Can’t I talk about Kashmiri Pandits, asks Anupam Kher

Actor Anupam Kher has claimed that it was he who helped turn the spotlight on the plight of Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley. Otherwise, the present generation would not have known what had happened to this community 26 years ago, he said.

Mr. Kher, who was here to perform in a play, was speaking to his friends and some media persons in the company of other theatre artists like Nina Gupta and Rakesh Bedi at the local Coffee House on Tuesday.

‘Not a movement yet’

Asked about his role as a leader of the Kashmiri Pandits’ movement, he said it was an emotional feeling rather than a movement. It would become a movement only when the entire country came together on this issue. “But in the span of four or five years, we have managed to bring the issue into the limelight and people have begun to understand what had happened to the Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley,” he said.

Mr. Kher, who was born and brought up in Shimla, was upset when a member of the audience pointed out that he did not suffer like the Kashmiri Pandits did. “When Sonia Gandhi, who was born in Italy, can become the chief of the Congress party, run the government for 10 years and comment on the working of the government at the Centre, why can’t I talk about Kashmiri Pandits? I am one of them,” he said, asking “Don’t the NRIs have a right to talk about their country?”

“The Kashmiri Pandits have been thrown out of their own land and I have every right to talk about their plight and sufferings.”

On the chanting of “Om” during the coming Yoga Day on June 21, Mr. Kher — a known supporter of Prime Minister Narendra Modi — said people can say Allahu-Akbar or Waheguru Ji Ka Hhalsa if they had a problem.