Shabana Azmi, Javed Akhtar censured for calling off Pakistan visit

Commenting on the stance adopted by Indian movie icon Shabana Azmi and her husband Javed Akhtar, calling off their trip to Pakistan in reaction to the killing of 44 Indian soldiers in India-held Kashmir, Karachi Arts Council President Ahmed Shah said on that it was obvious that Javed Akhtar was doing so under pressure.

He made these remarks at a press conference at the Arts Council on Saturday.

Shah said that Kaifi Azmi being among the top poets of the subcontinent, we were compiling his poetry as we were endeavouring to conserve the cultural heritage of the sub-continent.

He said he was really disappointed by the last sentence of Shabana’s tweet, which said, “We shall have to call a halt to these cultural exchanges.”

“We didn’t react because we know that there are people who want to promote hatred,” he added.

He said that in the present-day world, people-to-people contacts were supposed to be the most effective way of mending ties between countries and the fact that Javed and Shabana had refused to come over for the conference was not a happy augury for such ties.

“I strongly condemn Javed Akhtar. I do respect his talent but I cannot take anything against my country,” said Shah.

Playwright Haseena Moeen said the fact of the matter was that “India, deep down, has never reconciled itself to the existence of Pakistan”, and it was a manifestation of that which we were seeing today.

She narrated how she was invited to India by the late Raj Kapoor for writing the script for his movie. She said that Raj acknowledged that his movie would be a box office hit if the title carried her name but then there had just been the Babri Mosque incident and so she persuaded him not to put her name in the title because of what she said was communal hatred.

Television personality Talat Hussain said, “Intellectuals and artistes have no country.” He went on to say, “Today’s news is horrible as I could never expect Javed Akhtar to say all that.”

A conference was planned to be held around February 23 at the Arts Council to launch the Kuliyat and other books by Kaifi Azmi. Shabana and Javed Akhtar were supposed to be coming over from India especially for the occasion. However, they abandoned their plans, insinuating that Pakistan was behind the IHK tragedy.