The battle between Kangana Ranaut and Rhea Chakraborty camps was never just a Bollywood turf war. It was always much more, aided and abetted by a shrill media and other vested interests. In fact as you must have noticed, it’s become a fight between the Right-wing and the liberals. Not that one is surprised because in a ‘Modified’ era most conversations tend to go this way. And so we have channels subscribing to the Right-wing viewpoint targeting Rhea; while it was mostly the Left- of-centre anchors who got access to Rhea’s interviews. And Kangana is certainly playing to the script with her tweets claiming that she is Kshatriya, fighting the patriotic fight. Even before the controversy broke she was well on her way to becoming a Right-wing poster girl given her choice of movie roles, with films such as Manikarnika. Her battle against the Shiv Sena coincidentally ties in beautifully with the BJP’s gameplan to destabilise the current government in Maharashtra. If the Sena is targeting Ranaut, then the BJP government at the Centre is only too keen to give her Y class security. If Jaya Bachchan, a Samajwadi Party MP, and Urmila Matondkar, a former Congress candidate from Mumbai, are taking her on, then various BJP spokespersons are crying themselves hoarse defending Kangana. In the middle of all this, the Sushant Rajput death case seems forgotten. Instead, it is politics that has taken centre stage.
Kangana has since shifted to her Manali home. But that hasn’t stopped her from hijacking the Sushant case narrative. The case is now all about Kangana, those who support her and those who don’t. Is the stage being set for a political debut, one wonders. If so there’s little doubt as to which party she will join. The lines between Bollywood and politics have overlapped well before Kangana’s arrival on the scene. Don’t forget Akshay Kumar’s interview with the PM on the 2019 election eve; the PM’s meeting with actors in October 2019 including Shah Rukh and Aamir Khan; Anupam Kher’s many endorsements of the government’s policies and Aamir’s comment that he was worried about the rising intolerance in India after the Modi government came to power.
It’s not just the Modi government but the Congress too has been known to reach out to Bollywood to build its support base. We have all seen Amitabh Bachchan’s flirtation with various political parties from Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress to Mulayam Singh Yadav’s SP to Narendra Modi’s BJP. So in the end, all that Kangana is doing is playing an old game, but being Kangana doing it with a lot more hype and finesse than her predecessors.
She has the entire nation glued to her theatrics as she mulls a change in her CV. Should she be blamed for stealing the headlines from more pertinent issues? No, her forte is playing to the gallery. The fault is ours, from the media to the public. If the media is accused of overhyping the issue, then so is the public guilty for lapping all the salacious details, real or manufactured. Go to any grocery store, xerox centre or kiraana shop, and the topic of discussion will be Kangana versus Rhea. “Kangana is touching a chord with the public but it’s not just empty consumption. Whether its nationalism or the communal angle, she is able to touch upon all the pressure points that people feel,” said Kaveree Bamzai, author and columnist on the NewsX show, ‘Roundtable’. However she added, “It’s ironic that the narrative of nationalism and Hinduism was first hyped by Karan Johar and Aditya Chopra, the very people whom Kangana is now attacking. ”
Moreover, so long as the conversation is not about Covid mismanagement, unemployment, or the price of onions, this is a narrative that the government is only too happy to keep alive. Hence the select leaks from government agencies to keep the fires burning. This is playing right into their narrative of distraction. When asked whether a movie on the Sushant case was on the cards, Mayank Shekhar, film critic, retorted with a wry grin: “Which Bollywood blockbuster can compete with the 24-hour reality show that’s being played on our channels every night? But it hasn’t stopped there. Now a reality is being sold to the public that is completely different from reality TV. And because of this a 28-year-old girl and her brother are in jail. For what? For possible cannabis consumption? Not for peddling or possession. If this is the case then there is greater evidence to nail at least 25 percent of our male population on Holi.” He is absolutely right.
