Yogeshwar Dutt calls out Naseeruddin Shah’s hypocrisy

It looks like Naseeruddin Shah is in for some deep trouble. The actor, who stirred the hornet’s nest by crying intolerance in his interview with a Youtube based media channel, has been receiving brickbats for his atrocious comments.

Olympic medallist Yogeshwar Dutt, who is well known for his unapologetically nationalist tweets, went hammer and tongs after Naseeruddin Shah, as he posted the following tweet :

Yogeshwar Dutt questioned Naseeruddin’s allegiance to the nation, accusing him of not reacting in the same way when incidents of a bigger magnitude have happened before. He also accused Naseeruddin Shah of being sympathetic towards the terrorists, in a clear attack on Naseeruddin Shah’s mercy petition for terrorist Yakub Memon, one of the key accused of the 1993 ‘Black Friday’bomb blasts.

For those unaware, Naseeruddin Shah attempted to invoke the cringefest of ‘Intolerance’ once again as he expressed fear for his children in the India of today. To quote the address, “I feel worried about my children. They do not have a religion. I had received a religious education as a child. Ratna (his wife who is a Hindu) belongs to a liberal household, so she had received none. I feel anxious for my children because tomorrow if a mob surrounds them and asks “are you a Hindu or a Muslim”, they will have no answer. It worries me because I don’t see the situation improving anytime soon.”

However, Yogeshwar Dutt didn’t just stop at one tweet. He further added, “Those who are scared for their kids today, Naseeruddin Shah, were they not scared during the 1984 riots, or the 1993 Mumbai blasts or during the attacks of 26/11?

…When a terrorist group kidnapped Indian and Bangladesh citizens, and later released Bangladeshis because of their religion, but killed all the 39 Indian citizens – were you not angry then? Were you not afraid while signing the mercy plea of the terrorist Yakub Memon?”

Incidentally, this is neither the first time that Naseeruddin Shah has incited outrage for his absurd comments, nor this is the first time that Yogeshwar Dutt has taken the challenge of someone from elite Bollywood head on. Even when Yogeshwar was an active wrestler, he was unequivocally critical about the appointment of Salman Khan as the goodwill ambassador for the Indian team bound for Rio Olympics in 2016.

When Javed Akhtar mocked the Phogat sisters for boldly challenging the ‘activist’ Gurmehar Kaur, terming such sportspersons half literate, Yogeshwar had demolished his bubble fame with a single tweet,

As such, this was probably the wrong time for an actor like Naseeruddin Shah to seek some attention. Not only has he been criticized for his atrocious comments, he has also lost his credibility in the eyes of many of his fans. Only a week or two before, he had insulted the Indian cricket team captain Virat Kohli, calling him ‘the world’s worst behaved player’. It looks like he had taken no lessons from the roasting he received at the hands of both Virat’s as well as his own fans.