Rights groups criticise Bengal Urdu Academy for postponing event to be attended by Javed Akhtar

Civil rights groups have criticised the West Bengal Urdu Academy for postponing a four-day literary event after Islamic groups objected to poet-lyricist Javed Akhtar’s participation, reported The Hindu on Tuesday.

The event, “Hindi Filmon Mein Urdu ka Kirdar”, was due to be held in Kolkata from Sunday till Wednesday, with Akhtar slated to attend a programme on Monday.

However, on Saturday, Nuzhat Zainab, the secretary of the Urdu Academy, announced that the event had been postponed “due to unavoidable circumstances”.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is the chairperson of the academy.

Condemning the cancellation of the event, the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights said that the state government was not doing enough to protect secularism, The Hindu reported.

“There is no use appealing to the government to start the event again,” Ranjir Sur, the general secretary of the group, told the newspaper. “This is a political decision right before the elections because the state does not want to anger a certain group.”

Human rights activist Shabnam Hashmi, in a post on X, said that India was “neither a Hindu Rashtra nor an Islamic country, and there are a lot of atheists who have a right to live, speak freely”.

Akhtar has said that he is an atheist.

The cancellation of the event was announced after the Jamiat Ulema Kolkata, the city branch of the Islamic organisation Jamiat...

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