AKSHAY KUMAR ON NORTH-SOUTH CINEMA DEBATE

He is gearing for the release of ‘Prithviraj’ which also features Manushi Chillar

Akshay Kumar has said he does not like when someone names the film industries as south and north film industries, adding that the British divided and ruled us but we seem to have learnt no lesson from that either.

Akshay is gearing for the release of ‘Prithviraj’ which also features Manushi Chillar, Sonu Sood and Sanjay Dutt. The new film will release in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu on June 3. Directed by Chandraprakash Dwivedi, ‘Prithviraj’ is about Indian warrior king Prithviraj Chauhan. Akshay is essaying the titular role. Responding to a question on the language divide, a news report of a leading daily quoted Akshay as saying, “I do not believe in this divide. I hate it when somebody says south industry or north industry, we are all a common industry. I think we should stop asking this question. It is important that we understand that this is how the Britishers came and divided us, they invaded us and ruled us. We do not seem to have learnt our lesson as we are still not understanding this. The day we understand that we are all one industry, I think things will start working much better.”

He also said, “This word ‘pan-India’ films and all, woh meri samajh ki bahar hai, (I do not understand it). All I want is all the films to work and that is about it.”

Many non-Hindi films have performed well across India this year. These include ‘KGF Chapter 2’, ‘RRR’ and ‘Pushpa: The Rise’. Recently, many artists have been debating Hindi’s status as the national language. It all began when Kannada actor Sudeep stated that Hindi no longer had that status. Ajay Devgn reacted angrily to it in a tweet that Hindi is the national language.

Responding to a question on the language divide, Akshay said, ‘I don’t believe in this divide. I hate it when somebody says south industry or north industry’