After that DM, I was blocked, unable to reply. His technique was like a coward’s, who slyly looks for a chance to attack a girl then runs away on a motorbike.



Savarna male comics have joked frequently about how bad Besharam was. Savarna critics reviewed it brutally. Audiences went “thoo thoo”. Ranbir Kapoor has joked about that disastrous film a couple of times, and Rishi Kapoor himself has said he regrets doing it. I am far from the first person to joke about the film Besharam.

Rather, what stung him was my attack on their idea of khandaani merit, which the very mediocre but over-privileged family can’t stop yapping about.

Why this personal threat in DM for a meme mocking khandaani privilege?

What gives him the audacity to fire those words at me?

Is it because my display picture was Dalit rights activist and pop sensation Ginni Mahi? Or that my cover photo is of my idol, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, which clearly points at my social location?

Kapoor’s touchiness and caste-pride is easily explained. He is deeply Brahminical, as pointed out by Shashi Tharoor in this anecdote he recounts in his HuffPost piece, “Why Caste Won’t Disappear From India”:

I was a ten-year-old representing the 6th Standard in an inter-class theatrical event at which the 8th Standard’s sketch featured “Chintu” (Rishi) Kapoor, younger son of the matinee idol and producer Raj Kapoor, later to become a successful screen heartthrob in his own right. I had acted, elocuted a humorous poem and MCed my class’s efforts to generous applause, and the younger Kapoor was either intrigued or disconcerted, for he sought me out the next morning at school. “Tharoor,” he asked me at the head of the steps near the toilet, “what caste are you?” I blinked my nervousness at the Great Man. “I - - I don’t know,” I stammered. My father, who never mentioned anyone’s religion, let alone caste, had not bothered to enlighten me on such matters. “You don’t know?” the actor’s son demanded in astonishment. “What do you mean, you don’t know? Everybody knows their own caste.” I shamefacedly confessed I didn’t. “You mean you’re not a Brahmin or something?” I couldn’t even avow I was a something. Chintu Kapoor never spoke to me again in school.

After reading that piece, I’m not just suspicious of Rishi Kapoor’s caste supremacy, I’m certain of it.

Khandaani privilege is everything to him. It has given extraordinary wealth and public adoration to him and his extended family.

Khandaani privilege allows him to be rude, tasteless, and short-tempered, and still maintain his stardom.

The same privilege allows him to be misogynistic and still be revered. Remember when he fat-shamed Huma Qureshi? And remember his own domestic violence allegations? He also wanted to change the heroine in Wake Up Sid to someone younger, Ranbir Kapoor once said in an interview.

Khandaani privilege allows him to blame directors (and call them "monkeys") for his son's flop movies, because his own son, of course, couldn't be the flopping factor. Eugenics!

Rishi Kapoor couldn’t stand me, a girl with “fighting against caste” in her bio and Ambedkar in her cover photo, pointing out how unmeritorious him and his khandaan have actually been.

Because his khandaani privilege, held up by the false and fragile narrative of merit that he keeps pushing in his tweets, is what made him an erstwhile king of the orthodox village called Bollywood.