Mumbai: Lyricist and screenwriter Javed Akhtar may have his reservations against a woman covering her face, but does not condone Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s act of pulling down the hijab of an AYUSH doctor recently.
Kumar’s action came from a “male, chauvinistic and powerful” attitude defining “I am the monarch of all”, Akhtar believes.
At an interview with India Today TV’s consulting editor Rajdeep Sardesai, Akhtar lashed out at the 74-year-old politician and called the act “indecent”. Even if one does not believe in religion or is an atheist, it doesn’t give them the right to disrespect others, he said. The lyricist also said the Bihar chief minister knew he would get away with the act, citing that he wouldn’t have dared to pull up a Hindu woman’s ghoonghat (veil covering a woman’s face and head).
“Maybe I’m an atheist, I don’t believe in religion. It means I should go and pull people out of temples and mosques and churches? Should I do that? Or should anybody do it? You can oppose it, you can give your reason, and you should try your best to see to it that people think your way and understand what you intend, but you cannot do this. And particularly with a woman, if not a Muslim woman; a woman,” Akhtar explained during the interview.
Kumar had sparked a massive controversy last week, after a video of him, pulling down the woman’s hijab went viral.
Akhtar pointed to several regions in India where Hindu women wear ghoonghats as a practice. “Will you go and pull up their ghoongat? How can you do that? How can anybody do that?”
Akhtar, who has long spoken against burqa and hijab, reiterated that such rules on a woman are pathetic, but it still doesn’t give an individual the right to commit an act like that of Nitish Kumar.
The veteran screenwriter also remarked on the controversial statement by Union minister Giriraj Singh, defending Kumar’s act and calling him a “guardian”.
“Actually, I appreciate Giriraj Singh. Not for this particular statement, but for his very being, because, you know, he’s unadulterated; he’s honest,” Akhtar said.
“This is what most people of his kind think. This is it. But he is the only honest or innocent person who says everything with most of the belief. So, we should listen to Giriraj Singh very carefully. Because that is the belief, that is the ideology they are following. He says what many people in his group mean,” he said.
