Opinion Why Indian Express editorial on Kalyan Banerjee mimicry row misses the mark
It should be everyone's right to make fun of anyone and everyone, including the people leading us
While speaking during a programme in West Bengal’s Sreerampur, Kalyan Banerjee claimed he would do it a thousand times as he targeted Jagdeep Dhankhar. (Video screengrab) 
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Last week, Trinamool Congress MP Kalyan Banerjee channelled the inner fourth grader in him and put on a little show for his fellow parliamentarians, akin to what you might see in some classrooms across the country. The only thing missing was a blackboard with a cheeky caricature of the Vice President and Rajya Sabha chairman, Jagdeep Dhankhar. This, on the heels of the mass suspension of 146 Opposition MPs during the Winter Session of Parliament just happened to be timed perfectly with the passing of new criminal law bills by the ruling party.
Whether or not the act itself could claim any comedic merit is up for debate. Humour has and will always be highly subjective. Wodehouse has an audience. Amid increasingly intolerant “woke” culture — the irony of that statement is a joke in itself — the last thing we need is a joke police. As the stand-up community will attest, when it comes to humour, it has to be either all or nothing. Either everything is a target or nothing should be. The problem with drawing a line is that it begets more and more lines until there will be nothing left to joke about. The difference then comes to how you deal with it. Don’t like a joke? Change the channel. That’s why I disagree with this newspaper’s editorial that criticises Banerjee’s action as, “An own goal” (IE, December 21).
The real joke here is the ruling party’s sudden concern for constitutional offices like those of the President, the Vice-President and the Speaker. Their shrill insistence on exempting these offices from satire rings hollow, given their own treatment of our former vice-president, Hamid Ansari. Recall the baseless allegations that questioned his patriotism and integrity, simply because of his surname? It doesn’t take a genius to piece together that this sudden concern they have for the Vice-President’s feelings is another masterful ploy in deflecting from the real issues at play. How else do you distract the nation from the high-handed suspension of a hundred-plus elected parliamentarians. Multiply that number by the millions of voices these MPs represent and you’ll get an idea of the injustice. Honestly, what could be more unparliamentary than that? But apparently, there are bigger attacks on democracy unfolding. Bigger attacks in the form of mimicry.
It should be everyone’s right to make fun of anyone and everyone in the country, especially the people leading us. As long as the jokes are not coming from a place of hate and malice. That makes condoning Banerjee’s behaviour difficult, given the TMC’s history with Dhankhar, especially when the latter served as West Bengal’s governor. I agree 100 per cent with the editorial when it describes Banerjee’s defence — “that mimicry is a form of flattery and art, and that he did not intend to hurt Dhankhar’s feelings” — as rather ludicrous. However, this seems to be more a case of bullies bullying bullies and said bullies getting their feelings hurt. It is hard to have sympathy for either side.
What I do disagree with this editorial is the insinuation that somehow, because of this act of mimicry, the Opposition has lost the moral high ground to question the BJP. If anyone is at fault here, it is the media. The said action took place between Banerjee and his colleagues in the Opposition in a private conversation, recorded by Rahul Gandhi on his phone. It was never meant for public consumption. The entire video might be in terrible taste, but it wasn’t like Banerjee and his colleagues staged this event on live TV.
This entire affair is a non-issue that has been given more mileage by large sections of the media. Instead, if the media did spend more time asking the questions the Opposition is trying to get the ruling party to answer, we might actually be given reason to believe that the fourth estate is still an independent entity. If disillusioned youth are breaking into Parliament to protest rising unemployment, perhaps the media should be asking what the government is planning to do to combat the issue. Instead, we have TV crews stumbling over each other to see who can brand them terrorists. Shouldn’t the media be questioning our leaders why they are suspending elected members of parliament for doing their job? Instead, they seem more content singing paeans to the ruling party for replacing British Raj rules with even more sinister pieces of legislation that consolidate power at the Centre and hurt state governments. A media that forgets its role to check and balance the ruling government and instead serves as a collective mouthpiece for political overlords — what could be more undemocratic than that?
Saju is an editor and a stand-up comedian
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