New Delhi: Naseeruddin Shah and Ratna Pathak are one of the most venerated couples of Bollywood. Naseeruddin Shah penned an open letter in National Herald where he spoke about an ex-cabinet minister's spouse raising questions on his interfaith marriage and his mother's approval of his wife 'not changing her religion'.
Naseeruddin expressed shock over the fact that his interfaith marriage which happened in 1982 has become an issue now. He wrote in the open letter, "I had no compunctions or hesitation about marrying a Hindu, and vice-versa. I didn’t dream that some put-out-to-pasture spouse of an ex-cabinet minister would, 38 years after my marriage, threaten me with ‘no one said anything when you married outside your religion’, stopping short of accusing me of love jihad but clearly implying that my time was now up."
Adding that his mother played an important role during his marriage and wrote, "'As it happened, the subject of my wife Ratna converting to Islam was brought up just once by my mother and that as enquiry, to which on receiving a reply in the negative, she concurred with a “Haan, mazhab kaise badla jaa sakta hai (Yes, how can faith be changed)”.
"Whether this statement of a woman weaned exclusively on a diet of the Quran makes more sense than the hate-filled rhetoric of ‘Hindus and Muslims cannot live together’, I will leave to the judgment of the reader. All I can say is that my union (accepted unquestioningly by both families) with a Hindu woman for 40 years so far is proof— if proof were needed—that it is not only possible but desirable for Hindus and Muslims to live together."
Naseeruddin Shah penned in his letter.
Meanwhile, on the work front, Naseeruddin Shah in the role of emperor Akbar was seen in the web series ‘Taj: Divided By Blood’ on Disney+Hotstar.