Opinion Heard the one about Vir Das’ Emmy and an India no longer able to laugh at itself?

Humourists have existed in all shapes and sizes, some famous, some more humble, across Indian history. Some of the best scenes in B R Chopra’s magnum opus Mahabharata featured the witty Narada, taking sly potshots at actual gods. When did we forget how to take a joke?

Vir Das poses in the press room with the Emmy for Best Comedy for "Vir Das: Landing" at the 51st International Emmy Awards at the New York Hilton Midtown on Monday, Nov. 20, 2023, in New York. (AP/PTI)

Kuriakose Saju

November 21, 2023 08:10 PM IST First published on: Nov 21, 2023 at 07:18 PM IST

Vir Das achieved a feat for the Indian stand-up scene on November 21, becoming the first Indian to win an international Emmy for his Netflix stand-up comedy special, Landing. Das’ win is a huge vote of confidence not just for him, but for a larger community of stand-up comedians (including this writer) across the Subcontinent, assuring us that there is an audience for our material beyond our borders. The victory is bittersweet; on the one hand, international audiences are lauding Das for the things he says and does on stage. On the other hand, back home, Das has to deal with forced show cancellations and multiple FIRs because certain groups find his content shameful and denigrating. Criticism of any sort is no laughing matter evidently.

One might be tempted to think stand-up in its current form — irreverent, cheeky, sometimes blatantly offensive — is very anti-Indian culture. It doesn’t keep in line with our sanskaari heritage, where elders are respected and venerated as opposed to being reduced to WhatsApp Uncle or Kitty Party Aunty. The stand-up comedian is seen as a Western import, much like jeans or women’s rights. That isn’t exactly true. Sure, stand-up comedy might have appeared on the Indian radar in the mid-2000s, when Russel Peters found YouTube fame with his “Somebody gonna get a-hurt real bad” bit. And while Vir and a few others started grinding to create a proper scene in the late 2000s, the format saw an explosion in popularity post the infamous AIB Roast of 2015. Open mics started popping up everywhere, a bunch of engineering students started rethinking their life choices, and extreme right-wing and left-wing groups found a new hobby cancelling people. Why stand-up comedians are held to a higher moral and ethical standard than politicians and journalists is baffling, to say the least.

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But the very essence of stand-up comedy, using humour to educate, to empathise, to speak truth to power, has always existed in India. Kerala, for example, boasts a long-standing tradition called Chakyar Koothu. Practitioners adorn elaborate headdresses and painted moustaches, covering their bodies in sandalwood paste. They then proceed to retell stories from Hindu epics, cleverly using these events as allegories for current events. Performed in front of kings, Chakyar Koothu was a useful tool in the ruler’s arsenal to get the pulse of the people. An able performer would be able to get many a knock in at the ruler and be rewarded for their efforts.

With the advent of the film industry in the latter half of the 20th century, many a filmmaker used the medium to drive home similar points with abject humour, literally making a mockery of those in power. As stage shows started proliferating within and beyond India’s border in the ’80s and ’90s, cultural icons such as PuLa Deshpande, Jaspal Bhatti, and Jagathy Sreekumar started using the platform to render their own versions of koothu, spinning hilarious anecdotes and enthralling thousands with a mic. In the literary world, you had examples like Khushwant Singh and R K Laxman, using the power of satire to highlight what they thought was wrong with the world they lived in. This list is hardly comprehensive. Humourists have existed in all shapes and sizes, some famous, some more humble, across Indian history. Some of the best scenes in B R Chopra’s magnum opus Mahabharata featured the witty Narada, taking sly potshots at actual gods.

Also Read | Vir Das says ‘the universe is full circle’ as he wins International Emmy two years after being called a ‘terrorist and traitor’

So the question then arises: Have we become such a prickly lot that we have forgotten how to take a joke? When did filing police cases become the norm? I still like to believe this sort of behaviour is limited to a much tinier, yet very vocal, kind of rabid zealot. The larger public doesn’t seem to have a problem with comedians and their craft. This is evident in terms of the tickets being sold for stand-up events and the millions of views comedians amass online. However, as eyeballs go up, so do the number of death threats and FIRs. As a comedian, the closest I have come to stirring up controversy is when a venue owner in Kerala stormed the stage and pulled the plug on my act because I had jokes about Jesus. I should have been smarter about the whole thing; the giant picture of Jesus right at the venue entrance should have been a dead giveaway of the owner’s predilection. However, I still strongly believe Jesus would have loved my bit. How do you call yourself the son of God without having a heavenly sense of humour?

Saju is a stand-up comedian, writer and editor