Shahrukh Khan slams Hindu extremism
November 03, 2015
He had expressed these views while talking to the widely-watched NDTV of India on his 50th birthday on Monday.
Here follow some of his quotes from the interview:
- Religion cannot be defined by our meat-eating habits.
- Whoever takes a stand against creative people will face a huge backlash.
- In my house, everyone is free to follow their religion. My kids were confused about whether they were Muslim or Hindu, I said why not Christian? Sweet dish is prepared on Diwali in our house and I myself go to “Pooja”.
- If you are a patriot, you must love your country as a whole, not parts of it as religions and regions.
- The fact that we need to keep on talking about the three Khans to prove how secular India is means that India is not. We don’t need ‘Khans’ shining’ to prove that India is shining. If we start curbing creativity, we will be making more unsecular people.
- Anupam Kher should be able to give his opinion about another director and be able to have a discussion about it. That’s tolerance.
- I think it’s very brave of those returning their awards. I am on their side. If they tell me to join them on a march or a press conference, I would. Personally, it’s too much of symbolism to return my awards. Just returning something, I am not a believer in that.
- It is very degrading and humiliating to have to prove my patriotism.
- I am an Indian-born movie star. I am an Indian-born Indian. I am Indian - how does that get questioned?
- Nobody has more right to live in this country than me, and I am not going to leave. So shut up.
- Somewhere the decision to send the children abroad to study is so they wouldn’t have to deal with the security and my stardom.
On turning 50 on Monday, Shahrukh had maintained: “At 50, I can still do the dance and the hands and the cartwheel and I can still dignify a lady so much that she will fall in love with me. I think that is what romance is. I wish I didn’t have the injuries that slow me down but at 50, I wouldn’t change much else. I can make fun of myself, not the art. I love the films I’ve done.”
In January 2013, Shahrukh Khan had also exposed so-called secular face of world largest democracy, expressing his agony he was facing for being born as a Muslim in a Hindu-dominant state.
Shahrukh Khan had revealed that several Indian politicians had pressurised him to leave India and go to his native home Pakistan after the 9/11 episode.
“I sometimes become the inadvertent object of political leaders who choose to make me a symbol of all that they think is wrong and unpatriotic about Muslims in India,” he had written in an article titled “Being a Khan” for the “Outlook Turning Points” magazine of India.
Lashing out at Hindu extremism, he had asserted the Muslims in India were not considered loyal to the country.
Shahrukh had further lamented: “There have been occasions when I have been accused of bearing allegiance to our neighbouring nation (Pakistan) rather than my own country – this even though I am an Indian, whose father fought for the freedom of India. Rallies have been held where leaders have exhorted me to leave and return what they refer to my ‘original’ homeland.”
Shahrukh had disclosed: “I gave my son and daughter names that could pass for generic (pan-India and pan-religious) ones – Aryan and Suhana. The Khan has been bequeathed by me so they can’t really escape it.”
The richest Indian film star, according to the reputed Forbes magazine’s 2015 rankings, had further written in his afore-cited article that the was pressed to make the film “My Name is Khan” to prove a point after being repeatedly detained in US airports because of his last name.
He had added: “I was grilled at the airport for hours about my last name when I going to promote the film in America for the first time.”
