While the Hrithik- Kangana spat has provided the expected fodder to the media and readers, the hashtag #characterlesskangana, which has been trending on Twitter for over a day now, is a new low.
Trial by Twitter has stamped the actress as “characterless”, because she has had multiple affairs. Then what about our male actors? Aren’t they characterless too? Why is it so easy to defame a woman in our society? And we are talking about a two-time National Award winner, someone who has come up the hard way, not with a free pass to stardom thanks to family connections.
Says ad guru Prahlad Kakkar: “This is a man’s hashtag, this is driven by a culture that can’t deal with independent thinking women. Their character still makes for a discussion, if a women sleeps around she is still a whore and a man sleeping around is still a stud.”
He adds, “This comes from insecure men who can’t accept a woman having a life of her own. India still believes in owning jaydaat, joru and zameen (wealth, wife and property). Women are still considered a commodity that is meant to be owned, and
that makes for this psyche appalling!”
City-based celebrity manager Basanth Jain, who is currently managing Jwala Gutta, Harshvardhan Rane and Pragyan Ojha, feels women have always been the easy target, “People feel it is easier to target a woman no matter how well-placed she is.”
Elahe Hiptoola, city-based producer of films like Hyderabad Blues, Iqbal and Dor says, “Why is Kangana being called characterless, because she had multiple relationships or because she was involved with married men? If it’s multiple men, I don’t see why that is a problem because she hasn’t dated them all at once. And if it is because she is involved with married men, then it’s the men who owe their liabilities to their spouses, why should the woman involved care?”
Elahe believes India lays too much responsibility on women. “The beti is ghar ki izzat, the bahu is sasural ki shaan, she is the ma, … the this and the that... is nonsense.”
