{"id":312391,"date":"2019-05-17T06:31:10","date_gmt":"2019-05-17T06:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/?p=312391"},"modified":"2019-05-17T06:31:10","modified_gmt":"2019-05-17T06:31:10","slug":"terrorists-abound-in-all-religions-says-kamal-haasan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/terrorists-abound-in-all-religions-says-kamal-haasan\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Terrorists abound in all religions\u2019, says Kamal Haasan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\" wp-image-312392 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/kamal-haasan-300x179.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"513\" height=\"306\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2019\/05\/kamal-haasan-300x179.jpg 300w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2019\/05\/kamal-haasan.jpg 575w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 513px) 100vw, 513px\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Actor-turned-politician and Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM) leader Kamal Haasan on Friday defended his remarks on Mahatma Gandhi\u2019s assassin Nathuram Godse by saying \u2018terrorists abound in all religions\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">He said he was not intimidated by the backlash over his remarks but feel the quality of polity is going down.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Haasan said, \u201cevery religion has its own terrorists and we cannot claim that we are sanctimonious. History shows you that all religions have their extremists,\u201d adding to it he said that his focus on Sunday\u2019s campaign speech was on maintaining harmony.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Earlier this week, slippers were hurled at Kamal Haasan during his campaign in Tamil Nadu\u2019s Madurai.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">On May 12, addressing an election rally for his party candidate in Aravakurichi assembly constituency in Tamil Nadu\u2019s Karur district, Haasan had said that the first terrorist in free India was a Hindu.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">He clarified that his statement was not meant to appeal to the Muslim-majority electorate in the constituency.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">\u201cI am not saying this because this is a Muslim-dominated area, but I am saying this before a statue of Gandhi. Independent India\u2019s first terrorist was a Hindu, his name is Nathuram Godse. There it (terrorism, apparently) starts,\u201d Haasan had said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">A police complaint was also filed against Haasan on Tuesday\u00a0over his comments.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Haasan filed a petition for\u00a0anticipatory bail in the Madras High Court saying his remarks were in reference to Nathuram Godse only and not about the Hindu community as a whole.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Actor-turned-politician and Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM) leader Kamal Haasan on Friday defended his remarks on Mahatma Gandhi\u2019s assassin Nathuram Godse by saying \u2018terrorists abound in all religions\u2019. He said he was not intimidated by the backlash over his remarks but feel the quality of polity is going down. Haasan said, \u201cevery religion has its own [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":312392,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1801],"tags":[641],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312391"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312391"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":312393,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312391\/revisions\/312393"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/312392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}