look news india
These days, veteran Bollywood and South cinema actress Rashmika Mandanna has become the center of discussion on the internet more for her Hindi dialect and South Indian accent than for her films. Recently, some people on social media started making fun of Rashmika’s style of speaking Hindi and her special accent, after which this debate increased a lot. When this controversy started gaining momentum on social media, then the famous lyricist and writer of Indian cinema Javed Akhtar openly came in support of Rashmika Mandanna. Javed Akhtar gave a befitting reply to the trolls and advocated respecting language diversity and regional dialects. However, defending Rashmika proved costly for Javed Akhtar and the trolls on the internet instead targeted him. Since then, this whole matter has turned into a new and bitter war between Bollywood versus social media.
The whole controversy started when a video clip of a recent interview of Rashmika Mandanna started going viral on social media. In this video, some users made lewd comments on the Hindi spoken by Rashmika and made fun of her South Indian accent. Trolls said that despite working in Bollywood, Rashmika is not improving her Hindi pronunciation. Seeing such language-based trolling, the country’s veteran lyricist and screenwriter Javed Akhtar could not remain silent. Taking on the trolls through social media, he said that India is a multilingual country where every region has its own sweetness and accent. Javed Akhtar stressed that an actor’s acting ability should not be judged by his accent or dialect, and that taking a jibe at any regional identity is extremely narrow minded.
As soon as Javed Akhtar issued a statement in favor of Rashmika Mandanna, the entire army of trolls changed their stance and started directly targeting Javed Akhtar. On social media platforms, users started digging into Javed Akhtar’s old statements and accused him of double standards. Many users wrote that Javed Akhtar’s stand is different when it comes to other artists or issues, but here he has suddenly started teaching the lesson of love of language. Some people also argued that if an actor is playing a lead role in Hindi-speaking cinema, the audience has every right to comment on his accent. Soon this debate was not limited to only Rashmika and Javed Akhtar, but the questions of the entire language style and regional identity of Bollywood started getting added to it.
Since the rise of Pan-India films in the last few years, there has been an invisible competition and debate between the cinema and artistes of North India and South India. Rashmika Mandanna, who has made her place in the hearts of audiences across the country with blockbuster films like ‘Pushpa’ and ‘Animal’, has always been known for her innocence and easy-going style. However, whenever South actors work in Hindi films, a section often tries to target them because of their accent. Senior jurists and thinkers like Javed Akhtar believe that Indian cinema is now gaining a global identity, where diversity is its biggest strength. If we welcome artists from different states, we should also happily accept their natural language style and accent.
This entire incident has once again proved how quickly celebrity trolling can turn extreme in today’s digital age. Expressing one’s independent opinion on any issue or standing in support of a fellow artiste is now becoming a cause of trouble for the stars themselves. Javed Akhtar’s defense of Rashmika Mandanna was a message of affection and linguistic tolerance from a senior artiste towards his junior, but trolls turned it into a political and ideological issue. Despite this, many other veterans of the film industry and discerning audiences have appreciated Javed Akhtar’s stance and made it clear that art is not dependent on any one dialect or language. It remains to be seen at what point this controversy will end in the coming days, but it has definitely started a new debate on the relationship between cinema and language.