Says not comforting to hear chants of ‘Shoot the traitor!’

The army of trolls and their abuse and threats on the web may not have affected veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah but he stated in an exclusive e-mail interview to The Hindu that it was definitely not comforting to hear chants of “Shoot the traitor!” directed at him. “The vicious jingoism masquerading as love for the country has reached truly scary proportions and so has the constant whataboutery in response to almost everything. ‘The earlier rulers did this, what’s wrong if we do it too?’ ‘The Aussies dish out abuse, what’s wrong if we do it too?’” he stated.

Mr. Shah has been at the receiving end of extreme outrage and hatred over an interview in which he had expressed anxiety over mob violence and lynching and concern for the future and well being of his children. “The poison has already spread. It will be very difficult to capture this djinn back in the bottle. There is complete impunity for those who take law into their own hands. In many areas we are witnessing that the death of a cow has more significance than that of a police officer. I feel anxious thinking about my children. Because they don’t have a religion… tomorrow if a mob surrounds them and asks ‘are you a Hindu or a Muslim?’ they will have no answer. It worries me because I don’t see the situation improving anytime soon. These matters don’t scare me, they make me angry…” he had said.

On Friday he was prevented from inaugurating the Ajmer Literature Festival (ALF) following protests by BJP Yuva Morcha members. A session with him titled “Naseer Ki Nazar” was also cancelled.

Mr. Shah stated that he can only speculate at whose bidding all this would have happened but whoever was exhorting those goons did not realise that they actually ended up endorsing what he had said in the Karwaan-e-Mohabbat interview.

Staying silent not a choice

He told The Hindu that he was not surprised at the reactions to what he said and he does not feel defeated at the turn of events. He confessed being a bit saddened but more angered. “It does seem that for the moderate Indian staying silent is not a choice any more,” he said.

According to him no one in his family experienced discrimination at any point in their lives: “My Dad served in the PCS, two uncles in the police force, a cousin and a brother in the army and all of them not only did well but never felt that being a Muslim was a disqualification for us. We never really discussed or feared it.”

He said that in case what he has said now is misconstrued as the “insecurity of a Muslim living in India” he wanted to make it clear that though he gave the example of his children, he was not speaking only of himself and his family. “The Dalits or the farmers or the Christian community or students or anti-traditionalists or citizens from India’s North-East are no less insecure in their own country and that fact, instead of being a matter of shame for us all, invites accusations of sedition if solidarity with any of them is shown,” he said.

On the matter of religion he stated that religion has nothing to do with goodness and neither he nor anyone else in his family participate in religious rituals of any kind. “In fact the amount of harm that a rabid sense of faith has done to the world through the centuries is unequalled by anything else. What we have faith in and what we believe in is entirely our own business,” he stated.

Asked about the recent instances of artists being targeted for speaking out their minds, he said that power hungry leaders have through history been circumspect, if not downright suspicious, of artists because artists speak the truth in ways they (leaders) consider insidious. “The influence of art is not hammer and tongs but works by entering your veins and altering your system; besides artists talk about peace and love all the time and that does not always suit the powers that be — their agendas are different,” he said.

Also Read The Shah of acting

Mr. Shah clarified that if he “didn’t speak up when the Sikhs were massacred, when the Kashmiri Pandits had to flee?” it was because he had no voice, no standing, no face value then. “Who’d listen to an unemployed actor mouthing off?” he asked.

He said that the accusation that he was paid by the Congress to defame the country and, by association the ruling party, was so dumb that he won’t even bother to set the record straight. “By that reasoning I was probably paid by the Aussies to diss Virat Kohli!” he stated, adding, “It testifies to the dictum that you see everything in your own image; you see your own tendencies reflected in everyone — the cheating husband suspecting his wife of infidelities kind of thing.”

On a lighter note when asked about his 1983 film Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro reflecting the absurdity of current times and if its sequel needed to be made, he said that it has been crying out for a sequel for years but “with Kundan (Shah), Ravi (Baswani), Om (Puri) and Bhakti (Barve Inamdar) gone and the others turning fat and old and lazy, it's looking like a pipe dream”. “The level of corruption today has reached such proportions that to attempt a sequel would take an epic story, a master scriptwriter and genius filmmaker, not to mention a very good dietician and physiotherapist! Best leave well enough alone.”