The girl from Bhambla in Mandi district of Himachal Pradesh was always ambitious, and a little outspoken. She wanted to be in medical profession, but failed to clear the pre-medical test. The teenager was restless and reached Delhi to become a model, and then Mumbai to become an actor. And thus Kangana Ranaut was reborn, being increasingly seen as a rebellious rabble-rouser by her critics.
Controversies have followed her on and off-screen as an element of devilment replenished her persona, year after year. It was director Anurag Basu who spotted Kangana and signed her for her first movie ‘Gangster’ when she was 18 years old. She gave many hits such as ‘Tanu Weds Manu,’ ‘Manikarnika – The Queen of Jhansi’ and ‘Tejas’.
Finally, Kangana’s full-throated ‘Jai Shri Ram’ at the consecration ceremony in Ayodhya gave away that part of her life that’s unfolding in Mandi. The BJP candidate has arrived back home, fully loaded and unforgiving.
Her actions have followed the roles that she has played of two most powerful women politicians in the country: ‘Thalaivii’ in 2021 showed her as J Jayalalithaa, and the yet-to-release ‘Emergency’ where she is portraying the role of former prime minister Indira Gandhi.
Like all other times, controversy again followed her: the latest was when Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate allegedly posted an offensive comment against her on social media which she later deleted. Kangana responded saying she was considering legal action. She said the remarks made against her were insulting for Mandi, its public and the land’s hugely revered saints and seers.
“If a young man gets a party ticket, his ideology is attacked, and if a young woman gets a nomination, her sexuality is attacked. Any derogatory word about a woman, be it a teacher, actress, journalist, politician or a sex worker, is condemnable. The dignity of a woman should always be maintained, especially when Mandi is also known as Mini Kashi,” she asserted.
Kangana admires Swami Vivekananda who has instilled nationalism in her and Sadhguru who has “inspired her to become a karmayogi”. She supported CAA before joining the BJP.
She calls herself a “common party karyakarta” and is an ardent Narendra Modi fan. “Don’t think Kangana is a heroine, that she is a star. Consider Kangana your sister, your daughter. Everyone is my family,” she said as she hailed PM Modi with ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and asserted that the BJP’s main agenda is development. Her name had figured among the probable party candidates in the 2021 bypolls for Mandi parliamentary seat after BJP MP Ram Swaroop Sharma died.
Kangana, 37, is known for taking on bigwigs of Bollywood. Lyricist Javed Akhtar filed a defamation case against her in the court of the metropolitan magistrate in Mumbai in November 2020. He said that Kangana dragged his name while referring to an existing ‘coterie’ in Bollywood during a TV interview after the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput. Actor Aditya Pancholi and his wife Zarina Wahab filed separate criminal defamation complaints against Kangana in an Andheri court in October 2017.
Her strong views on farmers’ agitation landed her in the soup as Mahinder Kaur of Bathinda filed a defamation case against her in January 2021. Kaur alleged in an ‘X’ post that Kangana compared her, when she was participating in the farmers’ protests on the Delhi-Haryana borders, with the “Dadi” at Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh.
A case was registered against Kangana on November 23, 2021 at the Khar police station in Mumbai for allegedly portraying the ‘Kisan Morcha’ as a “Khalistani movement” and calling the Sikh community “Khalistani terrorists” on the complaint of Amarjeet Singh Sandhu, a Mumbai-based businessman.
The Himachal Pradesh BJP has posted the details of these cases on its ‘X’ handle, @BJP4Himachal, in compliance with the guidelines of the Election Commission of India.