Am a proud Indian and won't leave country, but I stand by my comments: Aamir

"I stand by everything that I have said in my interview. To all those people who are calling me anti-national, I would like to say that I am proud to be Indian, and I do not need anyone's permission nor endorsement for that," he says. Aamir also thanked those who stood by him. "To all the people who have stood by me, thank you. We have to protect what this beautiful and unique country of ours really stands for. We have to protect its integrity, diversity, inclusiveness, its many languages, its culture, its history, its tolerance, it's concept of ekantavada, it's love, sensitivity and its emotional strength," he said. The actor ended his statement by quoting Rabindranath Tagore's famous poem, "Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high, Where knowledge is free, Where the world has not been broken up into fragments, by narrow domestic walls, Where words come out from the depth of truth, "Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection, Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way, Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit, Where the mind is led forward by thee, Into ever-widening thought and action, Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake." Speaking at the eighth edition of the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards, the bollywood actor had expressed alarm and despondency over the rise in cases displaying intolerance in the last six to eight months. He had said that a sense of 'insecurity' and 'fear' had seeped deep within society. "When I go home and talk to Kiran (Aamir's wife), for the first time she says, 'Should we move out of India?'" the actor had said.

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