The comedian that is in the middle of the current episode is far from being the only one who has been targeted by political leaders, writes Tavleen Singh. (Photo: X/@kunalkamra88)
Tavleen Singh
Mar 30, 2025 12:50 ISTFirst published on: Mar 30, 2025 at 07:06 IST
Is Indian politics going through a silly season? I ask the question because I could hardly believe it when the Maharashtra legislative assembly passed a privilege notice against a comedian last week. This came after Shiv Sena goons owing allegiance to the Deputy Chief Minister turned up at the studio in which the comedian told his joke and started throwing chairs and tables around and vandalizing anything else they could get their hands on. Now that is something that should have been discussed in the assembly since vandalism is a crime but instead, it was the comedian who continued to be under attack all week. He has been warned not to come to Mumbai because if he does, he will be arrested. Wow!! Over a joke? Have our political leaders forgotten that India is a democracy?
In most democratic countries, and in some not so democratic countries, political leaders learn to deal with jokes and satirical jibes against them. And with being lampooned. Donald Trump is lampooned daily on American late night TV shows and Alec Baldwin’s impersonation of him is a class act. In most democratic countries, satirical magazines flourish and often get closer through satire to the truth of a political problem than us ‘serious’ hacks. Satire used to be appreciated once upon a time in our own dear ‘mother of democracy’.
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One of the funniest satires I remember was from the time Rajiv Gandhi became prime minister and started to ask questions that revealed his naivete and his incomprehension of complex issues. The satirist was called Sharad Joshi and the satire he wrote was called ‘Pani ki Samasya’ and in it, he made fun of Rajiv with brutal humour. A line that remains stuck in my memory had Rajiv being told by a villager that in summer the water in the river got very hot and Rajiv turning to one of his underlings and asking if the World Bank could not build a shed over the river.
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Satire was a tool used in those long-ago days not just by satirists but by writers, poets and journalists. So, what has gone wrong with us today? Why do all our political leaders have a nervous breakdown every time someone takes a dig at them? Is it because political leaders in Narendra Modi’s ‘new India’ take themselves more seriously than they need to? I am not sure what the answer is, but can say, after deep contemplation, that our political leaders have become a dull, gloomy lot and that Indian politics has lost something vital and enjoyable.
The comedian that is in the middle of the current episode is far from being the only one who has been targeted by political leaders. There is a long list of comedians who have found their shows cancelled and sometimes ended up in jail for telling a joke that some high and mighty political leader has found offensive. They take offence easily these days.
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So, it was a great relief that the Supreme Court last week spoke up on freedom of speech and clarified that although there were ‘reasonable restrictions’ on free speech, these must be ‘reasonable’. They cannot be ‘fanciful and obstructive’, said the judges adding that freedom of expression was an integral component of a healthy democratic country. Satire, in my humble opinion, is also integral to a healthy democracy and it is more than time that we reminded our political leaders of this.
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The problem is that our political leaders have such a grandiose idea of their own position in society that they often ignore what the Supreme Court says. The Supreme Court ruled some months ago that bulldozer justice was not justice at all, but the Chief Minister of Maharashtra decided to go ahead and demolish the house of the man suspected of masterminding the recent communal violence in Nagpur. In keeping with my suspicion that Indian politics is going through a silly season remember that this riot was caused by rumours that Aurangzeb’s tomb was going to be demolished. The absurdity of hysteria over an Emperor who died three hundred years ago is itself indicative of a silly season politics.
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As someone who loves conspiracy theories, I am beginning to believe there is a strategy behind this attempt to cause mass hysteria and headlines over some silly issue or other. If we start discussing serious political issues, we will have to confront the possibility that the economic boom of the past few years is over and that we are now on the verge of a downturn. This is not just because of Trump’s tariffs but they do not help. If the economic slowdown gets worse, then there could be real problems for the Prime Minister who has cultivated the image of being the leader who is going to make the Indian economy the third largest in the world.
We better get to this position fast because at number two sits our old enemy China. And, since communists rarely have silly seasons, China continues to streak ahead and is now way ahead of us militarily, economically and in new frontiers like Artificial Intelligence and space travel. Meanwhile, if our politicians continue to behave this way, we will spend the next few years sending comedians to jail and squabbling over the legacies of emperors who died centuries ago. We can either cry about this or cheer ourselves up with good satire.
