Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap has strong words in response to the Modi government’s decision to revoke Article 370 – which confers special status to Jammu & Kashmir – through a Presidential Order.
“You know what is scary, that one man thinks that he knows exactly what’s the right thing to do for the benefit of 1,200,000,000 people and has the access to the power to execute it,” he tweeted, calling out PM Modi on the controversial decision.
Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday, 5 August, moved a resolution in the Rajya Sabha that all clauses of Article 370 of the Constitution, which gives special status to Jammu and Kashmir, will not be applicable in the state. The government also moved a bill proposing the bifurcation of the state of Jammu and Kashmir into two union territories – Jammu and Kashmir division, and Ladakh. Shah said the UT in Ladakh will have no legislature like Chandigarh while the other UT of Jammu and Kashmir will have a legislature like Delhi and Puducherry.
In subsequent tweets Kashyap added that while he wasn’t entirely aware of all the facts concerning Articles 370 and 35A and the implication of the government’s decision, he was of the opinion that the manner in which the Modi government approached the situation was unjust.
“I do not know much about either Article 370 or Article 35A. I don’t understand much of their implication, history or facts. Sometimes I feel its good it has been revoked, sometimes I question why it has been revoked. I’m neither a Kashmiri Muslim nor a Kashmiri Pandit, but my Kashmiri friends say that Kashmir is like Rashomon,” he tweeted referencing Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 film in which four people recount different versions of a man’s murder and the rape of his wife.
“There are many sides to the Kashmir issue. They’re all right and they’re all wrong. All I know is that the manner in which this all happened was unjust,” he added.
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