Credit is a cheap currency until the lawyers show up. AR Rahman, a man who has spent three decades being treated like a musical deity, just found out that even gods have to answer to the Supreme Court.

It’s a classic story of the old world colliding with the new, and as usual, the old world had to sue its way into the conversation. The bone of contention is "Veera Raja Veera," a sweeping, choral centerpiece from Mani Ratnam’s Ponniyin Selvan: II. It’s a beautiful track. It’s also, according to the Dagar family, a bit of a heist. They claimed the song lifted the soul and structure of a specific Shiva Stuti composed by the late Dagar Brothers, the legendary custodians of the Dhrupad tradition.

Now, the Supreme Court has officially recorded an "undertaking" from Rahman and the film’s producers. They’ve agreed to give credit to the Dagar tradition. No grand admission of guilt. No massive settlement disclosed in the public record. Just a quiet, legally mandated "thank you" added to the metadata.

It’s the kind of compromise that leaves everyone slightly annoyed.

For the Dagars, this wasn't about a quick payday—though in the music business, it always is, eventually. It was about lineage. Dhrupad isn't just a genre; it’s a rigorous, oral archive that predates the very concept of intellectual property. When you take a melody that has been passed down through twenty generations of vocalists and slap it into a multi-million dollar film score, you aren't just "sampling." You’re mining. You’re taking a piece of sacred history and turning it into a "vibe" for a historical epic meant to sell tickets in IMAX.

The friction here isn't just about notes on a page. It’s about the cost of entry for traditional artists in a digital economy. Rahman’s legal team likely argued that the melody was part of the public domain, a piece of the cultural ether that belongs to everyone. It’s a convenient defense. It allows big-budget productions to strip-mine folk and classical traditions without ever having to write a check to the people who actually kept those traditions alive when they weren't fashionable.

But the Dagar family held their ground. They didn't want the song pulled from Spotify. They wanted their name on the receipt.

The "undertaking" is a fascinating bit of legal gymnastics. By recording Rahman’s promise to acknowledge the Dagar tradition, the court avoided the messy business of deciding who "owns" a raga. Because you can’t own a raga, any more than you can own the wind. But you can own a specific arrangement. You can own the specific way your father sang a prayer in 1970.

This is the reality of the modern music industry. We live in a world of "interpolation" and "re-imagining," words we use to describe the fact that we’ve run out of new ideas. Everything is a remix. Rahman is a genius, sure, but even a genius needs raw materials. When those materials come from a family that views their music as a spiritual trust rather than a royalty stream, things get litigious.

There’s a certain irony in seeing Rahman, the man who brought Indian film music into the digital age with MIDI cables and synthesizers, being pulled back to earth by a 500-year-old vocal tradition. It’s a reminder that the "global sound" he’s credited with creating is built on foundations he didn't lay himself.

The credit will eventually appear. A line of text in a YouTube description or a flicker of a name in the closing credits that no one reads. The film has already made its money. The song has already been streamed millions of times. The Dagar name will be attached to the digital file like a post-it note on a skyscraper.

Is this a win for the little guy? Hardly. It took a trip to the highest court in the country just to get a name-check for one of the most prestigious musical families in Indian history. If the Dagars had to fight this hard, what hope does the anonymous folk singer from a village in Rajasthan have when their melody gets "inspired" by the next big Bollywood hit?

We’ve decided that "tradition" is a free resource, right up until a lawyer proves otherwise.

What happens to the next song when the lineage isn't wealthy enough to sue?