India’s Bollywood star power dims in elections amid political divisions, controversial comments

Those dangers were underlined on Monday when Kangana Ranaut, a Bollywood actress running for political office for the first time as a candidate for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Mandi Lok Sabha constituency, was met with black flags and chants of “go back” at a rally in Kaza, a town in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh.

Her detractors were previously reportedly incensed by a meme Ranaut had posted on social media a year ago featuring the Dalai Llama and US President Joe Biden sticking out their tongues with a caption saying: “Both of them have the same illness, definitely they could be friends”.

The meme provoked outrage and forced an apology from Ranaut, who said her post was meant to be light-hearted.

“New people from the film industry have not come into elections this time as much as they normally do because politics has become very corrosive,” said Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, an independent political commentator, told This Week in Asia.

“They feel that siding on either side of this corrosive divide would be harmful to their professional interests.”

The incident was not the first time that Ranaut was embroiled in a controversy.

Ranaut, who had starred in hit films such as Queen and Tanu Weds Manu, provoked allegations of insensitivity from the opposition in 2021 when she said that India’s hard-won freedom from Britain in 1947 “was bheek (a handout) and real freedom was attained in 2014”, referring to when Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP came to power.

Two years ago, actor Aamir Khan faced boycott calls for his film Laal Singh Chaddha –a Hindi remake of the 1994 Hollywood film Forrest Gump – after a 2015 interview surfaced on social media where he talked about “growing intolerance” in India.

Analysts say