Rangoli Chandel, the survivor of a vicious acid attack that threatened her life and made her undergo 54 surgeries over years, was mocked in a derogatory, casteist slur by self-proclaimed comedian Atul Khatri.
Khatri had attacked twitter user and BJP supporter Ankit Jain’s tweet by deriding Rangoli and morphing her surname as ‘Chandaal’, in an attempt to mock her. The reason for Khatri’s reaction was that Jain had pointed out that if Padukone really wanted to show solidarity with students, she could have met ABVP students as well, who were injured in JNU violence.
Rangoli Chandel, reacting to Khatri’s shameful attempt to mock her, stated that the main reason behind the hatred she receives, and the way her struggles are dismissed by such ‘secular liberals’ is that she is not anti-Hindu and doesn’t deride India, or our security forces in her tweets.
https://twitter.com/Rangoli_A/status/1215097563063320576?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Chandel further added that for the cabal of Twitter ‘liberals’ the eligibility criteria for getting their love and support is being sympathetic to Pakistan and its terrorists and being hateful towards Hindus.
In an attempt to mock Jain and Chandel, Khatri had used the casteist slur ‘Chandaal’. In addition, in his attempt to support Padukone for her movie role as an acid attack survivor, Khatri mocked Rangoli, a real-life acid attack survivor.
It is notable here that actress Deepika Padukone, who is playing the reel-life role of Laxmi Agarwal, a 15-year-old girl who was acid attacked by a 32-year-old Naeem Khan for refusing his advances in 2005, had visited JNU campus recently. Padukone had stood and interacted with leftist students who had earlier blocked thousands of non-protesting students from registration and damaged the servers of JNU administration.
Padukone’s appearance was widely criticised as a cheap PR stunt to publicise her upcoming movie Chhapaak, the story of an acid attack survivor.