India’s Got Hypocrisy: When Comedy Sets Off More Fireworks Than National Issues
Did you hear about the latest national emergency? It’s not the economy. It’s not inflation. It’s not even healthcare. Nope, it’s a stand-up comic telling a joke. You see, in India, the greatest threat to our sovereignty isn’t a geopolitical showdown or a crumbling infrastructure — it’s a punchline that offends somebody. So, if there is one thing that riles people in this nation, it is not food inflation or the absence of decent sanitation, it is the question of whether a comedian’s performance crosses some nebulous boundary.
India’s current comedian-in-chief is no less than Kunal Kamra, whose latest stand-up set raised more outrage than, say, most national concerns put together. The backlash was so fierce that it almost felt like Kamra was threatening to destabilize the country. Social media platforms exploded. Politicians and self-proclaimed moral guardians dusted off their keyboards to spew righteous indignation. The outrage was so intense that you’d be forgiven for thinking Kamra had just declared war on the nation, rather than cracking a few harmless jokes.
Let’s take a moment to reflect. As Kamra’s set trended on all social media platforms and illuminated the news cycle, what else was transpiring in India? Oh, yeah — kids were still having trouble accessing good education, millions of individuals were without proper healthcare, and the national poverty rate was around 30%. Yet, the national conversation was about a comedian who mocked the powers that be. Makes you think about where our priorities are, doesn’t it?
Of course, a discussion of freedom of speech is a healthy one to have. But when a joke engenders more discussion than the actual issues that afflict the nation, something is wrong. We’re all too busy bellowing about a comedian’s use of humor, while the country further continues to grapple with structural problems seemingly without end.
The hypocrisy is evident. How do we call upon boundless hours of indignation over a comedian’s performance, yet cannot call forth the same fervor to confront India’s long-standing problems of poverty, education, and healthcare? Consider it for a moment: In a nation where millions of kids still can’t read or write at grade level, where public healthcare is still an unaffordable luxury for most, why is the comedy circuit in the spotlight during national debates?
Think about it: The Indian government, rather than dealing with the nation’s most critical problems, appears much more interested in pursuing comedians. Take the “India’s Got Latent” scandal, in which some prominent names from the stand-up and Influencer circuit such as Samay Raina, Ranveer Allahbadia, and Apoorva Makhija were caught in the crossfire of excessive policing, and what was the actual offense? Merely voicing opinions, in ways that would make some people uncomfortable.
Get Druti Banerjee’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Let’s put in some more perspective here. India invests less than 1.5% of its GDP in public health, one of the lowest rates among developing nations. At the same time, India’s literacy rate is around 74%, which leaves a considerable portion of the population behind in the educational system. And yet, when it comes to actual problems, the national will of the people is as sluggish as a sloth on a Sunday afternoon. But if a comedian makes a joke about a political figure, by gosh, that’s a different story. The police move in quicker than you can say “freedom of expression.”
The irony becomes even more evident if you look at how the media reports these stories. Kamra’s one-liners dominate the headlines, while the reality that millions of Indian children are still out of school is pushed to the back pages. The reporting of his stand-up act is a classic case of how celebrity and controversy tend to get more play than the issues that define the very fabric of society. Kamra gets more attention for a joke than India receives for having still a public health system that is underfunded and weighed down by its magnitude.
It’s not only the media, either. Public personalities within the government are more concerned about upholding the dignity of their political ideologies in the form of social media tantrums than paying attention to real issues that are crying out to be addressed. The debates about Kamra’s set have altogether dominated the talks on important matters like unemployment, farmer suicides, and the state of the environment.
But wait, let’s discuss the plain absurdity of the situation. Why is the whole country so concerned with policing comedy? When comedians such as Kamra question power structures, they are met with a degree of outrage that is utterly disproportionate to the offense. Comedy, after all, is meant to be a reflection of society, a mirror that points out its absurdities, flaws, and contradictions. But the moment that mirror shows anything other than what the powers that be wish to see, the national outrage machine goes into overdrive.
Let’s not forget the levels of hypocrisy at play here. While Kamra’s jokes lead to protests and police action, the same level of outrage is seldom reserved for the government for failing to provide basic amenities to its people. Can you envision the energy it would require to get the government to tackle hunger or sanitation with the same zeal they hold in reserve to police comedy? The energy expended to decry a comedian could likely solve half the nation’s ills, but oh, we are too enthralled in the “joke scandal” of the week.
In a nation as large and complicated as India, where the disparity is deep-rooted, it’s nothing short of tragic that a joke can spark such a heated national debate. The fury that erupts at the mention of a comedian’s punchline, as opposed to the lack of concern displayed towards the real issues that plague millions of people every day, is the unfortunate irony of our times.
So next time someone informs you how “sensitive” the issue is, keep this in mind: the national crisis is not the economy, not inflation, and not healthcare. The actual crisis in India? A comedian made a joke. And for that, we’re all set to torch the entire place.
What a time to be alive!
