Sir,

An incident that caught my attention shows just how much the poison of hate and stupidity is being spread by so-called ‘defenders of their religion’.

South Actor R Madhavan had recently posted a picture of him in his prayer room, with his son and his father, post festivities of Avani Avittam. Avanai Avittam was celebrated along with Rakhsha bandhan on August 15.

When a twitter user questioned him on the existence of a cross on his altar, accusing him of “drama” and asking if a Hindu god would be on a Christian’s church; Maddy slammed her with a tweet that won over a lot of hearts.

The twitter user tweeted this at R. Madhavan: “Why do they have a across in the background?! Is that a Mandir? You just lost my respect. Do you find Hindu Gods in Christian churches? All this is fake drama you did today!”

Following this, the actor tweeted that he really does not care about respect from the likes of the user.

Actor Madhavan goes on to say that he respects every religion as his own and hopes that his son would also do the same. He has prayed at a Gurudwara, Church and Dargah when a temple wasn’t around. He is only reciprocating the kindness that he has received.

He also says that he has many staff of different faiths and they all pray at the same altar, and this is a convenience to those who have their faith represented at the altar. He asserts that love and respect are the only religion, which is something he has learnt from extensively traveling.

This tweet by him got a lot of positivity from his fans. He got praised for rejecting bigotry and this tweet got many likes and retweets.

I too stand by the actor and so should all of us who are proud to be citizens of a great tolerant democracy which has always had an overwhelming Hindu majority! Let’s stand up against bigotry!

Yours Truly,

Shiva Narayan Dhar, 9 Sudder Street, Calcutta 16