Kangana Ranaut is at it again. The Bollywood actor has been vocal about a range of topics, including the “Bollywood mafia”, Sushant Singh Rajput’s death and mental health issues, and posting her thoughts—many of them quite damaging—on social media.
This time, Kangana trained her guns on the new Tanishq ad for ‘Ekatvam’, meaning oneness, and claimed that it promotes “love jihad” and “sexism”.
“The concept wasn’t as much a problem as the execution was,the fearful Hindu girl apologetically expressing her gratitude to her in-laws for the acceptance of her faith, Isn’t she the woman of the house? Why is she at their mercy? Why so meek and timid in her own house? Shameful,” she tweeted on Monday night.
However, more than 12 hours later, Kangana was on Twitter again to reply to her original tweet, and took a harsher view of things.
“This advert is wrong on many levels, Hindu bahu is living with the family for significant amount of time but acceptance happens only when she is carrying their heir. So what is she just a set of ovaries?This advert does not only promote love-jihad but also sexism,” she wrote.
“As Hindus we need to be absolutely conscious of what these creative terrorists are injecting in to our subconscious, we must scrutinise, debate and evaluate what is the outcome of any perception that is fed to us, this is the only way to save our civilisation,” she said in another tweet.
The ad was reportedly withdrawn after Tanishq faced a barrage of trolling from right-wing social media accounts for the concept behind it and soon after it was aired, #BoycottTanishq was trending.
The 45-second ad showed a Muslim family celebrating a baby shower for their Hindu daughter-in-law who is expecting. While the young mother-to-be is seen wowed by the effort put into the baby shower and tells her mother-in-law that such occasions are not even observed in their faith, the woman tells her daughter-in-law that such customs can be followed to keep the daughters of the family happy.
Several other celebrities and popular personalities on social media appreciated the ad which called for unity and oneness, the concept that Tanishq was going for to promote its ‘Oneness’ collection. However, right-wing bhakts and trolls have targeted the ad, accusing it of glorifying “love jihad”, making it into a ‘Hindus vs Muslims’ debate.