Amol Palekar reportedly said he was hurt after being interrupted while addressing a gathering at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) in Mumbai on Friday evening.
The veteran said that it was not right on the part of the curator Jesal Thacker to interrupt him. He also rejected the question of impropriety, regarding sticking to artist Prabhakar Barwe, whose retrospective was being launched at the event.
"If it's a question of impropriety, you have invited someone, you should have informed them beforehand. There was no such instruction. The curator Jesal Thacker also said, 'I have not given him any such instruction,' so there's no question of propriety. I was talking about the changes made at the NGMA. The event was being held at the NGMA and I was talking about it, I cannot understand how it is impropriety," Palekar said.
The 'Golmaal' actor's grouse is that two other retrospectives of famous artists including one of Sudhir Patwardhan were cancelled after a new policy was created following the appointment of a new director.
Palekar called the advisory committee's decision to scrap the other two retrospectives as 'shocking' for people who are artistically inclined like him.
The video of Palekar being 'heckled' went viral on social media. He is interrupted when he starts to talk about a 'disastrous decision' by the committee.
Before that, he was quoted as saying, "Many of you may not know that this retrospective will be the last show decided by the advisory committee of local artists and not by some bureaucrat or an agent of the government with an agenda of either moral policing or proliferation of certain art commensurate with an ideological incline.
"As of November 13, 2018, the artistes' advisory committees at both regional centres Mumbai and Bangalore -- have been abolished, is what I have learnt," he said.
He added that he was "in the process of verifying the hearsay".
Thacker interuppts, "This is not needed at the moment, sorry... The function is about Prabhakar Barwe, please stick to that."
He then mentions that writer Nayantara Sahgal was invited to speak at the Marathi literary convention recently, but at the last minute the invitation was withdrawn because what she was going to say "was slightly critical of the situation around us."
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