Hindi.
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Troll Mode Last Word

And then the man of the (penultimate) hour had the last word with a form of trolling straight out of a VIIIth standard student from the 90s, participating in an inter-school debate; Throwing a dictionary meaning of a word into the fray. Some of his followers on Twitter got it, while others slowly caught on;

For those who are needlessly curious, autonomous, according to the Cambridge dictionary, means independent and having the power to make your own decisions. Yeah, of course you knew that. That’s not the point.

The point here, is again the timing of the tweet, and its randomness, which the music maestro seems to have mastered.

In retrospect, from the anti Hindi-imposition Twitter wars against the Centre, what comes through is not just AR Rahman’s cult love for Tamil. It also shows that the man is born to tweet. After all, he limits even his acceptance speeches on stage, to two and a half sentences.

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Topics:  AR Rahman   Hindi imposition 

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