Actor Kangana Ranaut kicked off a firestorm on Thursday, the 11th of November. This happened after she declared that India attained “real freedom” in 2014 when the Narendra Modi-led government came to power. She also described the country’s Independence in 1947 as “bheek”, or alms.
People all over the country know the “Manikarnika” actor for her provocative and often inflammatory statements. With this recent statement, she is once again the center of the debate. Along with this, she is at war with politicians across the spectrum. These outraged politicians include BJP MP, Varun Gandhi. He was among the host of social media users and others who reacted with fury at her comments. She made these anti-national comments at an event on Wednesday evening, that is, the 10th of November.
BJP’s Pilibhit MP Varun Gandhi shared a video of Ms. Kangana Ranaut’s remarks on his Twitter handle. The media distributed this 24-second clip widely. Here Ranaut says India’s Independence in 1947 was not freedom but “bheek” (alms). “And we got real freedom in 2014,” she said at the event organized by a news channel. Some of the people in the audience clapped at the end of her speech.
“It is an anti-national act and someone must call it out as such. To not do so would be a betrayal of all those who shed blood so that today we may stand tall and free as a nation,” Mr. Gandhi said in his tweet in Hindi.
“People can never forget the infinite sacrifices of our freedom movement and the millions of lives lost and families destroyed. Belittling it all in this shameless manner cannot be condoned simply as a careless or callous statement,” he added.
“Sometimes an insult to the sacrifice and penance of Mahatma Gandhi, sometimes showing respect to his killer and now this disdain for the sacrifice of millions of freedom fighters from Shaheed Mangal Pandey to Rani Laxmibai, Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, and others… “Should I call this kind of thinking madness or treason?” the Lok Sabha MP asked.
Twitter suspended the ever-combative Ms. Ranaut’s account. So, she hit back on Instagram.
“Even though I clearly mentioned 1857 revolution first freedom fight which was curbed. This led to more atrocities and cruelties from the British and almost a century later they gave freedom to us in (Mr.) Gandhi’s begging bowl. Ja aur roo ab (go cry more),” she said in her Insta stories.
Ms. Ranaut, who received a Padma Shri earlier this week, also targeted the Congress in her remarks at the show. “If we get freedom as a ‘bheek‘, is it even freedom? What the British left behind in the name of Congress. They were the extension of the British,” she said.
Another Congress member Salman Nizami said that Kangana’s statement was an insult to the freedom fighters of the country who sacrificed their lives for India’s Independence. “Shame on you Kangana!” he said.
