Veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah has slammed Mumbai University for a "dishonest" and "insulting" last-minute disinvitation from an Urdu department event scheduled for February 1.
In a sharp opinion piece for a newspaper, Shah revealed on Thursday that he was abruptly told not to attend on the eve of the event without any explanation or apology.
"The Jashn-e-Urdu organised by the Urdu department of Mumbai University for February 1, from which I was disinvited at the last moment, was an event I was greatly looking forward to because it meant interacting with students.”
"The university, after informing me that I needn’t attend (on the night of January 31, and giving no reason for it, forget an apology) obviously considered this not insulting enough," Shah wrote.
The actor alleged the university later told the audience that he had refused to attend.
"It's not really surprising they didn’t have the courage to state the truth - that I 'openly make statements against the country', (if they were covert I suppose that would be all right) or, at least, that's what a senior university official reportedly said.”
"If he's not merely toeing the line and actually believes that statement, I hereby challenge the gentleman in question to produce one single statement of mine in which I run down my country," he said.
The actor, known for critically-acclaimed films such as "Nishant", "Aakrosh", "Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro", "Masoom" and "Sparsh", said he has often been critical and continues to be so of many things the ruling dispensation does.
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Shah also said he has been vocal about several other issues -- things that trouble "people like me about the direction in which we seem to be headed".
"... where student activists are held for years without trial but convicted rapists/ murderers are frequently granted bail, where cow vigilantes have a free hand to maim and kill, where history is being rewritten and the content of textbooks revised, where even science is being fiddled with, where a Chief Minister, no less, talks of harassing the 'Miyas'," he added.
The actor then asked: "Just how long can this hatred be sustained?"
"This is not the country I grew up in and was taught to love. The 'thought police' and 'doublespeak' have been deployed in full force, as has surveillance. The “two minutes of hate” have turned into 24 hours of hate.
"Would it be too far-fetched to equate the situation with George Orwell's 1984, in which not singing the praise of the 'great leader' is considered sedition?" he wrote.
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