Popular YouTuber and activist Dhruv Rathee has publicly addressed the brewing controversy linking his recent video on celebrity plastic surgery to Bollywood actor Janhvi Kapoor's statement on a tragic incident in Bangladesh. Rathee firmly denied any connection, urging critics to use logic.
The Spark of the Controversy
On December 25, Dhruv Rathee uploaded a video titled "The FAKE Beauty of Bollywood Celebrities" to his YouTube channel. The content discussed actors including Janhvi Kapoor, Bipasha Basu, Shruti Haasan, Deepika Padukone, Shilpa Shetty, Kajol, and Priyanka Chopra, suggesting they had enhanced their looks through surgical procedures.
Coincidentally, on the same day, Janhvi Kapoor took to her Instagram Stories to condemn the lynching of Dipu Chandra Das, a Hindu man in Bangladesh. She described the event as a "slaughter" and called out public hypocrisy. Soon, sections of social media began alleging that Rathee's video was a veiled attack on Kapoor for speaking up.
Rathee's Point-by-Point Clarification
Responding to the accusations, Dhruv Rathee posted a clarification video on his social media handles. He captioned it pointedly: "Did I mock Janhvi Kapoor for her post on Bangladeshi Hindus?"
In the video, he read out posts linking the two events and expressed frustration. "God has given you a brain, so why don’t you use it?" he questioned, asking why people were blindly believing narratives pushed by online factions.
Rathee presented a timeline to debunk the theory. "The first thing is, I uploaded my video within half an hour on the very same day that Janhvi Kapoor made her post. Is it realistically possible for me to research, shoot, edit a half-hour video and upload it all within a single day?" he argued, calling the notion unrealistic.
Asserting His Stance and Video's Intent
To further distance himself from the alleged motive, Rathee reminded his audience that he had previously created content in support of Bangladeshi Hindus. "I myself made reels on Bangladeshi Hindus. So why would I criticise that?" he stated.
He emphasized his direct style of communication, saying, "I’m not like you people who go around taking digs at someone indirectly. If I have something to say, I say it to their face." Rathee also clarified that his video's thumbnail, which featured Kapoor, was just one of many used and was not singularly focused on her.
He reiterated the core theme of his original upload: "The entire video is about plastic surgery and its impact on society. In this whole video, I didn’t ask Janhvi Kapoor a single question… so where’s the question in this video?" He urged viewers to watch the actual content to understand its message about the growing plastic surgery industry.
As of now, Janhvi Kapoor has not publicly reacted to Dhruv Rathee's clarification video. The actor's original post calling for awareness about the violence in Bangladesh continues to circulate independently of this online dispute.
