Anurag Kashyap on PM cautioning BJP members to avoid ‘unnecessary remarks’ on films, actors

Days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi directed his party workers to avoid making ‘unnecessary remarks’ on films and celebrities to grab headlines, filmmaker Anurag Kashyap has voiced his opinion.

At the trailer launch of his next film, ‘Almost Pyar With DJ Mohabbat’, in Mumbai, the director was asked if PM Modi’s caution to party workers will help decrease anti-Bollywood sentiment.
Kashyap said, ‘It would have made a difference if he (PM Modi) had said this four years ago, I don’t think it will make any difference now. It was about controlling their own people. I think things have gone out of hand now, it’s not that anybody will listen to anyone. When you empower prejudice with silence, when you empower hatred with silence, it has become so powerful by itself that it has become (their) strength, that mob is out of control.’

The filmmaker has often expressed his views on the on-going boycott Bollywood trend.
In an earlier interview with The India Express, Kashyap had said, ‘We are living in very strange times. Two years later, Sushant Singh Rajput still trends everyday. These are strange times, where everything is to be boycotted. It is not just one side, it is happening across. Everyone is being boycotted: political parties, Indian cricket team, everyone. This country now has a boycott culture. if you are not being boycotted, then you don’t matter.’

Zee Studio’s Shariq Patel who is distributing the film under the corporate banner, welcomed PM Modi’s statement, and said, ‘I think der aaye durust aaye. We’re happy that such a statement has been made. It was actually Anna, Suniel Shetty, who spoke about it first in the meeting with Shri Yogi ji when was in Mumbai a few weeks ago. I’m happy it has happened because nobody was able to make sense of why it (Boycott Bollywood) has been happening. But now that the honorable Prime Minister has said it, I hope it at least slows down. We make films to entertain, sometimes they end up getting made well, sometimes they don’t but that’s ok. But it is good, it is laudable and the industry is happy about it.’

‘Almost Pyar With DJ Mohabbat’ is written and directed by Anurag Kashyap. It stars Alaya F and Karan Mehta. The film is scheduled to be released in theatres on February 3.

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