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 Ghost of a Banyan Tree

  Image from here Fiction Jaichander Varma could not sleep. It was past midnight and the world outside Jaichander Varma’s room was fairly quiet because he lived sufficiently far away from the city. Though that entailed a tedious journey to his work and back, Mr Varma was happy with his residence because it afforded him the luxury of peaceful and pure air. The city is good, no doubt. Especially after Mr Modi became the Prime Minister, the city was the best place with so much vikas. ‘Where’s vikas?’ Someone asked Mr Varma once. Mr Varma was offended. ‘You’re a bloody antinational mussalman who should be living in Pakistan ya kabristan,’ Mr Varma told him bluntly. Mr Varma was a proud Indian which means he was a Hindu Brahmin. He believed that all others – that is, non-Brahmins – should go to their respective countries of belonging. All Muslims should go to Pakistan and Christians to Rome (or is it Italy? Whatever. Get out of Bharat Mata, that’s all.) The lower caste Hindus co...
121 comments
Read more

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
44 comments
Read more

Tanishq and the Patriots

Patriots are a queer lot. You don’t know what all things can make them pick up the gun. Only one thing is certain apparently: the gun for anything. When the neighbouring country behaves like a hoard of bandicoots digging into our national borders, we will naturally take up the gun. But nowadays we choose to redraw certain lines on the map and then proclaim that not an inch of land has been lost. On the other hand, when a jewellery company brings out an ad promoting harmony between the majority and the minority populations, our patriots take up the gun. And shoot down the ad. Those who promote communal harmony are traitors in India today. The sacred duty of the genuine Indian patriot is to hate certain communities, rape their women, plunder their land, deny them education and other fundamental rights and basic requirements. Tanishq withdrew the ad that sought to promote communal harmony. The patriot’s gun won. Aapka Bharat Mahan. In the novel Black Hole which I’m writing there is...
61 comments
Read more

Romance in Utopia

Book Review Title: My Haven Author: Ruchi Chandra Verma Pages: 161 T his little novel is a surfeit of sugar and honey. All the characters that matter are young employees of an IT firm in Bengaluru. One of them, Pihu, 23 years and all too sweet and soft, falls in love with her senior colleague, Aditya. The love is sweetly reciprocated too. The colleagues are all happy, furthermore. No jealousy, no rivalry, nothing that disturbs the utopian equilibrium that the author has created in the novel. What would love be like in a utopia? First of all, there would be no fear or insecurity. No fear of betrayal, jealousy, heartbreak… Emotional security is an essential part of any utopia. There would be complete trust between partners, without the need for games or power struggles. Every relationship would be built on deep understanding, where partners complement each other perfectly. Miscommunication and misunderstanding would be rare or non-existent, as people would have heightened emo...
9 comments
Read more

The Circus called Politics

Illustration by ChatGPT I have/had many students whose parents are teachers in schools run or aided by the government. These teachers don’t send their own children to their own schools where education is free. They send their children to private schools like the one where I’ve been working. They pay huge fees to teach their children in schools where teachers are paid half of or less than their salaries. This is one of the many ironies about the Kerala society. An article in yesterday’s The Hindu [ A deeper meaning of declining school enrolment ] takes an insightful look at some of the glaring social issues in Kerala’s educational system. One such issue is the rapidly declining student enrolment in government and aided schools in the state. The private schools in the state, on the other hand, are getting more students. People don’t want to send their children to the schools run by the government systems. The chief reason is that the medium of instruction is Malayalam. The second ...
6 comments
Read more