Actor Atul Kulkarni has bucked the “boycott Kashmir” trend, championed by the Right-wing ecosystem, with his passionate “Chalo Kashmir” appeal after landing in Pahalgam where terrorists killed at least 26 people last week.
Kulkarni’s pictures from Pahalgam showed him sipping tea at a roadside dhaba, sitting on a bench with a bold inscription of a Persian couplet in the backdrop, which translated to “If there is paradise on earth, it is here, it is here”, and posing with a Kashmiri bat seller.
The actor is camping in Pahalgam to send a message to fellow Indians that Kashmir is theirs and they should not abandon it.
Kulkarni’s visit comes at a time when thousands of tourists have left Kashmir in the wake of the April 22 terror attack.
On Sunday, the actor posted a picture of an empty Mumbai-Srinagar flight on X. “Crew said they ran FULL. We need to fill them again,” he wrote with hashtags such as “Chalo Kashmir”, “Defeat Terror”, “Kashmiriyat” and “Feet in Kashmir”.
“This is the land of Hindustan where courage is greater than fear/ This is the land of Hindustan where hate is defeated by love/ Let’s go to Kashmir/ Let’s go to the banks of Sindhu and Jhelum,” he wrote in Hindi, while urging tourists to visit the Valley.
In multiple interviews, Kulkarni said the country was shaken by the attack, but shunning Kashmir as a tourist destination was not
the answer.
“What did the terrorists want to tell us? They are telling us you don’t come to Kashmir. We can tell them that we will not listen. We will come in big numbers,” he told
a reporter.
“I want to tell all people that if you have cancelled the bookings, please re-book,”
he added.
He said there was a need to revive tourism in Kashmir soon, not only to boost the local economy but also to help people from across the country to understand each other.
The Kashmir Hotel Association on Sunday said 80 per cent of tourist bookings had been cancelled following the attack.
Kashmir is seething against the attack as well as the anti-Kashmiri backlash generated by it across the country.
Angry crowds have lashed out at Delhi-based TV channels in the city centre on multiple occasions over the last few days, accusing them of spewing venom against Kashmiris.
Kulkarni had gained widespread acclaim for playing the dual role of Laxman Pandey, a fictional Right-wing activist, and the real-life freedom fighter Ram Prasad Bismil in the Aamir Khan starrer Rang De Basanti.