Do we like Kangana Ranaut?
Our score: 4 out of 10. She spoke up for marriage equality and turns up to Parliament, but the farmer remarks, a defamation case still in court and the 2026 protester posts weigh against her.
Kangana Ranaut was born in Himachal Pradesh in 1986, started acting in 2006 with Gangster and had her turning point with Queen in 2013. WION credits her with multiple National Film Awards. In 2024 she moved into electoral politics and won the Mandi seat in the Lok Sabha on a BJP ticket.
Her loudest political stoush before this year came in August 2024. In a video she suggested the farmers' protests could have led to a “Bangladesh-like situation”, and she alleged that bodies were hanging and rapes were taking place during them. The BJP said that was not the party's view and directed her not to make such remarks again.
A related fight is still in court. During the 2020-21 farmers' protest she tweeted a photo of an elderly farmer, mistaking her for the Shaheen Bagh protester Bilkis Bano, and alleged such women were “available for Rs 100” to join protests. The farmer filed a defamation complaint, and a Bathinda court granted Ranaut bail in October 2025. She called it “just a misunderstanding”, but the complainant's lawyer disputed that any apology had been made. In January 2026 the court gave her a permanent exemption from personal appearance, and the case is ongoing.
Her other big legal fight ended in a handshake. Javed Akhtar filed a criminal defamation complaint over her remarks in 2020, and after about five years and 40-odd hearings the two settled through mediation on 28 February 2025. In court she apologised for “the inconvenience caused to Mr Javed Akhtar”, and she said she would not repeat the comments.
The recent row is the Generation Gutter one. After the NEET-UG paper-leak protests, she posted Instagram stories calling the protesters' reels “puke-inducing”. According to Outlook, she singled out young Hindu women, and she told ANI she meant only “some people or some women”. Sonu Sood, the AIMIM's Waris Pathan and Congress's Bhai Jagtap all criticised the posts.
On the harm test the record is genuinely mixed. In 2023 she was asked about same-sex marriage and said that if two people's hearts come together, their preference should not matter to anyone. She has also written that a person's identity is what they do in the world, not in bed. Against that, there are the farmer and student-protester remarks above, and she called A.R. Rahman “prejudiced and hateful” after he criticised her film Emergency. We found no record of her campaigning against trans people, and nothing flagged about her recent film company, but that search was not exhaustive.