The vandalism at Habitat Comedy Club in Mumbai’s Khar by Shiv Sena members against stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra for his show Naya Bharat, released on YouTube Sunday, was no surprise. In the video, Kamra is seen taking a jibe allegedly at Maharashtra Deputy CM Eknath Shinde for his 2022 exit from the undivided Shiv Sena. While several Sena members have been booked, an FIR has also been lodged against Kamra. Instead of condemning the mob attack, Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis has criticised the comedian, saying, “Freedom should not be unrestrained behaviour… No one has the right to do such low-level comedy and disrespect the former chief minister, deputy chief minister, and senior leaders of the state, who are respected by the people of the state.” In what has become a predictable leitmotif in a dismal pattern, the BMC has begun the demolition of allegedly unauthorised structures at the studio.
From its run-ins with artistes such as Pralhad Keshav Atre and Pu La Deshpande to the current episode, the Shiv Sena has had a problematic relationship with freedom of expression. At a time when technology is collapsing walls, making it easier to widen access and reach global audiences, the shrinking space in this country for comedy, once a sanctuary for irreverence and social critique, presents a sobering contradiction. Rather than embracing the diversity of thought and free speech that new media facilitates, and notwithstanding landmark judicial pushback against state encroachment on freedom of speech and expression in the 2015 Shreya Singhal vs Union of India judgment, in the last few years, India has witnessed a steady erosion of such freedoms, with numerous instances of legal cases, censorship, and threats against performers and artists. From the defamation lawsuit against comedian Vir Das after his performance at the Kennedy Centre in Washington DC in 2021, in which he spoke about “two Indias”, to bans on Munawar Faruqui’s shows for “offensive” content, to the threats against Agrima Joshua for a 2019 act, comedy finds itself increasingly at odds with political and social forces that seek to muzzle criticism and dissent. The state takes the most restrictive view and civil society retreats into evasion or silence.
The chilling effect that sets in with each such incident is a gradual erosion of society’s capacity for diversity, and its ability to embrace uncomfortable truths with humour. For all its parochial outbursts, Maharashtra, especially its capital, is maya nagri. In its best version, Mumbai is a city of ideas, not identities, of freedoms big and small, a city at ease with differences and contradictions, a city that can laugh at its own foibles and irregularities. Incidents like the attack in Mumbai strike at the heart of that self-awareness with narrowing notions of what constitutes freedom. With good reason, the culture industry banks on the talent of millions in a democracy but a comedian hounded doesn’t a creative superpower make.
