Akshay Kumar on North-South cinema and national language debate: ‘This is how Britishers came and divided us’

Akshay Kumar has said he does not like when someone names the film industries as south and north film industries, adding that British divided and ruled us but we seem to have learnt no lesson from that either. Akshay is gearing for the release of Prithviraj that also features Manushi Chillar, Sonu Sood and Sanjay Dutt.(Also read: Akshay Kumar says Twitter users have become critics)

Akshay’s new film, Prithviraj, 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, an Indian Express report quoted Akshay as saying, “I don’t 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 don’t seem to have learnt our lesson, 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 don’t understand it). All I want is all the films to work, and that’s 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 about Hindi’s status as the 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.

Talking about Prithviraj, Akshay had earlier told ANI, “Rarely do films take this much effort and embark upon such monumental tasks. Every element of our film which is based on the life of Samrat Prithviraj Chauhan has been dealt with utmost sincerity, authenticity and reverence. We have paid attention to the minutest details while making the film because we wanted this to be the most glorious retelling of Samrat Prithviraj’s life on the big screen.”