Many filmmakers and artistes from the fraternity including Madhur Bhandarkar, Ashoke Pandit, Priyadarshan, Manoj Joshi, Abhijeet Bhattacharya and writer Madhu Kishwar joined the march to hand over a memorandum signed by more than 40 personalities including actress Raveena Tandon to President Pranab Mukherjee.
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“We all have to speak up”. According to Kher, the protest is being conducted as a “campaign for truth”.
The actor seems to be sending out a clear and strong message with regards to his opinion on the current discourse surrounding the atmosphere of intolerance prevalent in the country.
The “March for India” will start from the National Museum, Janpath in New Delhi will lead to Rashtrapati Bhawan. “There is a huge political agenda behind the act of returning awards”, he said.
Kher has been critical of those from within the film industry returning their awards.
Anupam Kher is the Bollywood’s veteran actor and also a BJP supporter. Last week, apart from Banerjee and Patwardhan, Paresh Kamdar, Nishtha Jain, Kirti Nakhwa, Harshavardhan Kulkarni, Hari Nair, Rakesh Sharma, Indraneel Lahiri and Lipika Singh Darai returned their national awards. “Some of these usual suspects of #AwardWapsiGang were instrumental in getting me out of Censor Board the moment Congress came in Power”.
Hitting out at Shah Rukh two days after the actor added his voice to the protest by the intelligentsia against the “climate of intolerance”, Adityanath had suggested that the actor should go to Pakistan.
He also said that they will submit a letter to the President of India, Pranab Mukherjee claiming that supporting them are “millions of Indians who think that the country is tolerant”.
The BJP has, however, distanced itself from the controversial statements of Adityanath and Vijayvargiya saying they are not the party’s line.
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Kher added, “To all those people who say “India is intolerant”, we want to very tolerantly tell them that India is a tolerant country”.
