Shahrukh interviewed about 26/11
Since the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai a lot has been said in Bollywood about it. People want and need to talk about it and I guess that understandably the media wants to cover celebrities’ reactions to it.
Some of the reactions have been extremely emotional (people cancelling their film shoots and/or any trips outside the city), some have concentrated on the fear of what this might mean to Muslims in India and India-Pakistan relations etc.
There have been some unfortunate comments and reactions also. Simi Gerwal, a popular TV host, has made some rather nasty remarks and clearly cannot differentiate between Pakistani and Islamic flags.
Ram Gopal Varma (whose blog I continue to read) made an ugly faux pas when he tagged along with a politician to see the sights of the attacks. He later tried to explain that his presence there was a bit of an accident, but for many people an unpleasant taste remained.
Oddly enough among all of this none of the media succeeded in getting so much as a word out of Shahrukh Khan. It took him about 10 days to face the media. He finally did last weekend though - choosing his interviewers and words carefully and giving probably the calmest and most cautious response I’ve heard so far.
So here’s the interview he did for NDTV, it’s very level-headed, but in some ways rather emotional also. It’s a lot about the feelings of people in Mumbai and he makes a sort of appeal to use those feelings positively.
And below is an interview he did for CNN. In this one he’s a bit firmer.
He talks a lot about Islam here, probably in more detail than I’ve ever heard him speak about it. He actually quotes a bit of the Qu’ran and starts explaining the rules of jihad.
There’s one thing he says which was rather risky - that there is Allah’s Islam and the mullahs’ Islam and he appealed to the mullahs to teach the right reading of Islam.
