Hansal Mehta: Religious Segregation Has Happened To Me!

There is  a harrowing sequence in  Hansal Mehta’s Omerta where the leading man Rajkummar Rao  ’s car is stopped  at a checkpost, and he is called to step out by a burly cop who wants to know if he is a Muslim, or married to a Muslim .

Says Hansal, “It is the beard. And I’ve  faced this kind of cultural discrimination  . There was a time when  I used to keep a beard. My music guru Ghulam Mustafa Khan asked me  not to keep a beard because it made me look like  a Muslim. None of his sons  was allowed by Ghulam Mustafa Khan Saab  to  keep a beard since he didn’t want his children to be identified by their beard as Muslims.That  experience stayed with me. I used  it in Omerta.”

Says  Hansal, “It’s a frightening  situation where the young Muslim men would  not want to keep beard for the fear of religious identification whereas  Hindus would also shun the beard  for the same reason. The beard may  eventually become  a  thing of  the past.”

Omerta with its hardhitting chronicle on the evolution of  a terrorist’s mind ,has  caught the attention  of the discerning audience,