Sonakshi Sinha’s recent appearance on season 11 of Kaun Banega Crorepati has brought Twitter trolls out in full force after she failed to answer a question on the Ramayana. The Mission Mangal actor was stumped by host Amitabh Bachchan’s question, “According to the Ramayana, for whom did Hanuman fetch the Sanjeevani buti (herb)?” The four options she was given were – Sugriva, Lakshman, Sita and Ram.
Several Twitter users have pointed out the irony of her inability to answer the question when the names of several members of her family have been derived from the Ramayana. Her father Shatrughan Sinha gets his name from Ram’s youngest brother and her siblings are named Luv and Kush, the same as Ram and Sita’s sons. The family’s bungalow in Juhu, Mumbai, also happens to be named Ramayana. Some also compared her apparent ignorance on the subject to Alia Bhatt’s infamous appearance on Koffee With Karan in 2013 where she hastily called Prithviraj Chavan the President of India, instead of Pranab Mukherjee, during the show’s rapid fire round.
While a few of the ensuing memes are admittedly funny, most of them are terribly mean-spirited. Most Twitter users have aimed for low-hanging fruit, calling her “dumb” and blaming her father for not teaching her about “Hinduism, religion and Indian culture”. Some have even gone as far saying she didn’t deserve her role as a scientist in Mission Mangal. Because knowledge of Hindu mythology is what launched the Mars Orbiter Mission, right? And since when did sanskaar become a measure of one’s intellect? It goes without saying that general awareness is important, but at a time when there is no dearth of causes to concern oneself with, from climate change to the lockdown on Kashmir that’s lasted nearly two months, maybe a Bollywood celebrity’s ability to commit the Ramayana to memory should be far lower on our list of priorities – or perhaps not one of them at all.
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