After much speculation about who from Bollywood would turn up to meet Union Minister Piyush Goyal to “dialogue over CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act)”, the attendance proved to be a damp squib, with no sign of any of A-listers.
Among those who attended the meeting at Grand Hyatt on Sunday evening were Central Board of Film Certification chairman Prasoon Joshi, music composer Anu Malik, singers Kailash Kher and Shaan, T-Series chairman and managing director Bhushan Kumar, filmmakers Vipul Shah, Kunal Kohli and Abhishek Kapoor, actress Urvashi Rautela, and writer Reena Rathod.
As the attendees entered the hotel in Santacruz, over 50 people stood outside the gates in protest against the meeting. The protesters sang verses from Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s ‘ Hum Dekhenge ’ and shouted slogans like, “ Aya ek Nazi, laya NRC (a Nazi has come, he has brought the National Register of Citizens with him).”
Bilal Khan, a protester and resident of Chembur, said, “Bollywood celebrities are people fans look up to. This protest is to remind them that if they do not stand for the right thing, people might refrain from watching their movies.”
As the protesters distributed greeting cards and roses to the police present at the venue, some also demanded that the celebrities come out of the hotel and have a conversation with them. “If the government is not afraid of coming up with CAA and NRC, then why are they afraid of facing the general public?” asked Lara Jesai, an advocate at Bombay High Court.
Another protester, Amrita Ham Ray, accused the government of using Bollywood celebrities to influence the common man. “We don’t want Bollywood to promote the Bharatiya Janata Party’s ideology,” she said.
Organised by film producer Mahaveer Jain, an invitation sent to leading Bollywood figures on January 3 to meet Mr. Goyal was doing feverish rounds in the entertainment media WhatsApp groups on Saturday. The list of invitees has said to have included even those critical of CAA, like Javed and Farhan Akhtar and Kabir Khan, but Anurag Kashyap, Anubhav Sinha and Swara Bhaskar were left out
