Do we like Ranveer Singh?
Our score: 6 out of 10. Decent record and a past stand for gay rights, held back by a film that split audiences, a temple-sized apology and a messy exit from Don 3.
Ranveer Singh is the high-voltage face of Hindi cinema, and 2026 has been his year for both the best and worst reasons. Dhurandhar: The Revenge was a box-office monster, and it also landed him in the middle of a nasty national argument about what the film is really for. We'll be upfront: the early-life detail we could verify from sources we opened is thin, so this is mostly the recent story.
The Kantara stoush is the big one. At the IFFI closing ceremony in Goa in November 2025 he mimicked Rishab Shetty's performance and, per the complaint, called a revered coastal Karnataka deity a “female ghost”. A Bengaluru advocate complained, an FIR followed, and Singh apologised online, saying he only meant to praise Shetty's work.
The court wasn't impressed at first. Justice Nagaprasanna said “You can't call the deity a female ghost.” and barred coercive action while the probe went on. In May the court accepted a sworn apology, closed the proceedings without ruling on the merits, and ordered him to visit the Chamundeshwari Temple in Mysuru.
Then Don 3. Farhan Akhtar's Excel Entertainment alleged his late exit from the film caused major disruption, with about Rs 45 crore already spent on pre-production. The film-workers' federation FWICE issued a non-cooperation order, Singh's side served a legal notice, and FWICE withdrew the order in June. Singh's team chose silence on the details, so we only have one side of the money claim.
Now the harm check, properly. We found no slur, no attack on a group and no conspiracy rubbish from him. In 2018 he reportedly backed scrapping Section 377, the law that criminalised gay sex, while playing a bisexual character in Padmaavat. Where it gets contested is Dhurandhar: AIMIM's Waris Pathan said it portrays Muslims as villains, while its defenders reject the propaganda label.
After the film's success Singh flew to Nagpur and met RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat; no details of the meeting were disclosed and he made no statement about it. Critics online treated the visit as proof the film is political propaganda. That's what people read into it, not something he said, so we put it down as an asterisk rather than a mark against him.