Mumbai: Filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma on Wednesday issued a clarification after his claims over Oscar-winning song ‘Jai Ho’ in an earlier interview, triggered widespread debate and backlash online.
In the resurfaced interview, Varma recounted an anecdote involving Rahman, Sukhwinder Singh, and director Subhash Ghai during the making of Ghai’s film Yuvvraaj. He described Rahman as being “notorious for delays” and suggested that Sukhwinder had initially created the tune, which Rahman later adapted and used for Slumdog Millionaire.
To all concerned .. I am being misquoted and misread out of context in the matter of the Jai ho song . .. in my view @arrahman is the greatest composer and the nicest human being I ever met and he’s the last person to take away anybody’s credit ..I hope this puts an end to the…
— Ram Gopal Varma (@RGVzoomin) January 21, 2026
The Old Interview
In the viral clip from old interview, RGV can be heard saying, “Rahman was doing a film called Yuvvraaj for Subhash Ghai and Rahman is notorious for delays… On this day, Rahman was arriving from airport and Sukhwinder was there, doing something, Rahman came and said hi and asked Sukhwinder right in front of Suubhash Ghai, ‘did you compose’” Sukhwinder said yes, played a song and Rahman said he liked it and asked if Subhash liked it. Subhash got angry and started shouting at Rahman saying ‘I’m paying you ₹3 crore for you to do it… I also can get Sukhwinder to do it, why do I need you?’”
He added, “Rahman said in reply, ‘mind your tongue, Mr Ghai, you are paying for my name, not my work, don’t get confused’. I only said, did you like it … I did not say accept it if you don’t like it, I”ll do another song. Rahman said this and then left for Chennai. Sukhwinder told me that Rahman later called him and asked him to complete the song and email it to him. That was it, then one year later Rahman’s manager sent a cheque for ₹5 lakh to Sukhwinder and then Sukhwinder aked why? the manager said, ‘you made a song for Rahman and Rahman sold it to a party and this ₹5 lakh is your share/ Who did Rahman sell the song to? Slumdog Millionaire and the song Jai ho.”
Composed by Rahman for ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, and sung by Rahman, Sukhwinder Singh, Tanvi, Mahalakshmi Iyer, and Vijay Prakash, the song ‘Jai Ho’ won an Academy Award in the Best Original Score and Best Original Song categories.
The 2009 film featured Anil Kapoor, Irrfan Khan, Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Madhur Mittal, Imran Hasnee, Mahesh Manjrekar, Shruti Seth, Saurabh Shukla, and Raj Zutshi.