MUMBAI: Shah Rukh Khan has become victim of Hindu extremism yet again as Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Yogi Adityanath drew comparison of the Bollwood star to Hafiz Saeed on Wednesday.
The façade of India as a secular nation is fast deteriorating after extremist Hindu organizations have repeatedly interfered in people’s right to free speech.
The BJP leader claimed that Shah Rukh Khan was the same as Hafiz Saeed. It is pertinent to mention here that India considers leader of Jamat-ud-Dawa, Hafiz Saeed, as a terrorist.
Controversial BJP MP Yogi Adityanath hit out at Shah Rukh Khan two days after the actor added his voice to the protest by the intelligentsia against the ‘climate of intolerance’, Adityanath also suggested that he go to Pakistan.
In another controversial remark, Adityanath, the MP from Gorakhpur, said Shah Rukh should remember that if a huge mass of people in the country would boycott his films then he would also have to wander on streets like a normal Muslim.
Senior BJP leader Kailash Vijayvargiya yesterday in a series of tweets triggered a controversy when he painted Shah Rukh as an anti-nationalist and said that the actor’s soul is in Pakistan though he lives in India.
Under fire for the remark, Vijayvargiya, a BJP General Secretary, today withdrew his controversial tweets but asserted that had there been intolerance in India, Shah Rukh would not have been the most popular actor after Amitabh Bachchan. He, however, refused to apologize for his remarks.
The attack against Shah Rukh by BJP leaders came notwithstanding the refrain of BJP’s top brass in the recent weeks that partymen avoid sensitive comments. Claiming that in the name of secularism some artists and authors with radical views have started speaking as anti-nationals, Adityanath said unfortunately Shah Rukh had also matched their voice and lent his support.
