Shabana receives International Gandhi Peace Prize
H S RAO, LONDON, OCT 26 (PTI)
Versatile Bollywood actress and social activist Shabana Azmi today depricated as "unjust and untrue" the tendency of equating Islam with terrorism as she received the prestigious International Gandhi Peace Prize from her hero for many years, British actress Vanessa Redgrave.
Recieving the award at the House of Commons in the presence of a distiguished gathering, Azmi said, "terrorism is being equated with Islam - This is both unjust and untrue. Myths are being perpetuated in the name of religion."
Islam, she said, is not a monolith. "Islam resides in more than 50 countries in the world and takes on the culture of the co untry in which it resides. So it is tolerant in some, liberal in some, extremist in others.
"The fight today cannot be between the Christian and the Muslim, the fight cannot be between the Hindu and the Muslim- the fight needs to be between ideologies -the ideologies of the liberal versus the ideologies of the extremist. The liberal Muslim, Christian, Hindu on the same side against the extremist Muslim, Christian, Hindu on the other," Azmi said in her Gandhi Memorial Lecture 'Non-Violence Is Possible'.
Azmi, who was chosen for the award for her work among the disadvantaged women in India, particularly in Mumabi slums, also talked about the communal violence in Gujarat and said victims were still awaiting for justice.
Among those present at the function were Indian High Commissioner Kamalesh Sharma and Lord Bhikhu Parekh, Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics.
Azmi said she felt humbled in being linked even in a remote symbolic way with Mahatma Gandhi, whose name the award carries.
"I am truly overwhelmed and humbled to receive the covetous award. My joy on this occasion has been doubled because Vanessa Redgrave, who has been my hero for many years, both as an actress of immeasurable talent and a woman of tremendous courage who has stuck her neck out of for her political convictions and issues of human rights and social justice, has consented to give me the Award," she said.
She described Gandhi as the apostle of love and noted that the Mahatma, however, succumbed to a lethal bullet and his death ironically symbolised what has been the tragic history of non-violence.
"In India, we earned our freedom through non-violent passive resistance taught to us by the Father of the Nation but it is also a chilling fact that the land of his birth, Gujarat witnessed the worst communal violence in the year 2000 and the victims are still awaiting justice," she said.
"Non-violent practitioners have faced mortal blows but the method itself remains immortal; for nonviolence to succeed it has to rise from its death, not once but again and again and yet again."
"Never before has it been so true than the present time, when on the one hand, the world is becoming a global village, on the other the schisms between people and nations are becoming wider."
Azmi said that today, the world suffered from angst and anxiety, probably worse than ever before in human history.
"We have accumulated enough destructive power to annihilate the whole human species."