London: The Nehru Centre in London is an institution run by the
Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) and the Indian High Commission in
the UK. The ICCR is a department under the Ministry of External Affairs of the
Government of India. The Nehru Centre is in that sense the most significant arm
of the Indian High Commission’s cultural diplomacy in London and in the United
Kingdom.
The Nehru Centre,
and the ICCR recently offered their platform to the charlatan called Vivek
Agnihotri and his hate-propaganda film ‘The Kashmir Files’. The event was
titled ‘India After The Kashmir Files’. The title itself suggests that the High
Commission and the Nehru Centre believes in, and endorses, the idea that India,
a country of more than a billion people, has been transformed by one third rate
film to the extent that we are being asked to consider India ‘after’ the
release of this film as being somehow a different entity from what it was
‘before’ this film was released. It wouldn’t make sense to speak of ‘India
After the Kashmir Files’ otherwise.
Since this was an
official Indian High Commission hosted event, we would be correct in
understanding that this is now a public stance that the Government of India is
taking in its cultural diplomacy in the world at large.
The ICCR is an
institution that Indian tax payers pay for. As Indian citizens and tax payers
we need to ask what business the ICCR has to offer its platform to hate-mongers
like Agnihotri with our hard earned money. Or are we to conclude that the ICCR
and the people responsible for programming at the Nehru Centre, London, who are
civil servants, have also turned into charlatans?
Let me state very
clearly that I have no objection to any private parties or entities seeing or
showing Agnihotri’s disgusting film in the UK, or anywhere else, for money or
for free. And I have no problem with people peacefully objecting to such
screenings either. Every private person should be free to consume their poison
freely. And every person has the right to protest against it. But when a public
tax payer funded entity like the ICCR promotes hate-propaganda one has to sit
up and take notice.
Also, how is it
that London’s ‘Indophile’ circuits are not demanding an explanation for this
shocking abuse of the Nehru Centre’s platform ?
I am assuming that
the MEA has its press release drafted and ready.
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