Double Edged Feminism
In the cultural tradition of upper castes, particularly the Dwijas, the parampara represented by Amrapali of Magadha times would be condemned as un-Hindu. Their ideal women in mythology are women like Sita and Sati Savitri. A famous artist like Amrapali, who was respected in the Buddhist tradition was never respected by the Brahmanic tradition. What is significant now is that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have owned up Kangana Ranaut, a Kshatriya Bollywood actress, with all her complex personality. She has become a contemporary Amrapali in the RSS/BJP armour. The RSS/BJP are okay with her now because she serves a political purpose. On one hand, she occupies an Amrapali-like space of a feminist artist in Bollywood. While on the other hand, in her political capacity as a BJP member, she is anti-Dalit/Shudra/Adivasi women as they are farmers.
Any art cannot survive without food. Historically, food is not produced by Brahmin, Bania, Kshatriya, Kayastha, or Khatri women. It is produced by Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi women. Kangana fully supports the BJP/RSS agenda to hand over the agricultural lands of small and medium farming women to Adani and Ambani. She has been repeatedly calling farmers—women and men—who fought against the three farm laws, terrorists. When women farmers were on the roads to fight for their rights, she accused them of selling their souls for money. It appears that for RSS/BJP, she is a modern Kshatriya queen fighting against the poor women of India. For them she represents their parampara and also Sanathana Dharma.
Kangana’s fight against male authority in the cinema industry is certainly progressive, but her fight against poor women in the country is not. Making cinema against Indira Gandhi, the first woman Prime Minister of India, who fought all feudal men in the 60s and 70s is part of Kangana’s neo-Hindutva nationalist ideology. It seems that as a result of her Kshatriya upbringing, she is okay with wealth getting accumulated in the crony capitalist monopoly houses as they all come from Dwija background.
Kangana's Early Fight
Kangana walked out of the parampara of Sati Savitri and Sita in her personal life. As a liberated Kshatriya woman, she does not hide her encounters with men. She walked out of the Rajput regimentation and cultural weight of Sati-sahagamana and the parampara of permanent widowhood. She not only became a liberator of herself from that male chauvinist culture but also wanted to fight to liberate other women. How did the RSS/BJP forces reconcile negotiating with her freedom-loving self while upholding the RSS ideology of preserving the ancient Vedic and Puranic control over women? Kangana has thrown away the Hindu Nari dress codes and challenged the oppressive authority of men over women in relationships. She has thrown away the RSS-type anti-dating, anti-valentine friendships.
She entered into Western fashion shows. And then moved into the gold mine of Bollywood. But that world was totally strange to her. Not only that this world was inimical and exploitative at every level and, as a collective, refused to engage with her, but her lack of sophisticated Bollywood-style English became her prison house. She became a victim of that brutal money-and-mafia exploitation. She fought that culture. Finally, she found her own production company, which is something admirable. She learnt English to compete with them. Here too she did not take the anti-English route of treating English as a foreign language, like the RSS/BJP do.
She fought exploitation, deceptivity, and captivation of young girls who came there with an ambition to make a glowing glamorous life as a cinema heroine. She ran from pillar to post, lived in cramped hostel rooms, and became a victim of lures of those influential manipulative men of the industry. She fought against such brutes to become what she was by the time she won the election in 2024 as a BJP candidate. Now she is a force to reckon with in that field—a negative force at that.
She withstood all that oppression and remained in Bollywood because back home her traditional Kshatriya family and caste culture would not allow a better window of freedom for women. She was practical and had an assessment of her own freedom and future.
When her own Government asked the censor board to stop the film Emergency from getting released on 6 September 2024, she said that she had become a favourite target for everyone and that it was the price one has to pay for awakening a sleeping nation. The nation that got "freedom in 2014 under Modi’s leadership" has become a sleeping nation within 10 years, and she has become an awakening goddess like Durga.
In the recent past, the relationship between Bharatiya Janata Party (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh involved) and Kangana Ranaut has taken a very interesting twist. BJP had to distance itself from Kangana’s statement on the farmers’ protest. Secondly, her film ‘Emergency’—made with a tacit agreement with the BJP and RSS ideologues to put the Indian National Congress in the dock—had to be stopped from getting released as scheduled on 6 September, 2024. This happened just before the state elections in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand, and Jammu and Kashmir.
The life story of Kangana has a double-edged implication for the RSS/BJP ‘s notion of cultural nationalism itself. As of now, the nation does not know whether the RSS/BJP is leading her or she is leading them with her neo-Hindutva feminism.
An RSS supporter and promoter of the idea of Hindu Rashtra, she is a new nationalist and a new cultural phenomenon. She is an avowed opponent of Muslims, Sikhs, farmers, Congress, and male monopoly in Bollywood. She is a new phenomenon in Bollywood history.
She is a feminist in a mostly male-chauvinist political and social network. More than all these pro- and anti-ideological dramatic displays, she is a strong supporter of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, particularly since she made a shocking statement that “India got Independence only in 2014, not in 1947”. In turn, she gained the silent support of Modi. The RSS, a hundred years old organization, is obviously supporting Kangana, and hence she is a member of the BJP and a member of parliament.
Freedom in 2014
The RSS/BJP upper-caste cadres celebrated her courage, nationalist spirit, and wisdom for making such a bold statement that India got freedom in 2014. Nobody from those ranks opposed such a statement. By the very statement, she proved her disloyalty to the present Indian constitution adopted in 1950. Perhaps, that could be one of the main reasons she has become a darling of the RSS/BJP.
This statement of hers seems to have deeply impacted Modi. Since 2014, the entire Modi government has defended her in all her battles—both within and outside Bollywood—supporting her statements, whether right or wrong, and standing by her in every dispute, big or small. This emboldened her with a new sense of freedom to establish a Hindu Rashtra. It could be first seen when she started attacking Shiv Sena in Maharashtra as it fell out of the RSS/BJP line. But her Hindu Rashtra will not be dominated by the same male monopoly. It will be a Neo-Hindu Rashtra with feminist upper-caste women in the lead. She wants to be the queen of that Hindu Rashtra. She has never shown concern for Dalit/Adivasi/OBC women in her fight. Any talk of caste is equivalent to dividing the nation. Her slogan is ‘bantenge to tutenga’ (if you divide, we will break). This idea seems to be popular among RSS circles that the present Federal Union of India will lead to disintegration. Perhaps it should become a unitary monarchic theocratic state by dismantling the present constitution.
She does not have any sympathy for the poor, illiterate, toiling Indian masses, who hardly have anything to eat. Accumulation of wealth by upper castes is nationalism for her. Her feminism aids and abets the rich in a neo-capitalist way. She seems to be happy with the growing Dwija crony capitalism.
A Disrupter
She has become an entertainer, engager, and disrupter of the Indian civil society and also the RSS/BJP structures in her own way. As of now the nation does not know whether she is reforming the RSS or the RSS is reforming her by making her an MP so that she would use her full-blown upper-caste feminism. She has taken the battle into the Congress and Sikh society by making an anti-Indira Gandhi and anti-Sikh film. She has also given a call to bring back the Three Anti-Agrarian Farm Laws.
Lifestyle
In her lifestyle and man-woman relationships, she does not live in the RSS ideological framework, as that framework has many things in common with her Kshatriya family’s male chauvinism. She was in conflict with her own family’s patriarchal heritage right from her school days. She was a child who rebelled against her family. She walked out of her family right after school education and joined a fashion company in Delhi. She lived on her own with all the struggles that a lonely teenage girl could encounter in the Indian male chauvinist society. From there she reached Mumbai in search of cinematic life. This adventure of a Kshatriya girl who normally lives a very protected life is itself a cinematic story. Now she has reached the stage of being an adventurous actor with a lot of support from the BJP/RSS and emerged as a political entity, if not as a leader.
Interestingly, she is also disrupting the most conservative Kshatriya caste community of India that Yogi Adityanath, the patriarchal Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh hails from. According to her own admission, he is her strong supporter. This is a paradox.
Hence, she makes an interesting female personality with a determination to fight many forces at the same time. As an RSS bhakt, she constantly shouts Jai Sri Ram in public, but does things that go against the ideology of RSS in her personal life. She does not adhere to the Ram Rajya ethic, as that ethic controls women under the authority of men. She wants to control everything, including the social narrative through social media. Let us assume that she was a Dalit or an OBC woman, acquired the same status in Bollywood, and had such a disruptive personality. Would the RSS/BJP have supported her fight in Bollywood and given her the same protection that Kangana got? Would they have admitted her into the BJP and made her an MP? This is where caste matters. Since she is a Kshatriya woman she becomes a darling of RSS/BJP upper echelons.
From anti-Rahul to anti-Indira
The RSS/BJP leaders support her because she promotes their ideology through political messaging. And also, because she is anti-Congress, more particularly an anti-Rahul Gandhi’s family, as Modi and many other RSS/BJP leaders are. She shifted from acting in films like Gangster, Fashion, Queen, Raaz, and so on to playing the roles of political women leaders.
She made the film Manikarnika (Jhansi Lakshmibai) to establish herself as an anti-British nationalist. Then she acted as Jayalalitha on Thalaivii. Just before the 2024 elections, she made Emergency, a film in which an attack on Indira Gandhi’s history and personality seems to have been encoded. But at the same time, her anti-Sikh rhetoric was brought into the film, as the trailer of the film shows. The film seems to have stepped into the complex post-emergency history of the 1980s, depicting Indira Gandhi’s actions against Bhindranwale, and her tragic murder by her Sikh bodyguards at her official residence. According to Makhan Lal, who already viewed the full film, she did not show the anti-Sikh riots of 1984. Perhaps the RSS/BJP are upset with that mistake. The Sikhs are very angry against her for projecting Bhindrenwale as a terrorist.
Now the RSS/BJP does not know whether the film is against Indira Gandhi or Sikhs. The Sikhs are saying it is against them and the Congress is saying that it is against India itself.
Through all of this, perhaps, she wanted to make way for a “Congress Mukt Bharat”, a slogan that Modi has used repeatedly, right from the 2014 election campaign. But she did not stop there. She also wanted to attack Sikhism, as the Sikh farmers were the backbone of the 2021-22 Farmers’ movement. This was the movement that made the Modi-Shah eat a humble pie. Meanwhile, the BJP was using the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 against Congress to deflect attention from the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat.
She hates agitations in Modi’s India but loves such agitations against Indira Gandhi. She views any anti-BJP agitation as terrorism. The student movements that rocked the country around Rohit Vemula’s systemic killing or the student protests at Jawaharlal Nehru University were labelled by the BJP forces as part of tukde-tukde gang, accusing them of breaking the nation. Any movement by people around their rights is attacked as anti-national. Kangana is carrying this meaningless ideology forward, in whatever way possible. But the pro-feudal JP movement becomes nationalist in the film.
Pro-Landlord JP Movement
The Kashmir Files fame actor, Anupam Kher, plays the role of Jayaprakash Narayan in her film Emergency. After the BJP came to power in 2014, a strong anti-Congress team came together in Bollywood and started making a series of movies against the Congress regime and Muslims. Kangana and Anupam Kher are the leading forces in the pro-RSS network of Bollywood. Thus, it is obvious that in the film, the JP movement of the RSS version will be foregrounded.
Jayaprakash Narayan, popularly known as JP, led an anti-Indira movement in the pre-emergency days, advocating for a ‘Total Revolution’. Narayan called for Indira Gandhi and the CMs to resign and urged the military and the police to disregard all unconstitutional and immoral orders from them. In that anti-Indira agitation, Modi himself was an agitator. For the Hindutva school that hated the idea of socialism, JP, a Kayashta socialist, became a great national leader very much acceptable to them. In that movement, in order to overthrow Indira Gandhi, the RSS/Jan Sangh combine, very opportunistically accepted Gandhian socialism as their ideological agenda. Her election from Raebareli in 1971, after almost four years, was declared invalid by a court.
In fact, the 1971 election was a turning point in India where the Dalits/OBCs/Adivasis gained something through the policies of Garibi Hatao, the nationalization of banks, land reforms, and the abolition of privy purses. The RSS/Jana Sangh network was very upset with this pro-poor agenda of Indira Gandhi. All the landlords of India turned against her. The JP movement, unfortunately, was a pro-landlord one. JP’s earlier socialist image was used to fight pro-poor policies of Indira Gandhi, which led her to declare emergency. The movement was led by Hindutva forces.
In that election, Indira Gandhi gave a pro-poor slogan “Garibi Hatao” and promised nationalization of banks and the abolition of Privy purses and because till then the freedom was seen almost as landlord freedom. In the 1971 elections, Dalits and Adivasis were not allowed to vote by the Reddy Congress and the right-wing landlord forces all across the country. Indira Gandhi was attacked as a communist. The JP socialists were part of pro-landlord agitations in the post-1971 elections. The unemployment problem of that time was not greater than the unemployment problem in the Modi regime. Kangana wants to portray that agitation as nationalist but keeps on attacking any anti-Modi Government agitation as terrorist and anti-national. However, the BJP/RSS are now worried about the unintended effects of the Movie that Kangana made.
RSS and Jan Sangh were totally opposed to all these pro-poor welfare agendas of India Gandhi. To counter all these forces and to retain her power position she imposed emergency. Of course, during the emergency all opposition leaders were put in jail and many Naxalites and active trade union leaders were killed. Naturally, the emergency was opposed by large masses of India and in 1977 Indira Gandhi had to lift it and go for election. She lost the election so badly that she never recovered from that negative history of emergency.
At a time when the Modi Government is opposed to all forms of agitations, including those by farmers, Kangana is trying to justify anti-Indira agitations led by the RSS/Jan Sangh, while attacking Sikh socio-spiritual movements at the same time. The Sikh movement in the 1980s was started to get the Sikh religion a separate recognition, not for the creation of Khalistan.
She attacked the farmers’ movement as a terrorist or Khalistani movement. The women participants were derogatorily called ‘women worth 100 rupees’. It was for this anti-Sikh, anti-farmer, anti-women statement that Kulwinder Kaur slapped her at the Chandigarh airport after she became MP and was going to Delhi from her constituency Mandi, Himachal Pradesh.
Farmers as Bangladeshis
No RSS/BJP leader asked her not to go after farmers. After she attended her first parliament session, she again said, “Bangladesh-like anarchy could have happened in India also, in the name of Farmers’ protest. Outside forces are planning to destroy us with the help of insiders. If it wouldn’t have been the foresight of our leadership (meaning Modi and Amit Shah) they would have succeeded”. Not only that, she also said, “bodies were seen hanging and rapes were taking place” during farmers’ protest against the now-repealed three farm laws. Only BJP distanced from the statement. The RSS was totally silent. What should the nation read from these major events in her life?
There is an agreement with her persona among the top leaders of the RSS/BJP. Otherwise, she would not have got the BJP membership and a ticket to contest elections as an MP. By her own admission, she was offered a ticket in the 2019 parliament elections itself. But she refused to contest. Perhaps they did not discover her by the 2014 parliament elections, but they discovered that her ideology aligned with their ideology by the 2019 election.
As a reward, she was honoured with Padma Shri and national film awards. And now made a member of parliament with all the support she needed—money and manpower.
Contradictory Roles
Kangana played roles in a variety of films that no RSS/BJP man would normally accept. Before she entered the shoes of Manikarnika (Jhansi Lakshmi), Thalaivii (Jayalalithaa), and Indira Gandhi she played the roles of women who were partners of those involved in the Mumbai underworld and had love affairs. She appeared on screen in slim-fitting outfits and also shared images of herself in swim-suits on social media. With films like Manikarnika, Thalaivii, and Emergency, she wants to become a don. But something seems to be going wrong. The proposal to release the movie Emergency coincides with the BJP giving a call for mass condemnation of Emergency as “Dark Days of Democracy”. The political communication between RSS/BJP and Kangana’s Emergency movie making was consciously cultivated. But the story inside the movie seems to misfire, even after release.
Hindutva and Women
Hundreds of young Indian women have gone through unbridled attacks by Hindutva brigades in public parks for simply sitting with their boyfriends. How does Kangana feel comfortable in the company of such forces, both outside and inside parliament, who still believe that Indian women should be Hindu Naris, and never do such anti-Manu Dharmic things?
Having come from a Rajput family of Himachal hill state, that never aspired for high-end English education, leaving their feudal love for local authority in the local language, she faced the sophisticated English-speaking Brahmin, Kayastha, Khatri Bollywood domain. All her auditions were humiliating, despite her suitable Aryan looks. She got rejected time and again. She had to fight to make an entry into the industry, with the film Gangster. She still retains her anger against the Bollywood male monopoly and control.
Yet she won over the world’s biggest conservative, anti-Valentine’s Day organization’s brainchild party and made them accept her and offer her a seat in the parliament.
The Kangana Ranaut-RSS relationship is changing the history of that organization as well. An organization that promoted the Hindu Nari discipline has allowed the BJP to field her in the election. How that relationship came to be established when she was fighting Bollywood with her own strong and weak personality, more particularly how did the BJP give her a ticket if it did not approve her attack on farmers as terrorists? After becoming an MP, she is taking the same anti-farmer, anti-Sikh, and anti-Congress battle forward.
Where this relationship between the neo-Hindutva feminist Kangana and conservative RSS, and its political wing BJP will lead remains to be seen.
[The writer, Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd, is a Political Theorist, Social Activist and Author.]
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