The State of Satirical Comedy in India | Survesh Pratap Singh

George Orwell had once proclaimed that “every joke is a tiny revolution”. All societies grapple with the question of purpose that culture and art forms are supposed to serve. Cinema, music, poetry, are they tools for societal reflection, presenting society as it is? Or of social transformation, proposing a society as it should be? Do they serve the purpose of laying out the bare and crude cruelties of everyday life for the masses? Or an escape from those very realities? These questions, perhaps, are nowhere more starkly present as they are in the field of comedy and humour and what is known as the most recent format of this art form, stand-up comedy.

The stand-up comedy scene has picked up in India only in the past decade or so, with the availability and affordability of internet and smart phones becoming easier and cheaper. While it is a subject matter of debate in the audience as well as among the artists regarding what comedy should be about and to what extent can the risk of challenging societal norms can be taken, some comics choose to do what is called ‘critical comedy’. This brand of comedy engages with the pertinent social-cultural issues and attempts to offer an alternative critical perspective.

It would be a mistaken belief, however, to argue that comedy in the form of satire did not exist in India. The history of satirical comedy is almost as old as the history of neoliberalism and television in India. Post the introduction of neoliberal reforms, and with the launch of a state-supported channel in the form of Doordarshan, television consumption picked up in India among the elites and upper middle class residing in the urban areas. Among the first television shows to get widespread recognition was none other than Ramanad Sagar’s Ramayan. But the first truly satirical comedy show in Indian television history was Jaspal Bhatti’s Flop Show, the title of course being a satire in itself. The credits that flash at the end of the episodes of this show, bearing terms like ‘script piracy’, ‘camera jerks’, ‘lyrical mockery’, ‘hair spoiler’, ‘overacting’, ‘misdirection’ reveal the purest satirical format the show intended to adhere to. With a total of 10 episodes, all available on YouTube, the show did not have a very long life. Purportedly, the show was brought to an abrupt end because episode number 10 was a satirical take on, Doordarshan itself, highlighting the eternally difficult and marred relationship between satire and bearers of power.

Another masterpiece in satire that occupied the television screens, this one for a relatively longer period of time, is a show called Office Office. This show made its debut after about a decade of Flop Show being aired on TV. The episodes of this show revolved around a character called Mussadilal, a metaphorical representation of the aam aadmi (common person), who visits offices of institutions that are part of the state apparatus. The representation of the common man in the show is similar to the cartoon character created by R K Laxman through which the aspirations, desires, difficulties of the common man in independent India were highlighted. In the show Office Office, the protagonist would mark his presence in different offices with certain grievances. It would sometimes be a police station where he is compelled to give bribes, sometimes a municipal office requesting removal of illegal occupation on his property, sometimes in public hospitals where the treatment would be different from the requirements of the illness, and sometimes a cricket board where the deserving don’t get through and favouritism reigns! The show, through satire, represented the life and struggles of a common citizen in India particularly vis-à-vis the state institutions which fail to serve the common citizenry.

The satirical scene in India has been witnessing a slump, and there is hardly any mainstream television show that can justifiably put a claim to its legacy. The satirical scene, however, is far from dead. The avenues have changed and so has the socio-economic environment. Mobile phones screens have replaced TV sets, anytime YouTube streaming has replaced the fixed time and day telecast of each episode of television shows, more and more Indians from different spatialities and sections of society can now easily access comedy and humour for leisure. The typical format of ‘stand-up’ and do comedy has also seen its best days it seems. Increasingly, the ‘roast format’ has recently taken over the internet, where comics either perform a roast (read, make fun of, insult, humiliate) of other comics or sometimes of the audience. The roast format is somewhat of a personalised, crude and nasty adaptation of satirical comedy. One such show based on unrestrained ‘roast format’ is India’s Got Latent, a show curated and created by comedian Samay Raina which has broken the viewership records since its launch, accumulating over 332 million views in total and on an average about 27 million views per video. No other show has managed to shake up the comedy scene in India like India’s Got Latent. The videos of this show have now been deleted from YouTube after the recent controversy over some unpleasant comments made by one of the guests. The show is now the most recent case to become the talking point related to questions on morality, cultural preservation and liberty of speech along with ensuing restrictions. This, however, is not the first nor will it be the last controversy of such nature. Every time a controversy on any such ‘comedy acts’ erupt, the same questions are raised that are being raised right now.

Satirical comedy in India has had a chequered history. Whether satire is being performed under the patronage of state institutions or through privately-owned platforms or by individuals on the digital ecosystem, the same challenges of prevailing power structures, social morality and legal limitations are to be grappled with by any practitioner of satirical comedy.

(Author: Survesh Pratap Singh is a PhD student at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi).