Kangana v Hrithik: Is the actress misusing the feminism argument to deflect attention from real issues?

For long Kangana Ranaut kept quiet while all hell broke loose after she referred to Hrithik Roshan as her ‘silly ex’. While she alleged that Hrithik Roshan had hacked her account to delete all his emails, the latter maintains that they were never in a relationship. 

Things reached absurd levels when Adhyayan Suman entered the fray claiming that Kangana used to beat him up, mentally torture him and was jealous of his ‘success’. He claims he was warned by his family pandit and his tarot card reader that she was performing black magic on him. Adhyayan hasn’t really helped his case by retweeting umpteen people since the interview. Meanwhile, Shekhar Suman spoke to ABP and backed his son's claims of Kangana performing black magic!

Kangana finally broke her silence and spoke up in two interviews in Delhi while in the city to collect her National Award.

One was with NDTV’s Barkha Dutt and the other one was with India Today’s Rahul Kanwal. Both these appearances seemed less like interviews and more like advertorials for feminist slogans and girl power as both the interviewers gave the main issue a wide pass. The only thing of importance that we learned from either of them is that Kangana’s spoken English has improved dramatically.

On Barkha’s show she alleged that “if a woman is sexually active, she's called a whore" and if she's "super-successful, she's called a psychopath". The entire interaction seemed better scripted than most Bollywood movies. 

There were jokes about menstrual blood (Adhyayan Suman’s pandit had claimed that Kangana mixed her menstrual blood in his food) while she added that wasn't gross. The particular interaction missed the point that it wasn't period blood but the notion that it might be mixed in food that was gross. The interview ended with a teary-eyed Kangana telling Barkha how much she admired her and saying 'there's always cupcakes you can fall back on’ in harsh times. 

In the interview with Rahul Kanwal, Kangana spoke about how witch-hunts in the mediaeval ages had affected women. She added that even in the generation the first thing we call a woman we don’t like "is daayan, chudail or whore or psychopath". "The mentality is the same. If I can't get you, I might just destroy you," the actor said.

A feminist battle?

Dutt and Kanwal's interview took the angle of feminism in their line of questioning. With Dutt, the actress spoke about gender pay-gap in the industry, being an outsider, being abused and being a feminist. With Kanwal, when asked about being the 'face of feminism in Bollywood', Kangana said:

“Well, it’s little heavy on me, because I’m an artist, and I primarily see myself as an artist. I do not identify as a full time feminist. It seems superficial, I haven’t really done anything to deserve this. The day I do, I will take pride in that. But I don’t want to take credit for something I haven’t done. So I’m not a feminist by design, I’m a feminist by chance. But I would love to understand what’s it like to be a feminist. Do we have to fight for women’s rights, or do we have to make women aware of their rights, or work on a girl child’s education, or instil confidence and a sense of pride in women? I’m so consumed with my actress life that I don’t have time for these things, but I would love to someday.”

But regarding the current controversy, using feminism as a defence seems pretty flimsy, when all the serious allegations being made against Kanagana were given a wide pass by the two interviewers. To paint the Hrithik-Kangana battle as violence against women or society trying to trample women is grave injustice to the countless women who fight patriarchy every single day. Nothing in Hrithik Roshan's past has suggested that he has been a misogynist, label attached to him by trolls on Twitter.

Not to sound like a cold-hearted sadist but this debate isn’t about Kangana’s previous battles. This is not about her talent as an artist or her battle against domestic violence or even her sister’s acid attack or the fact that she refused to do a fairness cream commercial. While one doffs one’s hats to her choices, talent and fighting spirit, none of those facts are relevant to the debate here.

The real questions are the claims that have been made by Hrithik and Adhyayan (and not the black magic ones).

Was Kangana communicating with an imposter instead of Hrithik Roshan? 

Were Hrithik and Kangana actually in a relationship? Did Hrithik hack her email accounts like his Dhoom 2 character and delete all his mails?

An industry source told dna earlier, “There is no evidence on her side to show any relationship — no pics, no mails, no proof. This is not a lover’s spat. The whole relationship seems to be a figment of her imagination. What couple communicates in email and not text message or messenger?” Kangana and Hrithik had never been spotted together, and Hrithik hadn’t said a thing till she referred to him as her "silly ex".

Another police source told dna, “We have gone through everything and it is now clear that Kangana was communicating with an imposter. Hrithik’s forensic report show no association with email.com. It’s evident that she carried forward her communication of 6 months with the imposter. He has received over 3,000 emails from her and we have established that no mails were sent to her from his email. His phone records prove that he has made four calls to her in seven years. His passport copies prove he was not in Paris when she claimed they’d got engaged. We are convinced he is innocent.” Even the emails there were leaked has never been denied by her lawyer, who has instead claimed that they were out of context, unverified and unreliable, while never denying that she didn't write it. 

Did Kangana mentally and physically torture Adhyayan?

The other allegations that have been laid against Kangana by her former boyfriend Adhyayan are of physical and mental torture. These are serious allegations.

That Adhyayan might be doing this for publicity or that his voice isn’t important enough because of his lower stature in the industry is as preposterous as suggesting that the women who were sexually assaulted by RK Pachauri shouldn’t be taken seriously simply because they are not as famous or as powerful him.

If one truly believes in the principles of feminism, which demand that all genders be treated equally (let’s not subscribe to the binary gender system), then it’s wrong to laugh at men who speak up about abuse.

True feminism, as any feminist worth his or her salt will tell you is the belief that every individual has the same rights irrespective of their gender. That means that Adhyayan’s claims about abuse should be taken as seriously as Kangana’s. To use feminism as a smokescreen in this particular debate is a great disservice to the millions of women across the world who suffer simply by the virtue of their birth.