Shah Rukh Khan waves during the unveiling of TOIFA Bollywood awards in Mumbai, India. —Photo by AP
Shah Rukh Khan waves during the unveiling of TOIFA Bollywood awards in Mumbai, India. —Photo by AP

MUMBAI: Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan has insisted he is “safe and happy” in India in a bid to end a controversy sparked by an article he wrote on being Muslim in the Hindu-majority country.

The piece led Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik to say that India should provide Khan with security. India's Home Secretary R.K. Singh responded curtly that Pakistan should look after its own citizens.

Reading out a lengthy statement to journalists late on Tuesday, Khan said his piece in the magazine Outlook Turning Points had taken an “unwarranted twist”.

“Nowhere does the article state or imply directly or indirectly that I feel unsafe, troubled or disturbed in India,” he said.

In the magazine piece, he wrote that he sometimes became “the inadvertent object of political leaders who choose to make me a symbol of all that they think is wrong and unpatriotic about Muslims in India”.

The Indian actor said he had occasionally been accused of bearing allegiance to Muslim-majority Pakistan, and had been urged by leaders at political rallies to leave India and return to what they called his “original homeland”.

Khan has been targeted by the Shiv Sena, a far-right Hindu nationalist party headquartered in Mumbai that has often pushed an anti-Pakistan and anti-Muslim agenda.

The Shiv Sena threatened cinemas showing his 2010 film ‘My Name is Khan’ after he spoke in favour of Pakistani cricketers playing in the Indian Premier League.

On Tuesday, Khan said it was “irksome” to have to clarify the “non-existent” issue sparked by his recent article.

“I would like to tell all those who are offering me unsolicited advice that we in India are extremely safe and happy. We have an amazing democratic, free and secular way of life.”

Khan emerged last week at the top of Forbes India's first Celebrity 100 list, based on income and popularity, after he raked in an estimated 37.7 million dollars last year.

Opinion

Editorial

Digital growth
Updated 25 Apr, 2024

Digital growth

Democratising digital development will catalyse a rapid, if not immediate, improvement in human development indicators for the underserved segments of the Pakistani citizenry.
Nikah rights
25 Apr, 2024

Nikah rights

THE Supreme Court recently delivered a judgement championing the rights of women within a marriage. The ruling...
Campus crackdowns
25 Apr, 2024

Campus crackdowns

WHILE most Western governments have either been gladly facilitating Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, or meekly...
Ties with Tehran
Updated 24 Apr, 2024

Ties with Tehran

Tomorrow, if ties between Washington and Beijing nosedive, and the US asks Pakistan to reconsider CPEC, will we comply?
Working together
24 Apr, 2024

Working together

PAKISTAN’S democracy seems adrift, and no one understands this better than our politicians. The system has gone...
Farmers’ anxiety
24 Apr, 2024

Farmers’ anxiety

WHEAT prices in Punjab have plummeted far below the minimum support price owing to a bumper harvest, reckless...