Mumbai, Nov 25
[dropcap color=”#008040″ boxed=”yes” boxed_radius=”8px” class=”” id=””]T[/dropcap]wo days after his remarks on “intolerance” created a storm in the country, Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan on Wednesday stuck to his comments and asserted that he was proud to be an Indian and neither he nor his wife Kiran Rao have any plan to leave the country.
As the BJP and a section of the film industry slammed him over his remarks, Aamir issued a statement to clarify his position.
The statement said:
First let me state categorically that neither I, nor my wife Kiran, have any intention of leaving the country. We never did, and nor would we like to in the future. Anyone implying the opposite has either not seen my interview or is deliberately trying to distort what I have said. India is my country, I love it, I feel fortunate for being born here, and this is where I am staying.
Secondly, I stand by everything that I have said in my interview.
To all those people who are calling me anti-national, I would like to say that I am proud to be Indian, and I do not need anyone’s permission nor endorsement for that…”
The actor ended his statement by quoting Rabindranath Tagore’s famous poem,
“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high,
Where knowledge is free,
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments,
by narrow domestic walls,
Where words come out from the depth of truth,
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection,
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way,
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit,
Where the mind is led forward by thee,
Into ever-widening thought and action,
Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake”.
Speaking at award giving function hoasted by The Indian Express in Delhi on Monday, Aaamir had said: , “Kiran and I have lived all our life in India. For the first time, she said, should we move out of India… She fears for her child, she fears about what the atmosphere around us will be.”
Meanwhile, Oscar-winning music composer AR Rahman came in support of Aamir Khan and said he faced a similar situation a few months ago, when a Muslim group issued a fatwa against him.
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