Civil rights groups have criticised the West Bengal Urdu Academy for postponing a four-day literary event after Islamic groups objected to poet-lyricist Javed Akhtar’s participation, reported The Hindu on Tuesday.
The event, “Hindi Filmon Mein Urdu ka Kirdar”, was due to be held in Kolkata from Sunday till Wednesday, with Akhtar slated to attend a programme on Monday.
However, on Saturday, Nuzhat Zainab, the secretary of the Urdu Academy, announced that the event had been postponed “due to unavoidable circumstances”.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is the chairperson of the academy.
Condemning the cancellation of the event, the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights said that the state government was not doing enough to protect secularism, The Hindu reported.
“There is no use appealing to the government to start the event again,” Ranjir Sur, the general secretary of the group, told the newspaper. “This is a political decision right before the elections because the state does not want to anger a certain group.”
Human rights activist Shabnam Hashmi, in a post on X, said that India was “neither a Hindu Rashtra nor an Islamic country, and there are a lot of atheists who have a right to live, speak freely”.
Akhtar has said that he is an atheist.
The cancellation of the event was announced after the Jamiat Ulema Kolkata, the city branch of the Islamic organisation Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind, protested the invitation to Akhtar, The Telegraph reported.
On Thursday, Jamiat Ulema Kolkata’s General Secretary Zillur Rahman Arif said he had written to the Urdu Academy about the “unease” triggered by the invitation to Akhtar, IANS reported.
“Javed Akhtar has spoken a lot of nonsense against Islam, against Muslims, and against Allah,” Arif was quoted as saying. “This person is not a human but a devil in human guise.”
He said that Akhtar may be an atheist, “we do not have a problem with that, but he does not have the right to insult other people’s religions”, reported The Hindu.
In his letter, Arif had warned that protests similar to the ones in 2007 that forced Bangla author Taslima Nasreen to “leave Bengal” may be held if Akhtar attends the event, The Indian Express reported.
In a post on X, Nasreen said: “The Urdu Academy stands helpless before the Islamist fundamentalists. Even the state government itself is perhaps helpless.”
Media reports said that another Islamic organisation, Wahyain Foundation, had objected to the invitation to Akhtar. However, its founder Mufti Shamail Nadwi said that the organisation did not pressure the Urdu Academy to cancel the event, and said it had only extended an invitation for a public, academic debate.
“This invitation was not extended to Mr Javed Akhtar simply for being an atheist,” the Wahyain Foundation said. “It was because of his repeated disrespectful remarks about Allah [SWT] and promoting atheism in a manner that insults the faith of Muslims.”
Bharatiya Janata Party leader Agnimitra Paul asked if the West Bengal government had “surrendered to fundamentalists”.
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