Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan was Tuesday at the centre of the latest round of sparring between two often uneasy neighbours with Pakistan’s minister Rehman Malik’s comment that India should provide the actor security prompting a sharp rebuke from New Delhi that Islamabad should mind its own ‘minorities’.
Malik said in Islamabad that the Indian government should provide security to Shah Rukh, in the thick of a controversy over his remarks on being a Muslim that led to Jamaat-ud Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed saying the star could move to Pakistan.
Addressing reporters in Islamabad at a reception hosted by the Indian High Commissioner, Malik added that people of both Pakistan and India love Shah Rukh, reported Geo TV.
India was quick to react.
Soon after Malik’s remarks were reported in the media, Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari and Home Secretary R.K. Singh said Pakistan should worry about the state of affairs in its own country. Both Tewari and R.K. Singh spoke in near identical terms to decry Malik’s statement. “Instead of introspection of how minorities in India are being treated he (Malik) should contemplate how he can improve condition of minority in his country,” Tewari told reporters. He said it would be better for Pakistan if Malik paid attention to domestic matters of his own country rather than worrying about such things.
“Test of democracy is the way you treat your minority rather than majority. The UPA (United Progressive Alliance) government has strived to see every citizen in the same light and given equal right under the constitution,” he said. The home secretary spoke out too.
“We are quite capable of looking after security of our own citizens… let him (Malik) worry about security of his own,” he said. Even the Shiv Sena also said that our government is not answerable to Pakistan. “Pakistan should instead protect the Hindu minority in their country,” Sena’s spokesperson Sanjay Raut said. On whether the 47-year-old actor courted controversy with his comments, Raut simply said, “he may have.” “More than Shah Rukh, South star Kamal Haasan needs security at this moment, as he is receiving threats for his new film,” he added.
Shah Rukh, one of Bollywood’s more articulate personalities, had written in a magazine: “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.”
“There have been occasions when I have been accused of bearing allegiance to our neighbouring nation 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,” added the 47-year-old star.
He went on say that he became so sick of being mistaken for some crazed terrorist, “who co-incidentally carries the same name as mine that I made a film subtly titled ‘My Name Is Khan’ (and I am not a terrorist) to prove a point”. “Ironically, I was interrogated at the airport for hours about my last name when I was going to promote the film in America for the first time,” he said.
