Khan quotes a poem by Rabindranath Tagore.
By Sreejith Vallikunnu
Reacting to criticism against his remarks on intolerance in India, Bollywood actor Aamir Khan said on Wednesday that neither he nor his wife Kiran Rao have any intention of leaving the country. The actor also stated that he is proud to be an Indian and stands by what he had said earlier.
“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,” Khan responded.
He also said that “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.”
“To all the people shouting obscenities at me for speaking my heart out, it saddens me to say you are only proving my point. To all the people who have stood by me, thank you. We have to protect what this beautiful and unique country of ours really stands for. We have to protect its integrity, diversity, inclusiveness, its many languages, its culture, its history, its tolerance, it’s concept of anekantavada, it’s love, sensitivity and its emotional strength,” Khan said in a detailed statement.
He ended the statement with a poem by Rabindranath Tagore,
“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.”
The whole controversy started on Monday when Aamir Khan said that his wife Kiran Rao had expressed her concerns over raising communal clashes and was thinking of leaving the country while speaking at the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism awards.
He said during the function, “When I chat with Kiran at home, she says, ‘should we move out of India?’ That’s a disastrous and big statement for Kiran to make. She fears for her child. She fears what the atmosphere around us will be. She feels scared to open the newspapers every day. That does indicate that there is this sense of growing disquiet, there is growing despondency apart from alarm.”