Rohit Shetty addresses 'good Muslim, bad Muslim' controversy

While 'Sooryavanshi' garnered rave reviews, some criticised it for portraying Muslims as the bad guys

Rohit Shetty still can't get over the success of his recent offering, Sooryavanshi. The film stars Akshay Kumar and Katrina Kaif, with cameos by Ranveer Singh and Ajay Devgn. The project became the first to be screened in the cinemas in India after an 18-month hiatus due to Covid-19.

Sooryavanshi easily bagged 100 crores in the first week of release after cinema-starved audiences welcomed the reopening of theatres in the country. While Shetty's directorial garnered rave reviews, some criticised it for portraying Muslims as the bad guys.

After keeping mum on the matter for a while, the filmmaker is finally addressing the issue head-on. In a recent interview with The Quint, Shetty spoke how in the film Muslims have been portrayed in a good way as well as in a bad way." To this, the Golmaal director responded, "If I ask you one question, Jaikant Shikre (in Singham) was a Hindu Marathi. Then a second film came where a Hindu godman was there. Then in Simmba, Durva Ranade was a Maharashtrian again. In these three, negative forces were Hindu, why isn't that a problem?"

Shetty further added, "If there is a terrorist who is from Pakistan, what caste will he be? It changed my point of view of a few journalists whom I used to like. That oh, they are portraying it like I have seen in brackets somebody writing bad Muslims being preached by upper-caste Hindus, which is very wrong. We never thought that way."

The filmmaker then questioned if there was a sleeper cell that the film is talking about, what caste would the sleeper cell would be? He added that if the portrayal would have been wrong, everyone would have objected but only a small segment did. "If they are objecting, it is them who need to change the perspective and not us,” he concluded.

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