Why India Can’t Take a Joke Anymore

On Jan. 1, as the world ushered in 2021, a stand-up comedian was getting arrested in the central Indian city of Indore. Munawar Faruqui was whisked away by the Indore Police from a stand-up venue for allegedly “insulting” Hindu deities. He was also accused of insulting Indian home minister Amit Shah, of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). 

On Jan. 3, the city’s town inspector told the media that there is no video evidence of Faruqui dissing Hindu deities. However, the comedian has been booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, including the ones that criminalise acts that intend to outrage religious sentiments, disobedience towards public servants, and putting public life in jeopardy by likely spreading infection or disease. 

Faruqui, who was arrested with four organisers, was denied bail. 

The arrests were done based on a complaint filed by Eklavya Gaur, the son of the city’s mayor Malini Gaur, who is affiliated with the BJP. Last week, as Faruqui was getting arrested, Gaur told the media that the comedian is a “serial offender” who often cracks jokes about Hindu deities. Gaur said that he bought a ticket to Faruqui’s show because he expected him to do it again. 

An eyewitness called Jenosha Agnes claimed in an Instagram post that she saw Gaur disrupting Faruqui’s sketch before it even started. She added that Faruqui did end up performing a sketch, which was about attending a friend’s wedding. A few minutes later, the organisers stopped the show. 

As the case develops, some comedians and political leaders are rallying in support of the artist on social media.

But the incident is shedding light on an ongoing and an intensifying hate campaign against stand-up comedians in the country. 

Stand-up comedians often have to reconcile to getting trolled as an occupational hazard. But Faruqui’s arrest has become a cautionary tale in more ways than one. “This is one of the rare incidents where someone has landed in jail,” stand-up comedian Gaurav Kapoor told VICE World News. 

Before this, in 2016, an on-screen comedian called Kiku Sharda was arrested for making fun of an Indian cult leader Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh. Singh himself is in the prison after he was convicted of rape and murder in 2016 and 2019, respectively.

In fact, an infamous attack against comedians in the recent history of India’s comedy scene took place in 2015, when a comedy roast involving stand-up comedians and Bollywood celebrities led to a police complaint, an investigation and removal of the roast video from YouTube. 

Since then, the community has become a soft target for a series of abuse, including violent attacks. Last year, comedian Sourav Ghosh was brutally beaten up for a three-year-old video in which he made fun of the name of Mumbai’s airport. 

Kapoor said that he’s been observing a pattern of planned attacks against comedians, especially over the last year. “These attacks take place via videos, especially by YouTube or Facebook pages run by individuals,” Kapoor said. He added that most of these pages are run by local political leaders who look at comedians as soft targets to attain certain political ambitions. 

In 2018, a local political leader called Paras Rajput, who is affiliated with the BJP, had edited a video of standup comedians Masoom Rajwani and Kunal Kamra to make it look like they were getting heckled for insulting Hindu deities. The video was circulated on social media by trolls. In reality, Rajput had tried to interrupt Rajwani’s show but he did not succeed when the audience supported the comedian. 

The online hate campaign against comedians took a new shape in 2020 when comedian Agrima Joshua faced exceptional hate and abuse, compelling her to issue an apology. Joshua was targeted for a 2019 sketch in which she made fun of a proposed statue of a 17th century Hindu warrior king Shivaji Bhosale I. Shivaji is an icon of the state of Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital, and is also connected to the Hindu right-wing ideology. 

This new wave of trolling meant that even the comedians who lent support to Joshua faced online vitriolic attacks, compelling most of them to apologise. Some comedians like Rohan Joshi spoke about their phone numbers and addresses being leaked, and families being threatened. 

Stand-up comedian Navin Noronha told VICE World News that those running targeted attacks often use small clips of old videos, and use them out of context. Much like in Joshua’s case—where trolls with influencer-like following on YouTube or Facebook use old content to rally hate against their targets—Faruqui’s case is witnessing a similar movement. 

As he battles jail time, Faruqui has already become the face of hate campaigns. There is a pattern of videos being laden with explosives and abusive language. Shwetabh Gangwar, an author and YouTuber with over 900,000 subscribers, had previously told VICE World News that hate speech and abusive language are common among creators to gain popularity. 

In a Jan. 3 video posted on YouTube, content creator Rituraj Singh—who has 534,000 subscribers on YouTube—uses abusive language while demanding violence against all comedians as well as those who he sees as disrespectful of Hindu religion. The video has 53,997 views, as of Jan. 3. In another by a YouTube account called “India Thought”, the narrator took the liberty of putting words in Faruqui’s mouth, which appears to be done for the purpose to incite. 

“We now know the power of doctored images and videos, how they can spread like wildfire online on WhatsApp and how fast these bot accounts are activated on Twitter to spread them,” said Noronha. “We have to be very careful about how we contextualise content. It’s a scary time because in no time, this incident can turn you from a nobody to a famous person, for all the wrong reasons,” he said. 

VICE World News reached out to at least six stand-up comedians for this story, most of whom declined to comment. Apart from the fear in the community of facing more hate, the silence is also symptomatic of the fact that even institutions that are tasked with guarding freedom of expression, are failing to protect them. 

In Agrima Joshua’s case, the Maharashtra home minister sought legal opinion on her comedy sketch even as she faced rape threats to an extent that it led to arrests of those issuing those threats. 

Last month, the Supreme Court of India launched a criminal contempt of court against stand-up comic Kunal Kamra, who had tweeted jokes and criticisms about the top court. Kamra is one of the few politically outspoken comics in India. But not all comedians feel that there is a space of dissent. Rather, there is a culture of self-censorship. 

“Most of us are scared that we will randomly get accosted anywhere,” said Noronha, who has been a comic for five years. “There is no union in our industry. There’s no one to safeguard our rights.” Kapoor added that many like him will have to get personal legal representation since there is no association to help them once they’re in jail. “We will have to be prepared for the worst,” he said. 

Follow Pallavi Pundir on Twitter.