e theme of Mani Ratnam’s film is not a new one. My film Mujhe Jeene Do was also a story about Hindu Muslim marriage (Waheeda Rehman and I acted in it). The film was a big hit. What was important was that the audience tolerated the essence of the film, and it did not create communal tension as Mani’s film appears to be doing.

There is no doubt that we as a people are gradually becoming more intolerant. And this has a lot to do with politicians wanting to capture vote banks. They are no longer interested in spreading the sprit of nationalism. They want to please people because they want to get votes from them. Do people today talk of nationhood or brotherhood? They only talk in terms of talking care of the minority community, the scheduled caste and so on. Nobody is interested in talking care of India as a whole.

Hundreds of couples make a great success of inter-religious marriages. But publicity to such marriages does maximum harm. Marriage is a very personal issue. It is the outcome of love — and love has no barriers. That is why the stories of Laila Manju and Soni Mahiwal are so popular. Love is a feeling and nobody should or can suppress a feeling, no matter how hard he tries. Even if you put an iron curtain between two lovers, their feeling will pierce through the iron curtain.

You love and marry a human being. You are not in love with Islam or Hinduism. This is vital to me. When Nargis and I got married in 1958, we did not face opposition, despite the fact that my mother was uneducated and belonged to an orthodox family from Pakistan.

Nargis’ real name was Fatima and her father belonged to my community. Theirs was also an inter-religious marriage. He was going to study medicine abroad and was to board a ship from Calcutta. There he met Jatan Bai, my wife’s mother who was a great classical singer. He heard her sing, fell in love with her and decided to abandon his trip. His parents threatened to disown him but that did not dissuade him.

But Nargis and I enjoyed something of all religions even before our marriage. That was how we were brought up. She used to go twice a year to Vaishnodevi, to Tirupathi. And to dargahs as well. I did the same from the time I was a child. As far as my marriage is concerned, the truth is I never cared about what people thought or said about us. And it proved to be one of the most respectful marriages of the film industry.

I always felt my wife was just like me and she always felt I was just like her. We had the same smiles, shed the same tears. Our laughter was also same time. I have never found any difference between one human being and another. That is why as a resident of Bombay I was shocked when the riots broke out for the first time in its 300–year–old history.

Playing the communal card gives you political mileage. My son is suffering today because we took a very active part in working in riot-affected areas. He is suffering because I questioned the functioning of the system, and thus the intolerance. They did not realise we were only trying to ensure that such communal conflagration did not occur again. I felt the laws should not become inhuman. But they did not like it.

Do you think anyone in my family would want to destroy the city that gave everything to them after the partition? What could be Sanjay Dutt’s motive? Has anyone given thought to that? Members of all communities have appreciated our work. But it is the system which has put us in a soup. Once you become a player in the game, human life becomes unimportant to you.

Love is sublime and no ideology can change that. The best example of that is the fact that L.K. Advani’s niece has married a Muslim and he has had the grace of attending the wedding. I think the barriers of caste and religion will break only if people like TN Seshan come to the helm of affairs.

I have performed community service on the warfront, I have worked with the Bhagalpur riots victims and, of course, there was the padyatra to the Golden Temple. And I was almost lynched while working with the riot victims in Bombay. For what did I do all this?

My son was handcuffed to the hospital bed when he was on a drip, with six armed policemen sitting by his side. He has been humiliated and paraded as the most wanted criminal in the country. But more than just this, there has been a propaganda against him since his mother was a Muslim. It has been said he reads namaaz in jail. When we were working with the riot victims, my children distributed food packets in the affected localities. But they said we were distributing RDX explosives.

The people of the country still love us, but the system systematically wants to destroy us. When I thought they will give me a national award, specially for the work I did for victims of the Bombay riots, I get this is return.

Sunil Dutt
(As told to Ritu Sarin, The Pioneer, March 26, 1995)