Congress leader Shashi Tharoor hit out at filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri and actor Anupam Kher for "dragging" his late wife Sunanda Pushkar into a Twitter row between the trio over the film The Kashmir Files which has been banned in Singapore. Tharoor had described as a ‘film promoted by India’s ruling party’.
The authorities in Singapore said they have assessed the Hindi-language film The Kashmir Files to be “beyond” Singapore's film classification guidelines. This was announced in a statement issued by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) in a joint statement with Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY) and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), Singapore's news channel CNA reported.
"The film will be refused classification for its provocative and one-sided portrayal of Muslims and the depictions of Hindus being persecuted in the on-going conflict in Kashmir," the authorities told CNA.
"These representations have the potential to cause enmity between different communities, and disrupt social cohesion and religious harmony in our multiracial and multi-religious society." "Under the film classification guidelines, any material that is denigrating to racial or religious communities in Singapore will be refused classification," they added.
Earlier on Tuesday, Tharoor shared the news on his twitter saying, "Film promoted by India's ruling party, #KashmirFiles, banned in Singapore."
Tharoor's take on film ban attracted many reactions. The film's writer and director Agnihotri said that Singapore is most regressive censor in the world and urged him to stop making fun of it.
"...Singapore is most regressive censor in the world," Agnihotri said in a tweet.
"It even banned The Last Temptations of Jesus Christ (ask your madam) Even a romantic film called TheLeelaHotelFiles will be banned. Pl stop making fun of Kashmiri Hindu Genocide," Agnihotri tweeted.
In another tweet, the director asked whether Sunanda Pushkar was a Kashmiri Hindu and that the Congress MP should delete his tweet and apologise to Sunanda's soul.
"Hey @ShashiTharoor, Is this true that Late Sunanda Pushkar was a Kashmiri Hindu? Is the enclosed SS true? If yes, then in Hindu tradition, to respect the dead, you must delete your tweet and apologise to her soul," Agnihotri wrote.
Actor Anupam Kher, who performed as one of the main lead in the movie, also reacted to Tharror's tweets and shared an old screenshot of a tweet by Tharoor's late wife Sunanda Pushkar.
"Sunanda Pushkar wanted to talk about the genocide of 1990. But she was asked to shut up. She had to make the decision of being a wife and shutting up so that Shashi Tharoor's political ambitions weren’t hampered. But she wanted to talk. That's exactly what #The Kashmir Files does," Kher tweeted.
Later, issuing a statement on Twitter, the Congress leader said, "I tweeted a factual news item this morning, with no comment on its contents or on the film 'The Kashmir Files', which I have not seen."
"At no point did I 'mock' or disparage the sufferings of Kashmiri Pandits, of whose plight I am intimately aware, and to which I have repeatedly drawn attention over the years," he added.
"Dragging my late wife Sunanda into this matter was unwarranted and contemptible. No one is more aware of her views than I am. I have accompanied her to the destroyed ruins of her ancestral home in Bomai„ near Sopore„ and joined her in conversations with her Kashmiri neighbours and friends, both Muslim and Hindu. Pile thing I know, unlike those attempting to exploit her when she is not around to speak for herself: She believed in reconciliation, not hate," Tharoor's statement read.
Based on the Kashmiri Pandit genocide of the 1990s, 'The Kashmir Files' had hit the silver screen on March 11 this year.
The film starred Anupam Kher, Pallavi Joshi, Darshan Kumar, Mithun Chakraborty, Krishna Pandit and Chinmay Mandlekar, among others. (Inputs from UNI)
