WASHINGTON: India's leading Muslim actor Aamir Khan says that his family is feeling insecure in India in the backdrop of rising violence and intolerance in the Hindu-majority country, blaming the government for failing to take action against those who are taking the law in their own hand, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
At an event in India this week, hosted by the Indian Express newspaper, Aamir Khan, one of India's leading male actors, told the audience that his wife, Kiran Rao, had suggested moving from the country, the report said.
"That's a disastrous and very big statement for Kiran to make to me," Khan was quoted as saying. "She fears for her child, she fears what this atmosphere around us will be, she feels scared to open the newspapers everyday."
Khan's comment came while replying to questions about a recent decision by India's prominent writers and poets and other scholarly figures who have returned their national awards in protest at the rising intolerance in India, overwhelmingly against Muslims Khan's comments has triggered a new debate and added to an ongoing dialogue in the social media that began in late September in the backdrop of rising incidents of violence, including an incident that involved a murder of a Muslim man by a mob who suspected him of slaughtering a cow.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the senior ministers from his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have been criticized for not condemning the killing.
Modi only commented on the incident two weeks after death, merely describing it as "unfortunate". Aamir Khan said that when elected representatives fail to make strong statements in response to people taking the law into their own hand, then citizens "feel a sense of insecurity."
When asked to comment on the alleged links between Islam and the attacks on Paris earlier this month, Khan said that he didn't regard any terrorist claiming to be acting in the name of Islam as a Muslim.
"He may feel he's doing an Islamic act but as a Muslim I don't feel he's doing an Islamic act,".
Khan said, as quoted by the report. Khan isn't the first of Bollywood's leading lights to suggest that India is becoming increasingly intolerant. Shah Rukh Khan earlier this month said there was "extreme intolerance" in the country, the report added.
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