Actor Anupam Kher today termed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surprise visit to Lahore as “an important diplomatic move” and said he is trying to control the situation between the two countries like “a head of a family” would do.
“The way a head of a family controls the situation, in the same way Prime Minister Narendra Modi is trying to control the situation (between the two nations), it is an important diplomatic move,” Kher told reporters during his visit to the Jagti Township of the displaced Kashmiri Pandit community in Jammu.
He said Modi has become a target of political parties as he has shown them mirror. “You see one can always feel sad and upset about lot of things that the Prime Minister or anybody is doing, but I think we should also feel happy for lot of things that are happening but unfortunately the Prime Minister has become target of anything that happens in this country.”
“If he has taken this move (to visit Pakistan), I think it is like a family head who will take things differently and other people will take things differently,” he said.
“But let me say one thing about the Prime Minister that he is a kind of a leader who has shown mirror to every politician, a mirror which tells them that they are not as hardworking and sincere towards the country as he has been,” he said.
He said that those who say that Prime Minister has gone to Pakistan to celebrate the birthday of Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, they should also mention that he had celebrated Diwali with the soldiers on the border.
In a major surprise, Modi flew to Lahore this afternoon, his first touchdown in Pakistan, to meet Sharif.
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Kher said it was important for the central government to do something for the rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits. “It is equally important that we give these people a life of dignity… The only issue is about their return and rehabilitation to Kashmir,” he said.
Asked to comment on the opposition of the separatists who opposed the move of the government to establish a ‘composite township’ for the community, he said, “I think giving a reaction to separatists means to give them importance. I genuinely believe that if the government decides to do something they have the power to do it.”
He said Muslims and Hindus were living peacefully in all parts of the country and nowhere a Gaza-like situation as described by the separatists have come up.
“Hindus and Muslims have been living together peacefully, mosques and temples have existed together and nowhere a Gaza like situation has come up,” he said.
“Yes they (Kashmiri Pandits) should be given a separate place because we have not been asked to leave that place (Kashmir) but we have been forced…,” he said.
When asked whether the separatists should apologize to the Kashmiri Pandit community for their stand on their rehabilitation, he said that they need to apologise for lot of things.
Taking a dig at the people who have returned their awards on the issue of alleged rise in intolerance in the country, he said that they never raised a voice for the four lakh Kashmiri Pandits who were forced to leave their land.
“…I think the people who are talking about tolerance and intolerance, I think this is the tolerance which we should applaud, the country should applaud the tolerance of the Kashmiri Pandits who are living in these migrant camps,” he said.
“The country’s people who have returned their awards should be intolerant towards the treatment is given to the Kashmiri Pandits here, not for the incidents which politically suit them, I don’t know how many people came here, I don’t know how many of them spoke about them,” he said.
On a question regarding PDP adopting an appeasement policy towards the separatists in Kashmir, he said that the who appeasement policy needs to stop. “The whole political scenario needs to stop appeasement business towards anybody else. Appeasement does not take any country forward, it takes it backward,” he said.
Film director Ashok Pandit, who accompanied Kher, said that the government has to declare Kashmiri Pandits as an internally displaced people.
“It is very important as they are not migrants, they have not come out of their own, they have been thrown out of their place, please declare us as an internally displaced people, we are not migrants,” Pandit said.