‘My conscience does not permit me to accept this decoration’, said Bachchan

New Delhi: Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan has reacted to the racial attacks on Indian students in Australia, by rejecting an honourary doctorate offered to him by an Australian university.

The Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, had offered him a doctorate for his contribution to the world of entertainment, and Bachchan had earlier accepted the title. The honour was to be conferred on the star in July.

‘I have been witnessing with great dismay and shock, the recent violent attacks on Indian students in Australia, on the electronic media the entire day,’ Bachchan wrote in his blog. ‘I mean no disrespect to the Institution, but under the circumstances, where citizens of my own country are subjected to such acts of inhuman horror, my conscience does not permit me to accept this decoration from a country that perpetrates such indignity to my fellow
countrymen,’ he wrote.