Kolkata, West Bengal: Indian filmmaker, Mahesh Bhatt, on Thursday remembered Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore at the 28th International Kolkata Film Festival in Kolkata.
The Sadak director during his speech, used the lines said by Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore when he won the Nobel Prize for Gitanjali and said: "I do not think, it is the spirit of India to reject anything, reject any race, any culture. The spirit of India has always proclaimed the idea of unity.
"The ideal of unity never rejects anything, any race or any culture, it comprehends all and it has to be the highest aim of our spiritual exertion, to be able to penetrate all things with one soul, to comprehend all things as they are and not to keep out anything in the whole universe, to comprehend all things with sympathy and love," he added.
"This is the spirit of India. Now when, in the present time of political unrest, the children of the same grade, India cry for rejection of the West, I feel hurt. I feel it is a lesson that they have received from the West.
"Such is not our mission. India is there to unite all races. These are the words of India's greatest son Shri Rabindranath Tagore and they wreck echo in my heart as they should echo in the heart of every Indian, 101 years later."
Apart from Mahesh Bhatt, actors Shah Rukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya Bachchan, and Rani Mukerji also attended the inaugural function in Kolkata.
According to the official website, the 28th edition of the Kolkata International Film Festival organized by the Information and Cultural Affairs Department, Government of West Bengal is scheduled to be held between 15 - 22 December, 2022 in Kolkata.
Meanwhile, on the work front, Mahesh Bhatt made his directorial comeback with the drama film Sadak 2 which starred Alia Bhatt, Aditya Roy Kapur and Sanjay Dutt in the lead roles which premiered on the OTT platform Disney+ Hotstar.
