ACTOR DISCUSSES HIS CAREER AND PASSION FOR ENTERTAINING
ACTOR Kiran Raj has carved out a place for himself in the hearts of Kannada and Hindi language audiences around the world.
The self-made star has risen up from being a backing dancer to delivering winning turns in popular film and television projects such as Heroes, Love By Chance, Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai, Tu Aashiqui, Devathe, Kinnari, Chandramukhi, March 22, Asathoma Sadhgamaya and Kannadati. The versatile actor with nearly a million Instagram followers has balanced out big performances with philanthropic work.
With more big projects on the way, Eastern Eye caught up with the popular Indian personality to discuss his acting journey, future hopes, lockdown life lessons and secret of a great performance.
What first connected you to acting?
Initially, I wanted to get into direction and editing and studied for the same too. During my course, there was some audition happening and my friend insisted that I should give it a shot, so I did and ended up with the part. That’s when I realised, I’m quite decent in front of the camera and can act well too. So, one after the other I landed up with roles, and kept improving and learning. Gradually, I realised that I enjoy acting and eventually it became my passion.
How do you look back on your journey as an actor?
I would say it wasn’t easy. I’ve been a background dancer too and have done side roles, but every project of mine has taught me a lot. Today, when I see myself in proper full-fledged roles, I feel proud of my journey as I’ve earned it. Whatever I am today is due to my hard work, along with my parents’ support and blessings.
Which of your characters is closest to your heart?
It’s hard to pick as I give my 100 per cent to each and every character I play. But the one character that’s really interesting, and I’m looking forward to is in my upcoming Kannada movie Swaagatha, as it’s so versatile. I also have a monologue in it, which I’ve attempted for the first time. I hope my audiences love and appreciate it, because I’ve put in a lot of effort into this character.
Which role challenged you most?
I would say Harsha in Kannadathi, as the storyline began with a carefree rich ambitious guy who does not bother about his surroundings and gradually, how he changes and becomes caring and loving. This transition was not easy as I had to play it in a way that my audiences would connect with it, which I think they did like always.
Who have you enjoyed working with the most?
I enjoy working with every creative person, no matter new or experienced, as it teaches me something new in some or the other way.
Does your approach between cinema and TV change?
No, I’m an actor and acting is my job, be it cinema or TV. I do both with equal dedication because at the end of the day what comes on screen has to be 100 per cent good for me and give me self-satisfaction, that ‘yes, I’ve done a good job’. Then only my audiences will be able to love it.
How do you approach a new project?
Every new project is a fresh journey for me. With the kind of person I am, I get involved 100 per cent with it. I am a perfectionist, so need things to be proper. I pick things that I am confident about and which I think I can justify to my audiences.
What can we expect next from you?
I have quite a few interesting films lined up in Kannada and Telugu, and every story is different from the other, so audiences will get to see me in a variety of interesting roles, which I am sure they will enjoy.
Do you have a dream role?
Yes, I have a few in mind that I will someday portray on a larger scale, but until then it’s a surprise.
What according to you is the secret of a great performance?
Dedication completely. You have to live a role to give a great performance; until you don’t feel it from within, you won’t be able to perform. At least that’s what works for me. And I believe that when my audiences are investing their time and money to watch me, and showering me with so much love and appreciation, I owe them a great performance each time.
What is it that inspires you?
Challenges in life inspire me. Every time there is a new project or situation in my personal life and the way I have to deal with it according to the situation really inspires me, because it teaches me how life moves on, and how we need to move ahead with equal motivation and dedication, balancing everything at the same time.
If you could master something, what would it be?
I would like to master the art of filmmaking for sure as I’m very passionate about it from my college days. Even in my free time, I keep trying my hands at editing, writing, etc., and one day it’s my dream to make my own film and be behind the camera.
What kind of content do you enjoy watching as an audience?
Action flicks any day and anytime!
What is the biggest life lesson lockdown has taught you?
Nothing is permanent. We should value everything and every person that God has given us in our lives, and thank God for at least giving us the capacity to go through these difficult times, because there are many around us that don’t have what we do. And try to help as many as possible.
WHEN Rishi Sunak became an MP, he swore his oath on a copy of the Bhagvad Gita, but few people – including perhaps Britain’s first Asian prime minister – will have been aware of the efforts of a Shropshire-born civil servant in that little moment of history.
Charles Wilkins (1749-1836) was an employee of the East India Company and an avid Sanskrit lover. He arrived in India and went on to study the language under scholars in then Benares (now Varanasi, which India’s prime minister Narendra Modi represents) and produced what is believed to be the first English translation of the holy Hindu text.
It made the Gita accessible not only to the British, but also millions of Indians, including Mahatma Gandhi, and years later, Sunak.
This is just one of the anecdotes Manu Pillai uncovers in his new book, Gods, Guns and Missionaries: The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity, published earlier this year.
Pillai traces the transformation of the religion over the past four centuries – from the arrival of early Europeans in the Indian subcontinent to British rulers and the rise of Indian leaders during the freedom movement – and examines the impact of those influences.
Manu Pillai
“Most of us look at Hindu identity today through the prism of Hindu-Muslim relations, because in the present, that is what became,” Pillai told Eastern Eye. “But to me, it seemed like a lot of modern Hinduism was actually influenced by colonialism and Christianity.”
Not so much in the way that missionaries converted millions of people, Pillai explained, as they “never had physical success in terms of numbers”, but “they had a lot of intellectual success in terms of placing these moulds and frameworks of thinking, which we took in order to articulate a modern avatar for Hinduism. So, I thought that story deserved to be told.”
This is his fifth book, which Pillai began in 2019, following a dissertation on Hindu nationalism at King’s College London. At the outset, he clarified the book is not about his academic thesis, rather it examines the impact of the early Portuguese, the Italians and other Europeans, then the East India Company, the British and finally, Indian reformers and politicians prior to and after independence.
Pillai said, “Hinduism is not a Western-style religion. It’s a cultural framework in which there’s multiple diversities. Think of it like a draw cabinet; it is the overall frame that is Hinduism. But each door has its own individual identity, as well.”
And , the cover of his new book
Pillai charts the influence of hardline Portuguese missionaries whose influence is evident in Goa even today, while in the south, an Italian priest, Roberto de Nobili, adopted the local Hindu ways in order to spread the teachings of Christianity.
The book also shows how British colonial rulers were initially reluctant to the push from missionaries in the UK to proselytise communities in the subcontinent, before eventually changing their minds. Reformers such as Serfoji and Raja Ram Mohan Roy adopted a more modern approach, followed by Dayananda Saraswati, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Jotiba Phule and Veer Savarkar, whose interpretation of Hinduism came at a time of India’s freedom struggle.
This intertwining of religion and politics is not new, though, Pillai said. History has shown how rulers patronised places of worship and this continues in contemporary times, too.
The writer described how Jawaharlal Nehru (independent India’s first prime minister) and “the Nehruvian elites made a conscious effort to keep religion out, but bubbling just beneath that first level, (but) religion was always present in politics. Caste was always present in politics.”
Pillai said, “It was Nehru’s charisma and electoral success that allowed him to keep it at bay or in check. But it was never absent. By Indira Gandhi’s time, she started playing the religious card as needed, whenever she felt her party could benefit from it.”
He added, “The difference is religion has now come much more centrestage and openly acknowledged.”
Pillai also noted how economic clout and technology have both played a part in the recent assertion of religious identity, the most obvious is the patronage of places of worship, while carrying out rituals under the guidance of a priest over a video link is now the norm.
In the book, he writes about how the spread of the English language in the subcontinent meant exposure to new ideas, thus empowering Indians to not only challenge authority, but also learn about the world outside their country.
“The British employ Indians who can speak English. They pay those Indians. Those Indians are getting cash revenue. They are no longer dependent just on their farms (to earn their living). They use that to patronise their community. They build temples,” Pillai said.
“So, ironically, the wealth created by service in the British East India Company ends up in the flowering of Hinduism. The railways, which the British laid to move their troops around, also enables pilgrim traffic to temples. “All of these things come together – technology, politics and economics.”
More recently, Pillai said Hindu resurgence “isn’t purely due to political dynamics”. His view is that with rising disposable income, “you have time to think about identity, and now you have money to patronise things.”
He cites the example of Kerala, where he is from, explain how remittances from the Gulf countries led to a boom in old family temples being renovated. “There is something culturally coded in organising a big puja, or making donations to a temple is seen as an a c h i e v e m e n t , weighing yourself in grain and donating to a temple.
“So that kind of religious identity also boomed with economic boom. It’s not as an economic boom creates some rational paradise. On the contrary, an economic boom can actually result in a greater flowering of religiosity.
“Partly because of that, post liberalisation (of India in the 1990s), there’s been a new middle class that’s emerged, there’s also now disposable income. People have the wherewithal to now think beyond roti, kapda, makaan (food, clothes and shelter), and to think about who are we as a people? And the answer to that question lies in religion, culture, heritage.”
India and south Asia’s vast diversity dictate the way Hinduism is practised, across not just the subcontinent, but also across the world, where the diaspora communities are settled. Consequently, this shapes the evolution of Hindu identity.
Pillai said the next challenge for Hinduism will be maintaining that inner diversity, “because we live in times where there’s so much emphasis on that homogenised identity, on one reading of that label, of what it means to be a Hindu.
“It takes away from how much pluralism there is within the faith itself. The richness of Indian culture, in general, has been the fact that all religions that have entered India have become pluralized, even if it’s Islam.
“Islam in Kerala is not the same as Islam in Bhopal. When the north Indian Muslims under the Muslim League, as I mention in the book, went to Kashmir in the 1940s hoping to woo the Kashmiri Muslims, they were horrified. They thought that Kashmiris, with their saint worship, and all of that were not even proper Muslims. They said, ‘we’ll have to teach them Islam first, before making them Muslims, because they couldn’t recognise that version of Islam. “Everything in India is hybridised, and in many ways, that has been our strength, these hybrid identities have continued over so many generations. “What would be a major challenge is this tendency towards homogenising… towards feeling there has to be only one version of Hinduism and one interpretation of things.
“Even our epics have so many retellings. In Kerala there is an oral kind of Ramayana, in which Shurpanakha, when she propositions Rama and says, ‘I want to marry you’. And he says, ‘No, I’m already married. You go to Lakshmana.’ Shurpanakha turns around and says, ‘That’s okay; the Sharia says you can marry twice, more than one woman.
“So this is a Ramayana in which Shurpanakha quotes the Sharia, because it’s a Muslim Ramayana.
“That is the kind of country we come from. And I think losing that, where everything has become standardised, and that’s a global phenomenon, something we’re seeing around the world. That is a tragedy. That would be the bigger challenge.
“We need more people telling these stories about our inner plural, pluralism and diversity – which is not to devalue that framework. The framework has its own value. I’m not saying that Hinduism should somehow be only about its pluralism, but at the same time, it has to be a fine balance between maintaining that inner richness, maintaining all the threads in the tapestry without painting the whole tapestry one single shade.”
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