‘What were they thinking?’ Bhansali Productions tags Salman, Aishwarya in Karwa Chauth post; triggers Reddit outrage

Karwa Chauth is usually a day of festive timelines and couple photos. This year, Bhansali Productions managed to turn it into a full-blown online argument with one Instagram post.

The production house shared stills of Salman Khan and Aishwarya Rai from ‘Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam’, with the caption “Kuch tasveerein, kuch yaadein aur mohabbat ka ek khoobsurat afsana! Happy Karwa Chauth.” On paper, it’s a harmless bit of nostalgia. In practice, a lot of people didn’t see it that way.

‘HDDCS’ came out in 1999 and remains the only full-length film where Salman and Aishwarya play the leads together. The on-screen romance was lovely. The off-screen one was a mess. They split around 2002, and the years after were loud, public and ugly.

Aishwarya has spoken about it herself. In an interview from that period, she said “After we broke up, he (Salman) would call me and talk rubbish. There were times when Salman got physical with me, luckily without leaving any marks. And I would go to work as if nothing had happened.”

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These are her own accusations, and she has also said she wouldn’t work with him again. Bhansali knows this history better than most. He reportedly wanted the two of them for ‘Bajirao Mastani’, but it never happened because of the fallout.

So a festival post that frames these two as a romantic ideal, and tags both of them, landed badly with a chunk of Aishwarya’s fans.

Reddit did what Reddit does

The reaction was fast and harsh. One user went straight for whoever ran the account “Whoever used these (social media interns or Bhansali’s PR) is scum for using these pics for Karva Chauth. May they rot in hell. They knew what they were doing.”

Others kept it shorter. “Disgusting to see this,” wrote one person. Another just typed, “Bhansali, it’s done, bro.”

Some commenters went further and insulted the people involved outright. One called them “Shameless beings on the planet,” another said “This is disgusting and pure evil,” and someone else settled on “So sick to post these. Idiots.” A fourth put it more bluntly: “Absolute trash.”

“This was planned”

A big part of the thread wasn’t anger so much as suspicion. Plenty of people think the post was no accident.

“Peak rage baiting,” one user wrote, adding, “I personally think bhansali is the ethnic version of of Sandeep vanga reddy who does shit like this before release to stay in the news.”

Another commenter laid out the timing: “This is just attention farming by Bhansali Productions. Now, because of this, more people will talk about Bhansali, which is helpful since Love and War is coming out in 2 months.”

That last point is hard to ignore. ‘Love & War’ is Bhansali’s next big release, and a controversy this size keeps his name in everyone’s feed whether the post was calculated or just clumsy.

One commenter also pointed at the tagging, which seemed to bother people almost as much as the photos: “Infact tagged both of them. Bhaisahab, alg hi chal raha hai.”

So what actually happened here?

Nobody outside Bhansali Productions can say whether this was a deliberate stunt or a social media team picking an old, pretty set of stills for a festival without thinking it through. Neither explanation makes the company look great.

It’s also not the first time the production house has gone back to this well. A few years ago, it marked the film’s 22nd anniversary with a post tagging Aishwarya, Salman and Ajay Devgn, and that one passed without much fuss. The difference this time is the occasion. Karwa Chauth is about a wife’s devotion to her husband, and pairing it with a couple whose real story ended the way this one did is what turned nostalgia into a flashpoint.

Bhansali Productions hasn’t responded to the criticism so far.