Khan's movies are quite popular in Germany and other European countries Image: "Muslim artists have always dominated the Indian film industry," Salman added. He, however, said that only a small section of Indians believed in this. "I remember when Khan was becoming popular in the mid 1990s, an Indian journalist wrote an article attributing Khan's success to the scripts in the Urdu language which the journalist implied was a Muslim language," Salman said, suggesting that the Urdu-Hindi divide did exist in India. He said Khan had always been an "outsider" in the Indian film industry and that his unprecedented success made a lot of people jealous. Peerzada Salman, a cultural critic at Pakistan's Dawn newspaper, told DW that Khan was a "phenomenal actor" with a huge following in both India and Pakistan. Unsurprisingly, Pakistan's banned militant organization Lashkar-e-Taiba's (LeT) chief Hafiz Saeed - who New Delhi accuses of masterminding the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks - responded to Khan's article in a statement and told him to migrate to Pakistan if he felt unsafe in his country. Islamic parties in Pakistan often use these incidents to claim that Pakistan is a better place for Muslims than India. Khan refused to apologize to Sena's late chief and ideologue Bal Thackeray for his comments.Įxperts say that incidents like these have become an excuse for many right-wing Pakistani groups to accuse India of mistreating Muslims and its Muslim stars. In 2010, Shiva Sena boycotted Khan's film "My Name is Khan" (revolving around the life of an autistic American Muslim after 9/11) after Khan spoke in favor of Pakistani cricketers playing for the Indian Premier League. The party is known for speaking out against Pakistan and Muslims. Sena has a big support base in India's financial capital Mumbai, which is also home to Bollywood.
#LIVING WITH A SUPERSTAR SHAH RUKH KHAN FULL FREE#
We have an amazing democratic, free and secular way of life."īut Khan has a difficult relationship with Hindu right-wing groups in India, particularly the far-right Shiv Sena. "I would like to tell all those who are offering me unsolicited advice that we in India are extremely safe and happy. "Nowhere does the article state or imply directly or indirectly that I feel unsafe, troubled or disturbed in India," he said. On Tuesday, January 29, Khan read out a statement to journalists and said that his article for the magazine had taken an "unwarranted twist." India accuses Saeed of masterminding the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks Image: picture-alliance/dpa
New Delhi reacted sharply to Malik's comments and asked him to look after the security of Pakistani citizens instead of advising them about Khan. Khan is arguably India's most popular actor overseas.Įarlier this week, Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik responded to Khan's article by suggesting the Indian government beef up security for the actor.
He has acted in around 75 feature films, including India's biggest box-office hits. Khan, who is considered India's biggest film star, is immensely popular among Hindus and Muslims alike. Another Bollywood legend Yousuf Khan, who is popularly known as Dilip Kumar, was born in Peshawar. Khan, like some other famous Muslim Bollywood actors, has family roots in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar. In an article for The New York Times' Outlook Magazine, Khan wrote that sometimes he became "the inadvertent object of political leaders who choose to make me a symbol of all that they think is wrong and unpatriotic about Muslims in India." He further said that he had occasionally been accused of having a soft spot for the neighboring Islamic country Pakistan and had been urged by some Indian leaders to leave India and return to what they referred to as his "original homeland." Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan has insisted that he feels "safe and happy" after his article about being a Muslim in Hindu-majority India sparked a heated debate in the country and abroad.
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