New Delhi : Veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah wrote a sharply worded piece expressing hurt and anger after being disinvited at the last minute from Mumbai University’s Jashn-e-Urdu event. Shah reflected on his four-decade-long association with teaching and mentoring aspiring actors and said the university informed him late on the night of January 31 that he need not attend the event scheduled for the following day.
The 75-year-old wrote that he has been openly critical of the country’s leadership and of what he sees as growing intolerance and misuse of power by the ruling dispensation over the past decade.
Sure, I have never praised the self-proclaimed ‘Vishwaguru’. In fact, I have been critical of the way he conducts himself. His narcissism offends me and I haven’t been impressed by a single thing he’s done in 10 years.
No explanation or apology was offered. He further alleged that the university later “added insult to injury” by announcing to the audience that he had chosen not to attend. Shah suggested that the decision to disinvite him may have been linked to his public criticism of the current political climate. He wrote that a senior university official was reported to have said that Shah openly makes statements against the country, a charge he strongly refuted.
Shah listed several issues he said continue to trouble him, including the prolonged detention of student activists without trial, the granting of bail to those convicted of serious crimes, the rise of cow vigilantism, changes to history textbooks, and what he described as political rhetoric targeting minorities. Questioning how long such hostility could be sustained, Shah wrote that this was not the country he grew up in or was taught to love.
Drawing a parallel with English novelist George Orwell’s 1984, Shah warned of what he termed the rise of “thought police”, surveillance, and a culture where dissent is treated as sedition. This is not the country I grew up in and was taught to love,” he wrote while concluding the piece.
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