Janhvi Kapoor, who surprised the internet when she said that it would be “interesting to watch a debate between Gandhi and Ambedkar,” has now said that after she expressed her opinions, her PR team wanted to edit out this portion of her interview. Janhvi said that she, along with her team, wasn’t sure how it would be perceived and tried to get it cut from her interview as she was “panicking” about it.
In a chat with Mashable India, when asked about this, Janhvi said she was “shocked” with the way people reacted and wondered out loud, “Is it so hard believe that a female young actress can have an opinion?” Janhvi then pointed out the “irony” of the situation as many people thought that she was trained by her PR to make that statement when in fact, her team was getting “hyper” and wanted it out of the interview. “The irony, I remember that one of the reactions to this was she has been trained by her PR,” she said.
“I said it in conversation. After that interview got over, I looked at my PR if I said something wrong and they said that this one thing might get picked up but let’s see. Then the next day, I just started panicking. I said I don’t want… that the film is just about to release I don’t know how people will perceive this [comment]. I don’t know if this is the right thing. My PR people also started getting hyper and they asked if we can remove that bit? We don’t want unwanted attention. This is a bit risky and they (the publication) said ‘no, we don’t want to cut it’. That’s what was so ironic that my team wanted to cut it and people are thinking I have been trained,” she shared.
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Janhvi then shared that she had been spending a lot of time with filmmaker Neeraj Ghaywan and it was her conversation with him that encouraged her to read more about caste discrimination. “He was telling me about his experiences. That sparked a curiosity in my head that I am a part of this society, I am a Hindu and I know so little about my culture and society. I live on Ambedkar Road and I don’t know anything about his history. I should be ashamed of myself so I got quite triggered,” she said and added that this led to reading Ambedkar’s book Annihilation of Caste.
Janhvi said that reading this book “has changed me quite a bit” and she has started to re-evaluate her surroundings. “This is such a big part of our society and we don’t even realise that this classism and casteism is so ingrained within us and we don’t talk about this. We should be ashamed of ourselves,” she said.
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In a chat with The Lallantop, Janhvi had previously said, “I don’t know how my views will get translated to the audience, but I think it will be very interesting to watch a debate between Ambedkar and Gandhi. Just a debate between what they stand for and how their views kept changing over a topic and how they kept influencing people. They have both helped our society at a great extent. So I think it will be very interesting discourse.” She further said, “Ambedkar’s view [in terms of caste] was very stern since the beginning while Gandhi’s kept evolving over time. The caste problem in our society… I think to learn about it from a third person’s point of view vs living that life, there’s a big difference between the two.”
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