New Delhi: In a significant development for music director AR Rahman, the Delhi High Court on Wednesday set aside a single-judge’s ruling that had found his song “Veera Raja Veera” from the film Ponniyin Selvan 2 to be a copyright infringement of a classical composition.
The order reverses a previous interim injunction from April 25, which had held that the song was “identical” to “Shiva Stuti,” a traditional Dhrupad composition by the late Ustad Nasir Zahiruddin Dagar and Ustad Nasir Faiyazuddin Dagar, famously known as the Junior Dagar Brothers.
A bench of Justices C Hari Shankar and Om Prakash Shukla delivered a judgment that hinged on a crucial legal principle. The court found that the single-judge bench had erred by assuming that because the Junior Dagar brothers performed the composition, they were necessarily its composers.
“We have said that if we hold that the person who renders the composition to be the composer, we will have to rewrite the definition (of ‘composer’ in the Copyright Act),” the court stated while pronouncing the verdict. This finding, without even delving into the issue of infringement, was enough to allow Rahman’s appeal.
The lawsuit was originally filed by Ustad Faiyaz Wasifuddin Dagar, the son of Ustad Nasir Faiyazuddin Dagar. He had claimed that the “Shiva Stuti” composition, which is part of the revered Dagarvani tradition of Hindustani classical music, was used in Rahman’s song without authorization and with insufficient credit. The previous ruling had directed Rahman and the filmmakers to pay ₹2 lakh in damages and to explicitly acknowledge the Dagar brothers as the composers in the song’s credits on all streaming platforms.
The high court’s new ruling directly challenges the single-judge’s finding that “