Kangana Ranaut Hails Anandiben Patel Remark Mother Should Learn How To Cook

Kangana Ranaut on Sunday endorsed a contentious post on X, which contained a video of Uttar Pradesh Governor Anandiben Patel saying in a speech that a mother should first learn how to cook for her family, irrespective of the profession she belongs to. The actor and Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) member added that it’s a woman’s “duty to nurture humanity”.

“It is not something that we need to learn. God has bestowed up on us the duty of nurturing humanity, it is our true nature, that’s why women are called Devi, Shakti, Annapurna, Mata, and many more such forms, but beyond all that, it is such a joy to love, to feed, to dance and to nurture (red heart emoji),” added Kangana, underlining the stereotypical gender roles prescribed to women for centuries.

Kangana was responding to a viral video clip of Patel, where the UP governor is addressing a crowd in Kanpur. “Women today should learn how to cook for their families, whether you become a teacher or an IAS officer. You should first become an expert mother,” said the politician, much to the applause of the audience listening to her.

“What is a mother’s duty? To train her daughter in every way. She should not face any difficulties at her in-laws’. And if she does, she should deal with them on her own merit. We need to give that strength to her daughters,” added Patel. She also quoted recent “unfathomable” instances of women even killing their prospective husbands to avoid getting married as per their parents’ wishes.

Patel might be referring to the incident in Pune last month, when Siya Goyal allegedly killed her fiancé Ketan Agarwal along with her boyfriend Chetan Chaudhary. Kangana endorsed Patel’s rather contentious remarks as not only a fellow BJP member, but also a woman. Kangana is currently serving as a Member of Parliament from Mandi, Himachal Pradesh since winning the Lok Sabha Elections in 2014.

Last month, Kangana also weighed in on the Ketan Agarwal murder as more details of the case surfaced. “Passion without a goal or a purpose will find many such random self-destructive expressions. That’s why obsession is important, but with your career or some skill. To the young and the restless, I want to say: channelize your energies into a constructive path, think with an open mind, but live a conservative life; that way, you can avoid jail, boredom, negativity, depression, and many such dooms,” she wrote on X.

Earlier, she also defended Siya’s parents on X. “These days, just looking at the families, homes or parents, you can never be sure about sanskars (moral values) of the children, what is more important is that who is programming them? Who they spend time with, what are their influences on SM/AI (social media/artificial intelligence) or real life,” she argued.

“Parents can not be blamed because people are living so many parallel lives, people carefully build desirable perception of themselves because it is all about how they are seen not how they feel or who they really are, so families can not be judged for children actions,” added the actor. However, with her latest stance, she seems to be endorsing Anandiben Patel’s archaic notion that it’s the mother’s duty to raise her daughter well.

A large section of the internet called out Kangana for endorsing Patel’s controversial remarks. An X user commented on her post, “Cooking is a patriarchy that was thrown around for a million years and it’s embarrassing to see @KanganaTeam glorifying it.” Another user wrote, “Cooking’s a survival skill, everyone, no matter their gender, should know how to whip up good food.”

“You make it very difficult to support you, Kangana (facepalm emoji),” said a third user. As an actor, Kangana has been the face of several landmark feminist movies like Vikas Bahl’s 2013 coming-of-age movie Queen. She’ll be next seen in its sequel, Queen 2, also helmed by Bahl, which wrapped up its filming last month.