Bollywood director Mahesh Bhatt in his latest interview revealed that his mother was a Shia-Muslim. He shed light on his Muslim roots in a recent interview.
Bhatt made a revelation when asked about his parent’s inter-faith marriage in an interview. He said that he was unable to separate his Muslim identity from the Hindu one.
Mahesh Bhatt speaks of his Muslim roots
“I felt it was a privilege that I came from such a rich background. I had the best of both worlds. My mother was a Shia Muslim, while my father was a janoi-clad man. He never pretended to be secular,” he said in an earlier interview to Communalism Combat.
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“What’s very interesting, both (father and mother) retained their individual faiths. They were madly in love but neither indulged in the farce of wanting to do things the other way,” added the Indian director.
#MaheshBhatt claims he 'embarrassed' his mother by flaunting his #Muslim roots#TheNews
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“My mother always wore this big tikka, and saree — she liked that kind of thing. But, at the same time, I could see that there was something she was hiding.”
“She felt that her minority status would perhaps interfere with our day-to-day lives. She was a little embarrassed when I flaunted my Muslim roots,” Bhatt said.
The Bollywood actor again talked on the topic in the interview. He said, “It’s like me, how can you, or I, separate my Muslim DNA from my Hindu DNA! You’d have to kill me! Or call me an aberration and put me into quarantine. It’s so sad, when we make films like this, which are nothing but human documents of great affection and concern for the social environment, we have to run to politicians and bureaucrats.”
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“It makes you feel like a leper, having made something that you have experienced. It’s your experience, and I don’t give a tinker’s damn what people say. This is what I have experienced. And the job of a writer and a film-maker is to present the truth as he or she has felt it, without fear,” Bhatt commented further.
GVS News Desk