Bollywood News

/> Arjun Rampal who is in real life a practising Hindu, has studied the Holy Quran. For the role of the Muslim police officer in Chakravyuh Arjun moved in with his Man-Friday Raja who is a Muslim. He also followed Raja closely and learnt the ritual of performing the Namaaz before performing the sequence Namaaz-reciting sequence in Chakravyuh.

`Yeah, my 'boy' Raja who is a Muslim was my coach. It wasn't about getting the character right. It was about making sure that that I didn't overdo or underdo it. `

Arjun feels Muslim characters are constantly depicted in a stereotypical way in our films. `It may not be intentional. But a certain tone always creeps in when a Muslim character is portrayed, in the way the character speaks and dresses.

I wanted my character to appear normal. He had to look Indian, not Muslim. And since my 'boy' is Muslim without in any way flashing his religious identity I decided to observe him closely before playing the Muslim cop in Chakravyuh. `

Arjun was specially careful about the sequence where he had to perform the holy Namaaz. He religiously practised the prayer with Raja for close to two weeks.

The end-result is more than gratifying. Arjun is getting tweets by the dozens from Muslims.

`I think they like the fact that my being a Muslim character is not of any consequence to the way I am portrayed and what I do in the film, ` says Arjun happily.