Chennai/Lucknow: A case of defamation was on Friday filed against actor Kamal Haasan over his “Hindu terror” statement in a column in a Tamil magazine.
500 (Punishment for defamation), 511, 298 (hurting religious sentiment), 295(A) (intend to outrage religious feelings), and 505(C) (attempt to incite hatred enmity between classes) of the Indian Penal Code.
Haasan, in a weekly column on Thursday, took on the right-wing groups, saying that these outfits cannot deny the existence of “Hindu terror”.
“The Hindus cannot challenge others to show extremists among them since extremism has spread to that extent even among the Hindus,” Haasan wrote in a weekly column, titled ‘One cannot say there is no Hindu terror anymore’, in Tamil magazine ‘Ananda Vikatan’.
“In the past the Hindu right used to engage only in intellectual debates with the other religious groups. Once this approach started failing they have resorted to muscle power. They too started indulging in violence,” he wrote.
Haasan’s column was in response to a question by Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. The Kerala chief minister had asked the actor to express his view on “Hindutva forces” and its attempt to “dilute Tamil culture”.
BJP leader Subramanian Swamy responded to Haasan’s claim of ‘Hindu terror’ and called him a “morally corrupt person”.
BJP national spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao went on to compare the actor to Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) founder Hafiz Saeed.
