Did Karan Johar lie about his family’s ‘Halwai’ background?

Karan Johar in his autobiography, "An Unsuitable Boy," wrote that his paternal side of the relatives were "halwais". However, did he just make this up?

By: News Desk |
May 14, 2017 3:02 pm

If you’re someone who’s fond of Bollywood movies, there’s no way that you have missed Karan Johar’s movies. The extreme display of wealth, designer clothes, exotic locations, and high-voltage drama is what you generally witness in most of his films. And they work well for the Indian audiences.

Starting from his sexual orientation to his family background, Karan Johar has bared it all in this much-anticipated memoir An Unsuitable Boy. When KJo narrated his emotional rags to riches story through his book, all his fans were floored over the dramatic portrayal of family and relationships. It was no less than a Bollywood film made under the Dharma productions banner that ran high on emotions.

In his autobiography, Karan Johar claimed that his relatives on his paternal side were all halwais and his father, Yash Johar was the only educated one in the clan who was fluent in English. However, looks like some of his relatives are miffed with the film-maker for allegedly giving out wrong facts.

According to a report in the Indian Express, Karan Johar’s grandfather was working in a government organisation in Lahore before he opened a sweets shop in Delhi. Johar’s uncle Ved Prakash Johar joined the IAS after he got a journalism degree from Columbia University, New York. Also, his other uncle was in the army. The “relatives” that KJo was talking about was this one uncle who ran a very successful sweet shop in Delhi.

Basically, if these revelations about the real family background are actually true then this part of the book that we thought was the other side of the merriment and more of struggle story was nothing but Karan Johar apparently putting a dollop of extravagant emotions and brilliantly narrating his life events in an exaggerated form just like his movies. To be honest, it just shows Johar’s undying love for fictional Hindi films. It reflects in his book too, no? Strange Karan Johar went on to write an autobiography without being completely being aware of his family background. It’s as strange as it gets.

Meanwhile, the Express report suggest that one of his relative Rajiv Nayar, who is a senior Supreme Court counsel is considering to file a defamation case against Karan Johar.