‘Karan Johar was the first to come out and support Aligarh’: Hansal Mehta

Filmmaker Hansal Mehta's pioneering 2016 film Aligarh was met with a lot of acclaim and some controversy. In a recent interview, Hansal has said that filmmaker Karan Johar was among the first to voice their support for the film.

The film showed Manoj Bajpayee as a gay professor who is suspended on grounds of ‘morality’. It is based on the real life story of Aligarh Muslim University professor, Shrinivas Ramchandra Siras. Some alumni of AMU sought ban or change in the name of the movie, but the Delhi Hight Court had dismissed their plea.

Hansal, who often voices his opinion freely on matters of politics and society, was asked in an India Today interview as to what compels him to speak up. He said, “Because I am a citizen of this country before I am a member of the film industry. I have love and respect for my colleagues. Even with Karan [Johar], he was the first to come out and support Aligarh. Our paths had never crossed until then. By being vocal all I am trying to say is that ‘We need to speak up for ourselves because nobody else will’. We have equal rights to privacy, to be heard and not to be perceived as somebody from another planet which is a creation of the same people who are now trying to bring it [the industry] down. I get frustrated seeing the silence.”

Upon the film’s release, Karan had called it a must watch. “#Aligarh is exceptionally poignant,moving and heartbreaking in equal measure....a relevant and important film of our times,” he had written in a tweet.

Hansal has lately been taking on Twitter trolls who harass others in name of a fight for justice for late actor Sushant Singh Rajput. Despite being bombarded with filthy abuses daily, Hansal has not relented and keeps replying to them.

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