Shabana Azmi and Javed Akhtar have often been vocal about the Hindu-Muslim divide in India and have openly shared their views on the issue. Now, Shabana has said that the real fight is not between Hindus and Muslims but between liberals and extremists. She also shared how she and Javed have faced criticism from extremists within both communities.

Speaking to Zoom, the actor said, “Extremists from intolerant communities cannot tolerate both Javed and me. Both the Hindu extremist and the Muslim extremist can’t tolerate us. Looking at this, we think our secular credentials are established. Sometimes a maulvi is sending a fatwa, other times someone is calling us terrorists.”

She added that the need of the hour is to look beyond religious identities and understand the core issue.

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“But we have to get beyond this Hindu-Muslim narrative and the complete division. I think the only way it can be done is that you don’t fall into the pit where a conscious effort is being put to create a divide. We need to understand that it is not a fight between Hindu and Muslim, it’s a fight between the liberals and the intolerant. The liberal Hindu and Muslim are on the same side and the intolerant Hindu and Muslim are on the same side. So when you put it like that, you take away the poison of using religion as a way of dividing people.”

She explained, “It is against the ethos of India and its Constitution. It is not the truth of India. The truth of India is her composite culture, and that’s what we have celebrated all our lives. We have celebrated it in and out in my family.”

In the same interview, Shabana Azmi also spoke about the box-office failure of Rajkumar Santoshi’s Batwara 1947. She said the film failed because audiences could not accept Gadar star Sunny Deol playing a Muslim character, attributing the reaction to the current environment. She compared it to the era when Amitabh Bachchan was at the peak of his career and comfortably took on a variety of roles, including Muslim characters in films such as Coolie.

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She said: “The thing is that you cannot accept Sunny Deol as a Muslim. In Coolie and in many other films, Amitabh Bachchan very comfortably played Muslim characters. In Deewaar, he put 786 and that was accepted. So how do we understand this? Are they creating an environment where such decisions are being taken on purpose? I am not able to understand.”

Previously, the couple had also spoken about an incident in which a Sindhi landlord allegedly refused to sell them a flat because they were Muslims.