It had found itself in hot soup barely a month ago, when an episode of the popular comedy talent show India’s Got Latent, which was shot there, ran into trouble for comments made by podcaster Ranveer Allahbadia. In fact the place was vandalised even in 2020 — back then, the offence-takers, who were aggrieved over a 2019 stand-up act by comedian Agrima Joshua, belonged to the MNS.
This is the sad part, that we’ve seen all this before. The offence-taking machinery in our country has aggressively been targeting stand-up comedians and humourists of all kinds for the past decade. It’s no secret that at this time in our country, if you want to chase your comedy dreams, your arsenal should not just contain sharp jokes, but also a thick skin to endure online abuse and a terrific lawyer on speed dial.
In an ideally functioning democracy, it’s the comedians and artistes who should toggle with the line in the sand when it comes to pushing boundaries, but in the present scenario it’s the offence-takers who get that privilege.
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There are certain topics that have long been no-go zones when it comes to making jokes. Religion was the obvious one. Soon, politics joined the list and with each passing year a few more are added to the ever-expanding “thou shalt not” list.
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The chilling effect of targeting stand-up comedians over the last decade would, inevitably, spread to other art forms. Take the aforementioned Allahbadia controversy. He got into trouble for making a “what if” joke about parents. Given the scale of trouble that he and the other participants of the show got into for this, I can imagine TV, film and ad studio executives making frantic calls to have any references or story points about children making fun of or confronting their parents to be modified or completely dropped from their scripts. Henceforth, we’re all supposed to be well-behaved “sanskari” offsprings.
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This tendency to play it safe and not ruffle any feathers makes for a bland and bleak landscape when it comes to storytelling. Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap recently criticised the bosses at Netflix while praising the British limited-series drama Adolescence, claiming that such sensitive and bold subject matter would have never been greenlit had it come from an Indian creator. In how many other countries, where Netflix makes content, would it be so easy for a group of hooligans to enter their offices and break furniture?
The self-censorship bug is fast capturing YouTube content creators and podcasters as well. Programming that should thrive on open and honest discussion is being forced to stifle itself and be satisfied with half measures. That’s not to say that there aren’t artists or commentators who are smartly working their way around these restrictions but they do so with full knowledge that they might have to shut shop if push comes to shove.
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So, is it all bleak, with no respite in sight? Not entirely. There’s a Hindi phrase I often hear from comedians when asked why they still choose to stick around and do what they do, and the phrase is “aur kahaan milega itna comedy content?” (where else will one get this abundance of comedy content?)
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Even in the Kamra kerfuffle the funniest bits are unscripted. Like the leaked audio of a Sena party man calling and threatening to beat up the comedian: Upon finding out that Kamra is in Tamil Nadu, he responds “abhi Tamil Nadu kaise aayega bhai?” (How am I supposed to travel all the way to Tamil Nadu?)
Or the men who landed up at Habitat yelling at the staff to present Kamra to them, perhaps believing that the performance space is some weird comedy lab with lodging where they grow and store anti-national satirists.
The Habitat has, for now, decided to close down. Sadly, thanks to our political overlords, the iconic ‘H’ logo which features in the background of so many comedy videos and photographs — thus becoming a symbol for humour — will disappear for a while.
The writer is a podcast producer and stand-up comedian
