Mumbai: Event featuring Naseeruddin Shah cancelled, actor claims he was ‘disinvited at last moment’

A poetry and story reading session featuring actor Naseeruddin Shah, co-organised by the Mumbai University’s Urdu Department and scheduled to be held on February 1, was cancelled with the actor alleging that he was “disinvited at the last moment”.

The head of the Urdu Department had initially claimed that Shah had opted out of the event himself and later said that the co-organisers, the Bazm-e-Ahbab Foundation, may have cancelled it, the Mumbai Mirror reported.

A representative of the Bazm-e-Ahbab Foundation, speaking to Scroll, declined to comment on the event featuring Shah.

The poetry and story reading session, titled Preet Nagar, was to be held on February 1 as part of a celebration of the Urdu language at the university campus in Mumbai’s Kalina. The event was to feature the works of poets such as Sahir Ludhianvi and Faiz Ahmed Faiz.

Shah claimed that he was told late at night on January 31 that the event was cancelled, the Mumbai Mirror reported. The actor said he received an email from a person named Ghazal Sheikh, who had been coordinating with him.

In an article for The Indian Express on Thursday, Shah alleged that the university neither provided a reason nor an apology for the cancellation. The actor claimed that a university official said that he openly made statements “against the country”, but maintained that he had never done so.

“This is not the country I grew up in and was taught to love,” Shah wrote in the article. “The ‘thought police’ and ‘doublespeak’ have been deployed in full force, as has surveillance.”

Abdullah Imtiaz, the head of Mumbai University’s Urdu Department, initially told the Mumbai Mirror that Shah cancelled the event, not the university. “There is a rumour and misinformation being spread on social media by a Malegaon-based reporter, who did not get placed here and barely attended the event for 10 minutes,” the Mumbai Mirror quoted him as claiming.

However, after Shah reportedly confronted him over a phone call, Imtiaz later told the Mumbai Mirror that it was the co-organisers who had been coordinating with the actor and that they may have cancelled the session.

A representative of the Bazm-e-Ahbab Foundation, when contacted by Scroll, declined to state the reason for the cancellation of the session featuring Shah. “About 20 other events took place at the festival,” the official said. “I would prefer to focus on the events that took place, rather than the one that did not.”