Skip to main content

Laughter dies in a country of jokers


Last year India arrested a stand-up comic for a joke that he didn’t tell. The Time reported that Munawar Iqbal Faruqui was all set to enter the best year of his life hitherto with subscription to his YouTube channel crossing 500,000. On the evening of the New Year’s day in 2021, a group of nationalists put an end to Faruqui’s jokes. Soon he was arrested by the police for a joke that he didn’t crack. They said he would crack jokes that might hurt Hindu sentiments!

Faruqui is not the only comic who has been arrested in Modi’s India. From Vir Das to Tanmay Bhatt, quite a few comedians have landed in trouble for the crime of possessing a sense of humour. Laughter is banished from nationalist India.

The latest is a letter written by a Press Information Bureau official to the editor of the Deccan Herald for the newspaper’s subtle sense of humour. The following image speaks for itself. 


The loss of laughter is the biggest calamity that can befall a nation, I think. There are too many jokes and jokers in the country now right from the top places to the village streets. The problem is that all these jokers take themselves seriously. They think they are philosophical giants or saintly ascetics. They have appointed themselves as the custodians of the nation’s morality and culture. So we are not supposed to laugh at their jokes. On the contrary, we are expected to take them seriously. Even an occasional comic relief like what the Deccan Herald provides is being snatched from us. [Here is a collection of a few jokes – just a sample.]

Genuine and innocent laughter is killed. Now our jokes are distorted opinions and standpoints foisted upon us by people in high positions. Those jokes are murders without bloodshed. Or sheer manipulations.  

PS. Written for Indispire Edition 412: Our jokes are often our disguised stands or mysterious confessions or murders without bloodshed... Or sheer manipulations. #OurJokes

 

Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanMay 21, 2022 at 1:43 PM

    Hari OM
    The DH rsponded very well to the letter - but it is indeed sad that political correctness (and correcting) is reaching into the one area of speech where we can all let off steam... as an aside and matter of interest, in posting a video to YTube earlier this week, I was given a notice that "if the video contained any matters of news or current affairs, an approval would be required from..." and I can't quite recall the exact wording now, but it was an office of media affairs or similar in INDIA! YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 21, 2022 at 2:42 PM

      India seems to be on the highway to dictatorship.

      Delete
  2. AnonymousMay 29, 2022 at 6:43 PM

    Its just because of people like you , so called urban naxalites/librandu/communists, country suffers. Never highlights what country suffers from anti nationals like Munaver Faruqqui. Which world you are living in, boss? How can you allow people cracking jokes on your gods, can you crack jokes on Allah or Quran? You know what happens. We have been more tolerant and that is the advantage these Islamists have taken. Hindu Rashtra is the need of the hour, if we at all wish to see India a strong nation, economically, militarily, etc.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Whose Rama?

Book Review Title: Whose Rama? [Malayalam] Author: T S Syamkumar Publisher: D C Books, Kerala Pages: 352 Rama may be an incarnation of God Vishnu, but is he as noble a man [ Maryada Purushottam ] as he is projected to be by certain sections of Hindus? This is the theme of Dr Syamkumar’s book, written in Malayalam. There is no English translation available yet. Rama is a creation of the Brahmins, asserts the author of this book. The Ramayana upholds the unjust caste system created by Brahmins for their own wellbeing. Everyone else exists for the sake of the Brahmin wellbeing. If the Kshatriyas are given the role of rulers, it is only because the Brahmins need such men to fight and die for them. Valmiki’s Rama too upheld that unjust system merely because that was his Kshatriya-dharma, allotted by the Brahmins. One of the many evils that Valmiki’s Rama perpetrates heartlessly is the killing of Shambuka, a boy who belonged to a low caste but chose to become an ascetic. The...
8 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

In this Wonderland

I didn’t write anything in the last few days. Nor did I feel any urge to write. I don’t know if this lack of interest to write is what’s called writer’s block. Or is it simple disenchantment with whatever is happening around me? We’re living in a time that offers much, too much, to writers. The whole world looks like a complex plot for a gigantic epic. The line between truth and fiction has disappeared. Mass murders have become no-news. Animals get more compassion than fellow human beings. Even their excreta are venerated! Folk tales are presented as scientific truths while scientific truths are sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. When the young generation in Nepal set fire to their Parliament and Supreme Court buildings, they were making an unmistakable statement: that they are sick of their political leaders and their systems. Is there any country whose leaders don’t sicken their citizens? I’m just wondering. Maybe, there are good leaders still left in a few coun...
10 comments
Read more

Virginity is not in the hymen

The subtitle of Thomas Hardy’s novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles is A Pure Woman though Tess had lost her virginity before her marriage and later she commits a murder too.  Tess is seduced by Alec and gives birth to a child which dies.  Later, while working as a dairymaid she falls in love with Angel Clare, a clergyman’s son.  On their wedding night she confesses to him the seduction by Alec, and Angel hypocritically abandons her.  Angel is no virgin himself; he has had an affair with an older woman in London.  Moreover, Tess had no intention of deceiving him.  In fact, she had written a letter to him explaining her condition.  The letter was, however, lying hidden beneath the carpet in Angel’s room.  Later Alec manages to seduce Tess once again persuading her to think that Angel would never accept her.  Angel, however, returns repenting of his harshness.  Tess is maddened by Alec’s second betrayal of her and she kills him....
55 comments
Read more