New Delhi: Actors Diljit Dosanjh and Kangana Ranaut were engaged in a war of tweets over the farmers’ protest on Thursday that began with Shaheen Bagh protester Bilkis Bano and spilled over to name calling, Punjabi identity and the Delhi riots.
Both began their bickering on Twitter on Wednesday that continued well into Thursday.
Bollywood star Ranaut had this week misidentified a woman farmer from Punjab as Bilkis Bano, the octogenarian who made international headlines during anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests held earlier this year in Shaheen Bagh.
Ranaut had shared a tweet alleging that the ‘Shaheen Bagh dadi’ also joined the farmers’ protests against the new farm laws at various border points of New Delhi.
She had retweeted the post with pictures of two elderly women, including Bilkis Bano, and wrote that the “same Dadi” who featured in Time magazine was “available in 100 rupees”.
When Twitter users pointed out that both the women were different, Ranaut reportedly deleted her tweet.
Dosanjh shared a BBC interview of the woman who Ranaut had wrongly identified as Bilkis Bano and tweeted that her name is Mahinder Kaur.
As the protest by farmers, mostly from Punjab and Haryana, gathered momentum, he found support from fellow Punjabi singers Ranjit Bawa and Himanshi Khurana.
In the exchange that followed, Ranaut called Dosanjh filmmaker Karan Johar’s “pet”, a “bootlicker” and asked if he wasn’t ashamed of defending somebody who had “instigated” the Delhi riots.
She also said that her comments were directed towards Bilkis Bano and not Kaur, someone she said she didn’t even know.
While asserting his Punjabi identity, Dosanjh said Ranaut, even as a woman, doesn’t have the manners to talk to someone’s mother or sister.
Meanwhile, BJP national spokesperson RP Singh waded into the fight and demanded Ranaut’s apology.
“I respect you for your courage & acting but I will not accept anyone disrespecting or demeaning my mother. You must make a public apology for doing so,” Singh tweeted, highlighting Ranaut’s deleted tweet.
Thousands of farmers have gathered on Delhi’s borders demanding a repeal of the Central government’s three new farm laws.
The protesting farmers are wary as the new laws may eliminate the safety cushion of a minimum support price, or MSP, and procurement system, while rendering the mandi system that ensures earnings for various stakeholders in the farm sector ineffective.
The government is in talks with farmer leaders to resolve the issue.