PANJIM: Rajya Sabha MP Shantaram Naik has said that actor Rishi Kapoor’s recent “tirade” against the naming of public projects after members of the Gandhi-Nehru family amounted to utter disrespect towards the sacrifices made by those leaders for the nation.
Naik was briefing the media at the Congress House, Panjim, on the sidelines of a function to commemorate former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s death anniversary on Saturday.
He said both Rajiv and Indira Gandhi’s bodies were “pierced by the enemies of peace” and, if their sacrifices were recognised by the government and others by naming a few projects after them, there was no reason for Kapoor to raise his voice after all these years.
Rishi Kapoor’s thoughts are similar to those of BJP and RSS leaders, who desire to have a ‘Congress-mukt Bharat’, but he never questioned them about where they were when Congress leaders were struggling against the then RSS and Jan Sangh mentality with anti-national leaders with Sangh Parivar, said Naik.
He also claimed that the BJP government cannot even tolerate the existence of the Congress headquarters on 24 Akbar Road, and therefore, they had proposed to change the name of the road.
“Rishi Kapoor’s objective behind attacking the Nehru-Gandhi family appears to be to go close to the BJP, just as Anupam Kher, Ajay Devgan, and Salman Khan have gone and secured Rajya Sabha nominations for themselves,” Naik said.
He said that the Congress had always respected the Kapoor family, including his great grandfather, well-known theatre and film personality, Prithviraj Kapoor and Raj Kapoor, and that they were conferred prestigious awards in which the Gandhi-Nehru family too played their role.
“It should have been ideal if Rishi Kapoor had recollected a bit of history of the Hindi film industry before throwing stones at Congress leaders,” said Naik.
