Essence of democracy is freedom to criticise govt: Opposition slams Amol Palekar speech interruption

Palekar, who is also a painter, was invited to speak at the inauguration of an exhibition of the works of artist Prabhakar Barwe.

While appreciating the efforts that went into organising the exhibition, Palekar began to criticise the ministry of culture for reportedly scrapping the advisory committees at the gallery's Mumbai and Bengaluru centres.

"Many of you may not know that this retrospective will be the last show that is decided by the advisory committee of local artists and not by some bureaucrat or an agent of the government with an agenda of either moral policing or proliferation of certain art commensurate with an ideological incline," he said.

A minute ahead into this topic, a gallery member interrupted him and requested him to stick to the topic.

"The curator of the exhibition, Jesal Thacker, asked me to stick to talking about Barwe and not digress from the theme. It isn't that I wasn't speaking about Barwe," Palekar later said.

Palekar went on to refer to an incident when writer Nayantara Sahgal was invited to speak at a literary meet but the organisers later withdrew the invitation "avoid any untoward incident and in view of the controversy that has cropped up against her name".

"Are we creating the same situation here? You are asking me not to speak? I will not speak. I asked them 'are you censoring my speech'," Palekar said.

According to NDTV, Suhas Bahulkar, the organiser, said: "I thought that the focus shouldn't shift to something else. That was my honest intention."

Jesal Thacker said: "The evening was dedicated to the artist and we had invited Mr Palekar to talk about him and that was it."

"This is so shocking, veteran actor Amol Palekar being disrupted, not allowed to speak," tweeted Mumbai Congress.

CPM leader Sitaram Yechury said: The whole essence of our democracy, our constitutional rights, is the freedom to criticise the government and its leaders. No one is above criticism. This behaviour with Amol Palekar is undemocratic and highly condemnable."

"Why does the BJP want to police people’s thoughts and opinions and control what they eat, wear, say and do? They want to make India monochrome and colorless. Telling Mr. Palekar to stop speaking shows the nervousness of the govt. Lets say #NeverAgain to #GolmaalBJP," tweeted SP leader Akhilesh Yadav.