Do we like Karan Johar?
Our score: 7 out of 10. Decent on the evidence we could open, with a long public record, real charity work and a few contested moments, but gaps we couldn't fill.
That argument is nepotism. Kangana Ranaut took a swing at him over it on his own show in 2017, and the row has trailed him ever since. His line, in a 2024 interview, is that most of the directors he has introduced were outsiders. Where you land depends on whether you think the star-kid pipeline is the problem or the studio just following the money.
The messiest chapter was September 2020, when media reports linked narcotics to a party he hosted in 2019, and the Narcotics Control Bureau questioned two people tied to his company. Johar issued a statement saying he does not consume or promote narcotics, that nothing was consumed at the party, and calling the reports false. The Quint's report of the day records no outcome from the questioning, so this stays an allegation he denies.
On the harm test, there is nothing in what we opened that campaigns against anyone. When the Supreme Court decriminalised gay sex in 2018 he called it a historic judgment, and he has said in his own words that he has a problem with the level of homophobia in India. The asterisk is political rather than personal: in January 2026 he said he wasn't offended by the politics of Dhurandhar, a hit that critics label propaganda. Praising a film isn't pushing harm, but it's worth knowing.
There is a gap we should own up to. Hardik Pandya's remarks about women on Johar's show in 2019 cost the cricketer a BCCI show-cause notice, and Johar apologised publicly, but we couldn't open a page we could cite for the detail, so we haven't weighed it. Critics have also long argued about how his earlier films portrayed gay characters. We couldn't open a source for that either, so we're flagging it rather than judging it.
The recent stuff is mostly industry weather. Homebound, which his studio produced, was India's Oscar entry and made the shortlist but missed the final nominations in January, and he and director Neeraj Ghaywan publicly backed each other afterwards. In March he told media off for clickbait after his remarks about actors switching agencies were tied to Janhvi Kapoor's exit from his agency. Nothing new on him lately that changes the picture.