Ravi Kishan’s daughter chose the Army over Bollywood: ‘Go ahead beta’, he told her
Ishita Shukla trained with the NCC before becoming a Mahila Agniveer in 2023
Dubai: Ravi Kishan told his daughter to go ahead. Then he thought properly about the training, the physical demands and what he had just agreed to, and started backtracking.
Ishita Shukla asked him one question in reply, and it ended the discussion.
Hers is a story that keeps finding new audiences, and it has been circulating again this week. The reason is the contrast at the heart of it. In an industry where the children of stars tend to follow their parents into it, she went the other way.
Who she is
She was born on 10 February in Barain, in the Jaunpur district of Uttar Pradesh, to Ravi Kishan Shukla and Preeti Shukla, and studied at Rajdhani College, part of Delhi University.
Her father is one of the most recognisable faces in Bhojpuri cinema, with more than 200 films behind him, and has been the BJP member of parliament for Gorakhpur since 2019.
She has three siblings: Riva, Tanishk and Saksham. Riva has trained in filmmaking and acting, which makes the divergence in the family neater still.
She spent around three years as a cadet with the 7 Girls Battalion of the National Cadet Corps, Delhi Directorate, and received an Award of Excellence from the Additional Director General of the NCC in 2022.
In January 2023 she marched in the Republic Day parade at Kartavya Path with the NCC contingent, having trained through a Delhi winter to get there. Her father marked it publicly at the time.
"My brave daughter Ishita Shukla has been working very hard for the past 3 years to serve our nation," he wrote. "She is a cadet of 7 Girls Battalion of Delhi Directorate, training in this bitter cold and fighting the fog for the Republic Day Parade at Kartavya path."
She has posted from her training since, including footage showing bruises picked up along the way. She has named the retired Indian Army officer Major Nithi CJ as her role model.
Enlisting
In June 2023, at 21, she was selected under the Agnipath scheme as a Mahila Agniveer.
Agnipath, introduced in 2022, recruits personnel on four-year terms with a proportion retained afterwards for longer service. It was contentious at launch and remains debated. Mahila Agniveer refers to women recruited through it.
The conversation with her father
His first answer was supportive and his second thoughts were not.
By his own account, she told him one morning that she wanted to join through the Agnipath scheme, and he told her to go ahead. Then, as a father, he began worrying about the physical demands of the training and questioned whether she should do it.
Her response, as he has described it, closed the matter. She asked him why he wore a kurta and went to Parliament.
The point being that he had chosen his own form of public service and she was entitled to choose hers.
Why it keeps coming back
Anupam Kher congratulated her publicly when the news first emerged, describing the decision as an example for young women considering the forces.
The reaction then, and each time since, has been about the contrast rather than the career itself. Comments centred on how rarely a politician's child enters the military, and on how many star children go the other way.
She is not entirely without precedent. Captain Dr Shreyashi Nishank, daughter of the former Uttarakhand chief minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, joined the Army Medical Corps some years ago.
But in a family where cinema was the obvious route, and with a sister who took it, Ishita Shukla's choice remains the more unusual one. Which is presumably why it has now been rediscovered three times.
