It would be an understatement if I say that I hate Kangana Ranaut. In fact, there are very few people, let alone public figures, for whom I have had such strong negative feelings. However, when I heard about the incident where she was slapped by a CISF officer at the airport, my first thought was, “Whoa! That should never have happened.” Whether she deserves to be hated or not is a different story in my mind and that is how it should have been for everyone. The only thing that matters is and should be that it was a huge lapse in security – public figure or not, MP or commoner – and it should never have happened. But of course, people were so busy celebrating with “The art and the artist” memes that they never bothered to think about how pathetic they were being in hailing something that can be termed as nothing but anarchy. A lot of these were people who talked about how democracy was dead when the Telangana rape accused were killed in an encounter. Today when I saw news about Trump’s narrow escape from death, I could see that the very same proponents of democracy and freedom were laughing about it.

The day is not far when a political assassination would also be celebrated as the “right move” and the culprits hailed wrongly as “modern day Bhagat Singhs.” Whatever one’s political beliefs, the day you choose to celebrate such anarchy based on personal dislikes, you lose the right to say that you are working towards a democratic world. Don’t condemn it if you don’t want to – that’s absolutely fair, and that’s your choice. At least don’t condone it so blatantly, making it all look like a joke and make yourselves look like hypocrites! Please understand that you can choose to not like a person without being so dumb about it.

Also published on Medium.