Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan says he has ended a row with a right-wing Indian politician who threatened to block release of his new film "The Last Lear".
Raj Thackeray, the head of the right-wing Hindu nationalist party Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), had campaigned against the film's release after Bachchan's wife said she preferred speaking Hindi, the language of north India, to the local language in Mumbai, Marathi.
But the actor said Jaya Bachchan meant no offence and Thackeray told a news conference Thursday he was abandoning his call for a boycott of the film.
"The episode is over now so I don't want to make any further comment on it," Bachchan told reporters late Thursday at a premiere of "The Last Lear" in the Indian capital New Delhi, according to the Press Trust of India.
Bachchan, 66, had asked for "forgiveness" for his wife's remarks, saying they were without "malice."
When asked whether he felt it demeaning for a star of his standing being forced to apologise to a political group, he told reporters in New Delhi, "by apologising no one becomes small".
The incident was now a "closed chapter," said Bachchan, who plays Harry, a retired, silver-haired Shakespearean actor who yearns to play the English playwright's tragic hero King Lear in the English-language film.
"I am now happy my film will be released and people can enjoy it," he said.
Bachchan, who is from the Hindi-speaking north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, is one of various Bollywood stars who have become targets of "anti-immigrant" campaigns of local parties in the western state of Maharashtra such as the MNS that promote "Maharashtran pride."
The parties say outsiders are swiping jobs from locals.
Thackeray, who has been at the forefront of a drive to promote Marathi, had branded Jaya Bachchan's comments a "slur" on the Hindi language.
His party has previously accused the Bachchan family of not doing enough to promote Maharashtra where they have become huge movie stars.
Panes of glass were smashed at the cinema where the premiere of "The Last Lear" was due to have been held Wednesday in Mumbai, India's entertainment hub, prompting the event's cancellation on security grounds.