Why AR Rahman changed his name from Dilip Kumar, embraced a different faith after meeting a sufi: ‘The truth is I never liked my name’

AR Rahman was born as Dilip Kumar but the composer embraced Islam in the 1980s and changed his name.

New Delhi | June 28, 2023 08:14 PM IST

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AR Rahman embraced Islam in the late 1980s. (Photo: Express Archives)

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AR Rahman was born as Dilip Kumar but somewhere in the late 1980s, the music composer adopted a different faith, and changed his name. In a chat with Karan Thapar for his BBC talk show in 2000, the composer opened up about what led him to embrace Islam and said that “another spiritual path gave us peace”.

Rahman shared that there was a sufi who was treating his father in his last days when he was struggling with cancer. He shared that when he and his family met that sufi 7-8 years later, they decided to adopt another faith. “There was a sufi who was treating him towards the end days before he died. We later met him after 7-8 years and that’s when we led another spiritual path which gave us peace,” he said.

In Nasreen Munni Kabir’s AR. Rahman: The Spirit of Music, the composer said that growing up, he saw his mother as a practising Hindu but his house always had images from other faiths. “My mother was a practising Hindu. She had always been spiritually inclined. We had Hindu religious images on the walls of the Habibullah Road house where we grew up. There was also an image of Mother Mary holding Jesus in Her arms and a photograph of the sacred sites of Mecca and Medina,” he shared.

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When asked about how the change in faith could affect his relations with others, the composer had said, “No one around us really cared. We were musicians and that allowed us greater social freedom…”

Speaking about his name, AR Rahman told Karan Thapar that it was his mother who chose Allah Rakha (AR) as it came to her in a dream, and Rahman was chosen by other members of his family. In the book by Nasreen Munni Kabir, however, the composer said that he never liked his original name. “The truth is I never liked my name. No disrespect to the great actor Dilip Kumar! However, somehow my name didn’t match the image I had of myself,” he said.

In AR. Rahman: The Spirit of Music, Rahman said that he got the name Rahman from a Hindu astrologer. He said that before he changed his faith, his family visited an astrologer with the horoscope of his younger sister as they wanted to get her married. At the time, when Rahman asked him abut changing his name, the astrologer suggested Abdul Rahman and Abdul Rahim. “He suggested the names: Abdul Rahman and Abdul Rahim and said that either name would be good for me. I instantly loved the name Rahman. It was a Hindu astrologer who gave me my Muslim name,” he recalled.

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