Some media persons were heckled by participants of the march organised by actor Anupam Kher. The actor staged the campaign to counter the protests by writers and artistes against “rising intolerance” in the country.
The ‘March For India’ rally from National Museum to Rashtrapati Bhavan was also joined by filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar, Ashoke Pandit, Priyadarshan, Manoj Joshi, Abhijeet Bhattacharya and writer Madhu Kishwar, among others.
The protest turned ugly when some people started shouting anti-media slogans and heckled the journalists.
A bunch of people were shouting and calling the media biased. They said we practice selective journalism. They heckled us.Reporter From a Leading News Channel
The marchers reached Rashtrapati Bhavan to hand over a memorandum signed by more than 90 personalities including actress Vidya Balan, Shekhar Kapoor, Kamal Haasan and Raveena Tandon, to President Pranab Mukherjee.
Criticising people returning their National Award, Kher alleged that the “award-wapsi” campaign was to defame the country by projecting a “wrong” picture of the situation.
India is a very tolerant country. Some people have coined the term ‘growing intolerance’. They are very few. Not every Indian thinks like that. We are secular people. We do not believe in pseudo-secularism, selective outrage or selective patriotism.Anupam Kher, Actor
The actor said the protests, which began with writers returning their Sahitya Akademi awards, shows that rather than addressing their concerns through their respective fields, these people are using media to “hurt the spirit of India”.
Kher said no one has the right to call India intolerant and there is no country in the world, which is more tolerant than India.
People want me to become defensive as they keep telling me, ‘You belong to BJP, your wife is from BJP.’ Their motive is to defame the country. If there is a fight in the house, we have a dialogue but these people are upset without any reason and are not even having any dialogue. I got angry because foreign papers were calling India intolerant.
Filmmaker Priyadarshan called the move of returning awards a political agenda.
After years of tolerance, we have got a man (Narendra Modi) with a view. They don’t want him to work. They want to sabotage what he is doing. There is a huge political agenda behind the act of returning awards.Priyadarshan, Filmmaker
Filmmaker Ashoke Pandit said that the President had assured them that he will take up the issue with the PM.
The BJP-led government has dismissed the protest as a “manufactured rebellion” and “politically” motivated.
Reports said that NDTV had said that the actor had issues an apology to the journalists earlier this evening.
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