Karan Johar is one of the big names in the Hindi film industry. For the past several years, Karan has been playing many roles in the industry apart from being a film producer. Be it a director, actor, host, RJ and even a matchmaker, the producer has always been praised for his contribution to the industry. However, as many people may love the 52-year-old filmmaker, he is equally trolled by the audiences for every move. Karan has often been engrossed in controversies, with the latest being his social media fight with Divya Khossla over the Jigra ticket sale. Hence, let’s have a look at the five biggest controversies of Karan Johar’s life.
It is significant to note that Karan sold 50 per cent stakes in his iconic production banner, Dharma Productions. These stakes were sold to Serum Institue’s CEO Adar Poonawalla.
The Jigra controversy
Alia Bhatt‘s film Jigra has hit the theatres on October 11. The film clashed in theatres with Rajkummar Rao and Triptii Dimri starrer Vicky Vidya Ka Woh Wala Video. However, amid new releases, a war of words intensified between filmmaker and actors Divya Khosla and Karan Johar. It all started with Divya calling the Jigra collection fake. Later Jigra producer Karan Johar also took to his Instagram story to call such posts ‘insignificant’. However, an interesting fact about this social media war is that neither of the parties took each other’s names, they just shared cryptic posts on Instagram stories, until Divya gave an interview, where she called out Karan for calling her a fool, as the filmmaker had shared an Instagram story that read, ‘Silences in the best reply to fools’. Karan was also accused of favouring Alia over other talents during Jigra casting.
The infamous drug party debate
Karan Johar got into controversy in the year 2019 when he shared a video on social media from one such fancy party. This video shared by Karan included famous Bollywood actors including Deepika Padukone, Arjun Kapoor, Varun Dhawan, Ranbir Kapoor, Shahid Kapoor, Malaika Arora and Vicky Kaushal. As soon as the post went viral, reports of drug consumption in the party started coming out. After watching the video, everyone present at the party was accused of taking drugs and this controversy made a lot of headlines. Later, Karan reacted to the rumours and said, “We were all having a great time at the party. I made that video for my fun and if something like drugs was going on there, would I have shared it on social media? I am not that stupid.”
The controversial Koffee With Karan episode
Indian all-rounder Hardik Pandya appeared on Karan Johar’s chat show with star batter KL Rahul. His controversial statements about women on ‘Koffee with Karan’ garnered a lot of discussion on the internet. Not only was Hardik bashed on social media for his inappropriate comments but Karan Johar was also blamed for airing the episode, despite its controversial content. After the episode went on-air, BCCI banned him and KL Rahul for two ODI matches. Moreover, the KWK episode was removed from Disney+Hotstar.
The nepotism debate
Another controversy started from ‘Koffee with Karan’, which later became a big issue for the entire industry. This was when Kangana along with Saif Ali Khan arrived on the show to also talk about their film Rangoon. Kangana commented on nepotism on the talk show, which even Saif and Karan probably did not like. Not only this, the actress also labelled Karan as a promoter of nepotism. Since then, this controversy has been surrounding the Bollywood industry. Whenever a star kid debuts in the industry, this controversy comes into the news and Karan is mostly headlining those.
The curious case of Fawad Khan
Karan was once again embroiled in controversy when Pakistan attacked Uri. 19 soldiers of our army were martyred in this attack. Immediately after this attack, Karan Johar’s film ‘Ae Dil Hai Mushkil’ was released in theatres, in which Pakistani actor Fawad Khan was also in the lead role. Karan was asked to reshoot all the scenes of Fawad because, after this attack, Pakistani actors were banned from working in our industry. But Karan did not do so, due to which there was a lot of controversy about him in the whole country.
When the war broke out between Karan and Ajay
Karan Johar’s film ‘Ae Dil Hai Mushkil’ and Bollywood superstar Ajay Devgn’s film ‘Shivaay’ were released on the same day. During the promotion of his film, Ajay Devgn tweeted a video related to Karan Johar, which surprised everyone. In the video, Kamal R Khan can be heard saying that Karan had given him Rs 25 lakh for giving a good review of ‘Ae Dil Hai Mushkil’. Karan’s very good friend Kajol was shocked to see this video and she retweeted this video. Karan did not like this and he wrote about it in his book ‘The Unsuitable Boy’. Although Karan, Ajay and Kajol have now become good friends again, but this matter made a lot of headlines back then.
