Mumbai/Nagpur: Veteran actor, Naseeruddin Shah has slammed Anupam Kher mocking his claim to represent the interests of Kashmiri Pandits.
Taking a potshot at Kher, he said that someone who’d never lived in Kashmir had suddenly started fighting for Kashmiri Pandits.
He said, “A person who has never lived in Kashmir has started a fight for Kashmiri Pandits. Suddenly, he became a displaced person,” Shah was quoted by PTI.
According to PTI, the 66-year-old actor was in the capital to promote his film “Waiting” which released on Friday.
Shah also said that he was worried by the “changes made in few textbooks.” He, however, added that the government was not “stupid” enough to turn the nation towards “dark ages”.
He said, “I believe the people in the government are not stupid to understand the choices in front of them, either to build a modern India or to take us back into the dark ages. I think they are not stupid to take the second choice.
“Not for anything else but to at least be in power. I am not leaving the hope. If we will leave the hope it means we have lost the battle.”
Shah said he agreed with lyricist Javed Akhtar’s statements made during his farewell speech in Rajya Sabha saying nobody had the right to question a person’s love for their motherland.
“I am sad that statements like these (referring to AIMIM MP Asaddudin Owaisi) are made and then they are not even condemned. Like Javed sahab said, ‘It is his right to say ‘Vande Mataram’ and ‘Bharat mata ki jai’. I will say it with my choice not because somebody asks me to,’ I support him. Nobody has a right to question my love for my country,” he said.