Lyricist Javed Akhtar said in Mumbai on Saturday- I get abuses from fundamentalists from both India and Pakistan. One says- you are a Kafir, you will go to Jahannum (hell). Others say Jihadi go to Pakistan. Now if I have only the choice of Pakistan and Jahannum i.e. hell, then I would prefer to go to hell, not Pakistan. He was speaking at the launch event of the book Narakatala Swarg. He said- just like in any democracy there is a need for an assembly, a parliament, there is a need for parties with different ideologies, there is a need for honest media. Similarly, there should be people who do not belong to any party. They can say whatever they think is true, whatever they find bad, they can say it. All parties should be ours and no party should be ours. I am also one of those people. The result of this is that if you are talking from one side then you will displease only one type of people, but if you are talking from all sides then you displease a lot of people. If you ever meet me, I will show you my Twitter and my Whatsapp, in which I get abuses from both sides. Javed Akhtar said, ‘It is not that I will be very thankless and I will not say that many people praise me, many people encourage me, praise me. But it is also true that the extremists from this side abuse me and the extremists from that side also abuse me. This is the right thing. If one of them stops abusing me, I will be worried about what I am doing wrong.’ Javed Akhtar’s statement on Pakistan after Operation Sindoor Pakistan is called the root of terrorism: After Operation Sindoor, in a program of FICCI in Delhi, Javed Akhtar said- ‘Where do the terrorists come from? They do not come from Germany. We are connected to their borders and this thing cannot be ignored. The incident of Pahalgam should be a turning point. When such incidents happen repeatedly, then tension is natural. Almost every few days or every year, some such tragic incident comes to light.’ Javed Akhtar further said, ‘How is dialogue possible with Pakistan, when it refused to take the bodies of its own soldiers during the Kargil war. He also said that even today 99 percent of the people of Jammu and Kashmir are loyal to India.’ Had called Pakistani Army Chief an insensitive man: Javed Akhtar had strongly objected to the statement made by Pakistan Army Chief General Asim Munir regarding Hindus. In an interview given to Kapil Sibal, he said, ‘I saw his speech on YouTube. He is a very insensitive man. If he doesn’t like Indians, then you can abuse us, no problem, but why are you abusing Hindus? Hindus live in your country too, even if they are less in number. Shouldn’t they be respected?’ Let us tell you that even before this, Javed Akhtar had raised his voice against Pakistan after Operation Sindoor. Along with this, he also justified the decision of banning Pakistani artists in India. He said that the relationship between India and Pakistan is one-sided because Pakistani artists are respected in India but Pakistan never respected Indian actors. Called the ban on Pakistani artists a right decision: Javed Akhtar, in an interview given to PTI on the ban on Pakistani artists after the Pahalgam attack, said that after whatever has happened at present, the question should not be asked whether it is right to ban them or not. Because now the friendly feeling for Pakistan has completely ended. Along with this, he has said that giving Pakistani artists a chance to work in India is completely one-sided because till date not even a single performance of Lata Mangeshkar has been allowed to take place in Pakistan. He has completely refuted this one-sided way of working.
