Agencies :
At the age of just 34, Indian-American Johran K Mamdani has made history
by becoming the first Muslim mayor of New York. Behind his success is
a strong family atmosphere.
Johran’s mother is Indian-American filmmaker Mira Nair, a bold name in world cinema.
Her films do not have commercial flashiness, but stories of people, society, pain, migration and self-struggle.
She is the director of internationally acclaimed films like ‘Salaam Bombay’, ‘Monsoon Wedding’, ‘Mississippi Masala’. Johran’s father is renowned Gujarati writer Professor Mahmud Mamdani.
He is a thinker of Indian origin from Uganda. Zohran grew up with Bengali culture because of his mother.
He closely watched his mother’s film world from a young age. Mira was born in the Bengali-dominated Rourkela in Odisha, India.
Therefore, there is an influence of Bengali and Bengali language in her life and work. She also taught her son Zohran Mamdani the Bengali language. She introduced him to Bengali culture.
Her son even played a role in Mira Nair’s decision to make the film ‘Namesake’, which is based on the story of a Bengali family migrating to America.
When Mira was offered the opportunity to direct ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’ in 2007, she hesitated.
At that time, the teenage Zohran himself was a Harry Potter fan and asked his mother to make ‘Namesake’.
Zohraan has been elected mayor of New York as a candidate for the Democratic Party. Mira Nair is very excited about her son’s victory.
Her father Mahmud Mamdani is also happy. Sharing a picture of her son on Instagram, Mira wrote, “He is not only my son, he is a symbol of hope for our time.” Mira said about her son, “I’m amazed by my son’s courage and way of speaking.
What I like about him is that he has unequivocally accepted the diversity of this world.
I am optimistic about the hope he has shown. He has a vision to see this world. And that is not the greed for power. He has always stood for equality, justice and the working people.”
Mira Nair’s first feature film, ‘Salaam Bombay!’, won the Cannes Film Festival’s Camera d’Or in 1988. It was also nominated for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language Film category.
