When Shabana Azmi stood up for Kangana after slap attack, said 'no love lost...'

Kangana Ranaut and Shabana Azmi have rarely seen eye to eye. But when Kangana was slapped at an airport, Shabana refused to celebrate the attack. Now, Kangana's latest 'Shabana Azmi-type' jibe brings that unlikely moment back into focus.

In Short

• Kangana was slapped at Chandigarh Airport in 2024 over farmers' protest support
• Shabana Azmi condemned the attack despite their long-standing differences
• Azmi stressed that personal dislike doesn't justify violence publicly

There is a certain irony in the Kangana Ranaut-Shabana Azmi equation. The two have rarely seen eye to eye, and their names have often found themselves on opposite sides of public debates. Yet, when Ranaut was slapped at Chandigarh Airport in 2024, Azmi was among those who refused to celebrate it. She publicly condemned the attack, making it clear that personal disagreements could not justify violence.

More than two years later, that moment makes for an interesting throwback. Ranaut has now taken a swipe at Azmi while defending her controversial “Generation Gutter” remark about the young protesters at Jantar Mantar, saying that more than half of those present were “Shabana Azmi-type people”. The comment lands rather differently when revisited against the time Azmi had stood up for Ranaut, despite their long-running differences.

When Shabana Azmi refused to celebrate Kangana being slapped

In June 2024, Ranaut, then newly elected as a BJP MP, was travelling through Chandigarh Airport when an altercation during a security check turned physical. A CISF constable, identified as Kulwinder Kaur, slapped Ranaut and abused her.

Ranaut later said that when she asked the constable why she had hit her, she was told that Kaur supported the farmers' protests of 2020-21. The incident quickly became a political flashpoint, with some people online celebrating the assault because of Ranaut's vocal opposition to the farmers' movement. Azmi, however, wasn't having any of it.

Despite her well-known differences with Ranaut, the veteran actor posted on X to make a rather straightforward point: disagreeing with someone does not mean cheering when they are physically attacked. “I have no love lost for Kangana Ranaut. But I can't find myself joining this chorus of celebrating 'the slap'. If security personnel start taking the law into their hands, none of us can be safe,” she wrote.

It was, in many ways, an unusually clear moment of principle in an otherwise deeply polarised Ranaut-Azmi equation. Whatever they disagreed about, Azmi drew the line at violence. Azmi had her own reasons to disagree with Kangana. And this was not exactly a friendship waiting to happen.

At the time, Azmi's husband, lyricist Javed Akhtar, was locked in a long-running defamation battle with Ranaut. The legal dispute had begun in 2020 after Akhtar filed a defamation case over remarks Ranaut made in an interview, while Ranaut subsequently filed a counter-complaint alleging intimidation.

So when Azmi spoke out after the airport incident, her defence of Ranaut was particularly notable. There was already a significant personal and legal history between the two camps.

Speaking about the incident in a later interview with Times Now, Azmi explained why she had chosen to speak up anyway. "I feel very strongly about this issue. One's personal ideology should never come in the way of fighting for what is right," she said.

That summed up Azmi's position better than anything else: she could disagree with Ranaut, even strongly, without believing that an assault on her was something to celebrate.

The legal battle between Akhtar and Ranaut was eventually settled through mediation in February 2025, after years of hearings. But the two actors' public disagreements have continued to surface in different forms.

Cut to 2026: Kangana's 'Shabana Azmi-type people' remark

Fast-forward to August 2026, and Azmi's name has once again entered the Kangana Ranaut conversation. This time, from the other direction.

While defending her controversial “Generation Gutter” remark about protesters at Jantar Mantar, Ranaut questioned whether the gathering could really be described as a Gen-Z protest. She argued that people from several age groups were present and claimed that more than half of those gathered were “Shabana Azmi-type people”.

Her full remark was: "The youth of this country? If we speak of Gen Z, then the population is around 30–35 crore. Around 10,000 people were at Jantar Mantar, where more than half of them were Shabana Azmi-type people, so many age groups were present. If we specifically speak of Gen Z, then only 2,000 of them were present. So, how is it a Gen Z protest? (sic)."

It is an odd little chapter in their long-running public equation: two people who have disagreed repeatedly, one of them once drawing a line in the sand for the other, and the other now invoking her name as a shorthand for the kind of protester she wants to distance herself from.

Politics, celebrity feuds and public memory do have a funny way of bringing old moments back around.

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