RGV’s Independence Day post: Filmmaker calls freedom from marriage his biggest liberation

Filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma marked Independence Day with a humorous post calling freedom from marriage his “greatest independence”. The director also shared views questioning traditional education systems and discussed the growing role of artificial intelligence in replacing conventional professional roles

Mumbai: Filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma, who is known for his controversial opinions, has shared a clever remark with regards to independence on India’s 80th Independence Day.

On Saturday, the filmmaker took to his X, formerly Twitter, and penned a note in which he said that his personal experience with the greatest independence is liberation from marriage.

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He wrote, “The GREATEST INDEPENDENCE I have ever had is from MARRIAGE #HappyIndependenceDay”.

RGV was married to Ratna Varma, although the exact year of their marriage is not consistently documented in reliable public sources. The couple later separated and eventually divorced. Their divorce was reportedly finalized in January 2022. They have one daughter, Revathi Varma, who pursued medical studies and later became a doctor.

Revathi got engaged to fellow doctor Pranav in January 2013, with reports describing theirs as a love marriage. They married on August 15, 2013, in a private, traditional South Indian ceremony at a hotel in Hyderabad. The wedding was deliberately kept low-key, with roughly 250 guests, mainly family and close friends. Ratna was also present and helped with arrangements.

Earlier, the filmmaker took to his X, formerly Twitter, and penned a long note ridiculing the prevalent system and concept of education.

He wrote, “EDUCATION SHOULD BE KILLED Memorise. Write . Pass. Get degree. Get job. This was the formula paper thrust upon us , but now it is high time to tear it up A medical student burns five years of his time doing MBBS, two years post graduation, then two or three more for specialisation , totalling 10 years to learn what the A I in his pocket already knows . The doctor conducts tests , sees data and makes diagnosis from his accumulated knowledge to suggest treatment Now A I is doing all that with far more precision and unimaginably faster without fatigue or preoccupation Geoffrey Hinton, the man who built the foundations of modern AI , is shouting from roof tops that A I will do everything far better All experts agree that AI will keep take over what doctors are currently doing in the next 1 or 2 years”.

He asked why exactly are students still preparing for NEET or joining medical courses when diagnosis is algorithmic and surgery is robotic.

He shared, “The human doctor slowly starts becoming a middleman for which he doesn’t need to do a course for 10 years. Teachers still say, ‘It’s in the syllabus’. Parents still say, ‘Everyone else is doing it’. The youngster who dares to ask ‘Why am I memorising what my phone already knows?’ is treated like a radical instead of the only sane person”.