Retaliation will never end intolerance: Muzaffar Ali

Observing that intolerance was an age-old issue, eminent filmmaker and artist Muzaffar Ali on Monday called for spreading message of love instead of retaliation to tackle it.

"Intolerance is not a sporadic thing, rather a big issue. The need is to go deep into the whole ethos of intolerance and look into the symptoms as to why it is growing.

"However, it is not a new thing, but rather an age-old thing which we have inherited from our colonial masters," Ali said here at an event.

"In fact a lot of our democracy is based on intolerance, dividing people on the basis of religion, caste or community. People have preferred putting people of one kind together and becoming their leader rather than becoming the leader of an idea or the nation," he said.

While a host of eminent personalities including filmmakers and authors have returned their awards in protests against "intolerance", Ali asserted retaliation was not the solution.

"We need to come out with creative solutions. If people get into retaliation mode, then there will be no end to it. We need to spread message of love," he added.

Ali, who directed the classic "Umrao Jaan", was in the city to deliver the Maulana Azad Memorial Lecture on "The Moving Image and Human Emancipation".