Naseeruddin Shah is a three time National award winning popular Indian film actor, who predominantly appears in Hindi films aka the Bollywood movies.  The 73 year old Padma Bhushan, Pada Shri recipient has often been vocal against ‘propaganda movies’ in the Indian film industry, and has even called out Bollywood’s silence on the same. 

Naseerruddin Shah is a revered name in the Indian film circles, and among the Hindi cine audience. A recent interview of his, has come as a wakeup call to both the right and left wingers in India, and is currently going viral on the internet. 

In a video chat with TheWire.in’s Karan Thappar, Naseeruddin Shah said that it is very easy for those opposing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindutva politics to blame everything on him. Naseeruddin Shah is an openly secular about his politics, so this statement sure turned a lot of heads.

Shah stated, “It’s very easy for those of us who oppose Modi, to blame everything that’s wrong with the country on him. The fact is there was plenty wrong with the country even before Modi came to power. Modi just managed to tap in into what was always dormant. There has always been an undercurrent of hostility among religions in our country. I can recall, as a child being taunted for being a Muslim, and I remember taunting others about their religions. Which I think has always been under the surface and Modi was very clever to tap into the hint that he got, the cue that he got and dismember whatever remnants that were there of secularism and of equality.”

The veteran actor further added, “Its very easy to say it was all hunky dory before (Modi), that we were living in a land of milk and honey, we weren’t. There was plenty of problems. And some of us were taken in by the naïve statements of the Hindi film songs of Hindu-Muslim (camaraderie)..’Hindu Muslim Sikh Christian My Salute To All’ (lyric from a 1960 Hindi song titled Chhalia Mera Naam that featured in the Mamohan Desai directed Chhalia movie starring Raj Kapoor). This was an attempt but I don’t think the entire country was taken in by it. Some of us certainly were but it has has been proved that these songs did not resonate, these songs were merely lip service.“

Islamophobia which was already dormant in a Hindu dominant country like India, has definitely seen a meteoric rise ever since Modi and the BJP-RSS’ Hindutva politics came into prominence. Naseeruddin Shah while acknowledging the same, says that the Muslims aren’t blameless either. 

“The country I was born and brought up in, the country in which six generations of my family have parent, the country which I was taught to revere and love, there were times when I could not recognize it at all. But the fact is that the Muslims are not blameless either.

 

Truth is calling a spade a spade.
Kudos Naseeruddin Shah

— Manas Ganguly (@manasganguly) June 12, 2024

 

The Muslims have concentrated on all the wrong things, instead of worrying about education. They are worrying about hijab and the length of (Indian tennis legend) Sania Mirza’s skirt and all these sort of things, when they should be worried about education, they should be worried about enlightening their race, about exposing them to modern ideas instead of thrusting them into Madrasas all the time and teaching them, giving them only religious initiation. The Muslims have been at fault.”