SS Rajamouli has delivered three worldwide blockbusters back to back in the form of Baahubali: The Beginning, Baahubali: The Conclusion, and RRR. Though all his films do include elements of mythology, a lot of people don’t really know that Rajamouli identifies himself as an atheist.
In a recent interview, the director opened up on the same and revealed why he moved away from religion. Talking to The New Yorker, Rajamouli said, “We have a giant family, and everyone – my father and mother, cousins and aunts, and everyone else – is deeply religious. I remember, as a young kid, I had doubts after reading stories about the Hindu gods. I used to think, this doesn’t seem real.”
“Then I got caught up in my family’s religious Farvour. I started reading religious texts, going on pilgrimages, wearing saffron cloth, and living like a sannyasi (ascetic) for a few years. Then I caught onto Christianity, thanks to some friends. I’d read the Bible, go to church, all kinds of stuff. Gradually, all these things somehow made me feel that religion is essentially a kind of exploitation”, he further added.
Sharing how Ayn Rand’s work inspired him, Rajamouli stated, “I worked under a cousin of mine (the Telugu writer Gunnam Gangaraju) for a few months. He introduced me to Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. I read those novels and was greatly inspired by them. I didn’t understand a lot of her philosophy, but I understood the basics of it. It was around that time that I slowly started moving away from religion.”
“Even at that time, my love for stories like the Mahabharata or the Ramayana never diminished. I did start pushing away from those texts’ religious aspects, but what stayed with me was the complexity and the greatness of their drama and storytelling”, the Padma Shri awardee concluded.