No one stood up for me: Shabana Azmi

“I respect SRK for his fearless stand. But I have been called a traitor ,an anti-national, a woman with Pakistani blood running in my veins by the Shiv Sena and not a crow stood up for me.. And the same Shiv Sena is calling BJP names for calling SRK anti-national!! It is vile that there are repeated attempts to posit an Indian Muslim automatically as Pakistan loyalist. It suits Pakistan fine and you play into the hands of people like Hafiz Saeed whose raison d'etre is to fuel enmity between the two countries.

“SRK has merely expressed his opinion, he hasn’t broken the law, he hasn’t indulged in violence, but speaking his mind is enough for the state to post a posse of policemen outside his house! I’ve said this before — this is not a fight between Hindu and Muslim. It’s a fight between ideologies. We need to have the liberal Hindu Muslim Christian on the same side against the intolerant Hindu Muslim Christian on the other.”

Attributing intolerance to all political parties, the actress said, “Intolerance has always existed and will continue to do so as long as there are human beings — it exists in pockets of the Congress, the Left and the BJP. How the intolerance is dealt with is the business of the state. Apni dukaan mat chalao, just deal with it in the way it should be handled in a democracy. Show that you mean business. Kehni aur karni should be the same.”