Rashmika Mandanna, riding high on the appreciation she’s received for her turn as Lilly in Dear Comrade, has been battling language supremacist trolls in Karnataka. The latest ammunition in their armour is Anushka Shetty wishing her mother for her birthday on Instagram. Following the post, some fans derided Rashmika for not being fluent in the language even as Anushka, who has not worked in the industry, had written the message in Kannada.
Earlier, in a fun interview for a Tamil YouTube channel during the promotions for the film – directed by Bharat Kamma and co-starring Vijay Deverakonda – Rashmika was asked if dubbing in Kannada was easier, to which she said she was not good with any language. It’s been nearly a fortnight since then, but there seems to be no stopping the trolls, who have been berating her for letting down Kannada, the language they say gave her an identity. There’s also another group that berates these trolls for usurping her Kodava and Anushka’s Tuluva identities.
Meanwhile, other fans have backed Rashmika on Twitter, telling her that Anushka would never have wanted her fans to troll another actress.
Rashmika has always been targeted by trolls, a sea change from the time when they called her ‘Karnataka’s Crush’, during the post-Kirik Party days. What irks most of them is her broken engagement with another popular Kannada star. It’s been a while now, but that seems to be the one thing they hold against her. Something similar had happened to Amala Paul, who recently shut up trolls with a superlative performance in Aadai.
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The trolls have also been questioning Rashmika about her chemistry with Vijay Deverakonda, with whom she starred in Geeta Govindam and Dear Comrade, and the fact that she’s busier in the Telugu industry.
As for Rashmika, she seems to be growing in strength in Telugu, where she’s to shortly join the sets of Mahesh Babu-starrer Sarileru Neekevvaru, directed by Anil Ravipudi. She’s also part of Karthi’s film with Bakkiyaraj Kannan in Tamil, and Pogaru in Kannada, besides a couple of projects in Telugu.