Actor Kangana Ranaut has reacted to a replacement advertisement featuring actor Alia Bhatt. within the commercial, for a bridal wear brand, Alia played a bride who doesn’t consider the practice of ‘kanyadaan (giving one’s daughter away)’ at some Indian weddings.
Sharing her thoughts on the ad, Kangana tagged Alia and also the brand in her Instagram post and wrote that she believes the ad is trying to ‘manipulate’ customers and using religion and minority politics to their advantage. “Humble request to all or any brands ….. don’t use religion, minority, majority politics to sell things …. Stop manipulating naive consumer with shrewd divisive concepts and advertising… #mohey @aliaabhatt @moheyfashion @stylebyami.” she captioned her post.
The actual note read, “We often see a Martyr’s father on television once they loose a son on the border they roar don’t be concerned i’ve got another son, uska bhi daan main iss dharti Maa ko dunga… Kanyadaan ho ya putradaan (I will give him away for the protection of Mother Earth. Be it freely giving one’s daughter or son)… The way a society looks at the concept of (lack of word in English or Urdu using) renunciation shows it’s core value system… once they start to seem down upon the very idea of daan (charity/donation)… Then you recognize it’s time for reestablishment of Ram Rajya…. The king who renounced everything he ever loved only to measure the lifetime of a Tapasvi (monk) Please stop mocking Hindus and their rituals…. Dharti (Earth) and woman both are mothers in scriptures they’re worshipped as goddesses of fertility…. Nothing wrong in seeing them as precious and extremely source of existence (shakti).”
In the ad, Alia sits at a marriage mandap along with her husband-to-be, and tells the viewers how her family loves her lots but keeps reminding her that she must leave sooner or later for her husband’s house. “Am I a thing to be donated? Why only kanyadaan,” she asks in an inside monologue. Many fans liked the trendy tackle the tradition but others objected thereto on social media. The ad is directed by Abhishek Varman, who directed Alia within the films 2 States and Kalank.
This is not the primary time that Kangana has spoken against Alia or her work. She has often taken potshots at her, criticising her acting skills and calling her a member of the ‘nepo-gang’. In an interview with Pinkvilla last year, Kangana said she told Alia over a telephone to ‘have a voice of her own’ and accused her of being Karan Johar’s ‘puppet’.
She found it ‘embarrassing’ to be compared to Alia and called her performance in Gully Boy mediocre.
