Bollywood actor Anupam Kher today led a march to the Rashtrapati Bhavan to counter the protests by writers, artistes and others against "rising intolerance", voicing concern over the "wrong projection" of India by those returning their awards.
Kher, director Madhur Bhandarkar and painter Vasudev Kamath were among 11 members who handed over a memorandum to President Pranab Mukherjee. The memorandum is signed by 90 personalities, including Kamal Haasan, Shekhar Kapur, Vidya Balan, Raveena Tandon and Vivek Oberoi besides, authors, former judges and musicians.
"Any brutal killing is condemnable. We strongly condemn it and expect swift justice. But if it is used by some people to attempt to defame India at the international platform, then we should be worried," Kher said while reading out their letter to the President.
The actor said the protests, which began with writers returning their Sahitya Akademi awards, shows that rather than addressing their concerns through their respective fields, these people are using media to "hurt the spirit of India".
Kher said no one has the right to call India intolerant and there is no country in the world, which is more tolerant than India.
"People want me to become defensive as they keep telling me, 'You belong to BJP, your wife is from BJP.' Their motive is to defame the country. If there is a fight in the house, we have a dialogue but these people are upset without any reason and are not even having any dialogue. I got angry because foreign papers were calling India intolerant."
Bhandarkar, who joined the march, said, "The whole projection and narrative that is going abroad is wrong. It is a diverse country and of course there are incidents but we all condemn them. There is no two ways about it."
Filmmaker Priyadarshan called the move of returning awards a political agenda.
"After years of tolerance, we have got a man (Narendra Modi) with a view. They don't want him to work. They want to sabotage what he is doing. There is a huge political agenda behind the act of returning awards," he said.
Another filmmaker Ashoke Pandit said the President has assured them that he will take up the issue with the PM.
Taking a dig at Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, Kher said, "The leader that opposition party is trying to project does not inspire me. He reads out from prepared statements. Our former PM also used to do the same. The passion with which PM Modi talks about India at international platforms, no other PM has ever done that. No other PM has also visited Kashmir so many times. So, why shouldn't I respect him?"
At least 75 members of the intelligentsia have returned national or literary awards in an escalation of protests by writers, historians, filmmakers and scientists over "growing intolerance", voicing fears that the country's robust democracy might be "coming apart" in the current atmosphere.
The BJP-led government has dismissed the protest as "manufactured rebellion" and "politically" motivated.
