Kangana Ranaut defends SS Rajamouli against ‘right wing’

On Saturday, actor Kangana Ranaut did something unexpected as she took on the ‘right wing’ for not supporting the film industry. In a series of tweets, she defended filmmaker SS Rajamouli and told the ‘right wing’ not to target him.

Recently, SS Rajamouli gave an interview to The New Yorker, in which he spoke in detail about his views on religion and Hindu texts. He mentioned that while was strictly religious at one point in time, he has not become an atheist. However, his love for Mahabharat and Ramayana remains, ‘pushing away from those texts’ religious aspect’. Excerpts from the piece were carried by OpIndia on their website with the headline, ‘Inspired by ‘The Fountainhead’, SS Rajamouli says ‘religion is essentially a kind of exploitation’: Here is what the RRR, Bahubali Director said’.

Kangana was not impressed and gave a warning to the right wing against targeting Rajamouli. “No need to overreact, it’s ok not to carry Bhagwa Jhandi everywhere, our actions speak louder than words. Being a proud hindu calls upon all kind of attacks, hostility,trolling and huge amount of negativity, we make movies for everyone, we artists are vulnerable especially because we get no support from so called right wing as well, we are absolutely on our own, so sit down, don’t even dare, I won’t tolerate anything against Rajamouli sir who is like a flame in the rain, A genius and nationalist a yogi of highest order. We are blessed to have him,” she wrote in a bunch of tweets.

Replying to a Twitter user’s post about truth and dharma, she wrote, “Truth stands on its own it is not slave to your or mine acknowledgment, what I said is for the higher good, I have nothing to gain from this, I have never met or spoken to Rajamouli sir ever, I don’t know all this negativity might not even bother him but I hail truth that’s Dharma.”

About his experience with religion, Rajamouli told New Yorker, “I worked under a cousin of mine [the Telugu writer Gunnam Gangaraju] for a few months. He introduced me to Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. I read those novels and was greatly inspired by them. I didn’t understand a lot of her philosophy, but I understood the basics of it. It was around that time that I slowly started moving away from religion. Even at that time, my love for stories like the Mahabharata or the Ramayana never diminished. I did start pushing away from those texts’ religious aspects, but what stayed with me was the complexity and the greatness of their drama and storytelling.”

He added, “They (his family) feel very sad for me, because I am going away from the path of religion. I don’t say bad things about God, I never do that. I respect people’s feelings because I know a lot of people depend on God a lot. Still, my father used to get angry when I used to say that I don’t believe in religious rituals or that kind of stuff. Now he’s made peace with it and respects my way of life.”