Embarrassed Kamal Haasan’s party issues clarification on actor's "plebiscite" remark

Actor turned politician Kamal Haasan's party Makkal Needhi Maiam has issued a clarification about the actor's statement at the Rotaract Annual District Conference held in Chennai. Haasan, who was at the conference found himself in soup after he suggested a plebiscite in the Kashmir Valley. His party has issued a statement saying that Haasan was misquoted by a news channel and all that he said was in reference to an article published in a magazine many years ago.

Haasan's comments came when he was asked about the Pulwama attack on our CRPF personnel, at a reputed school in Chennai on Sunday. Speaking about the Kashmir issue, Kamal Haasan addressed the crowd and questioned why the government was "scared to hold a plebiscite" in the valley to understand what the people living there want.

A popular news channel in the country used this statement to label him a "separatist". The actor-politician was back in the news for calling the Pakistan occupied Kashmir an Azad Kashmir. He had said that the region was using Jihadi's pictures on trains to celebrate them as heroes. Haasan had labelled this "foolishness" before stating that India too behaves on the same lines.

"If we want to prove that India is far better than all this, then we should not behave in such a manner. There begins the politics and there begins a new political culture," he added.

Speaking about war, Kamal Haasan questioned what has one learnt from civilisation in the past ten thousand years. He said that just like how we have learnt not to kill one another for food, there should come a time when we decide not to kill one another at all. Haasan also iterated that when politicians across borders behave well, no soldier would have to die and the "line of control will be under control", he concluded.

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