By TCN News,
Mumbai: Days after furor over BJP leader’s ‘Muslim men should be stopped from entering Garba pandals’ comment, a Muslim singer Osman Mir – of Deepika Padukone starrer ‘Ramleela’ fame – set the stage on fire at a Raas Dandiya event at Juhu.
Ahead of Dushehara festival, Gujaratis – and now-a-days others too, celebrate nine nights of popular dancing via Garba, Dandiya and Raas.
Osman Mir, Preety Bhalla and Bhoomi Trivedi
A huge controversy had erupted after Usha Thakur, MLA from Indore in Madhya Pradesh and BJP’s state vice president, had written to Garba organizers in her constituency asking them to stop Muslim men from entering the dance venues and seducing women.
At that point top BJP leadership neither criticized her nor stopped similar efforts from other places. In fact, posters went up at Garba venues in Madhya Pradesh proclaiming ‘No non-Hindus allowed’
But here in Mumbai, the cosmopolitan financial capital of India, dominated by Gujarati and Marwari business community, it seems the organizers didn’t find any taboo.
Apart from Mir, singers Preety Bhalla and Bhoomi Trivedi had participated at the ‘Carnival Raas Jalsa Dandiya’ event that saw a huge turnout of enthusiastic Mumbaikars.
Mir, a Gujarati Muslim, has been a singer for several years but was recently ‘discovered’ by Sanjay Leela Bhansali during his film ‘Ramleela’ starring Deepika Padukone and Ranbir Singh.
Preety Bhalla and Bhoomi Trivedi performing
Mir’s own Facebook page describes him as: ‘I’m Gujarati Folk, Classical, Ghazal and Bollywood playback singer. Debut movie “Ramleela” by Sanjay Leela Bhansali’.
On a popular Speeking Tree website blogger Bharggav Adhyaroo described Mir as “trumpet blower of secularism” and further said: “This born Muslim artist has performed mostly at Hindu temples, at Ashrams of Hindu Mahamandaleshwars and invariably he is an indispensible part of ‘Ramcharit Paryana’ of Morari Bapu, a religious figure from Gujarat.