Indians are witnessing a Greek Comedy theatrical and their rulers are not liking it..

Everyone who laughs on the government, gets intimidated.

At first I thought why write about this? (Now Western audience, please bear with me for a while here. You are going to learn a lot of new stuff about what’s happening in India) People have written a lot about this already. Every last person in India (at least the urban ones, the rural India doesn’t really care about such issues) must have seen and heard Kunal Kamra’s comedy sketch and his song on YouTube.

Again, why write about this? It’s been weeks already. But, then I read a news today, that “the audience members who sat in his comedy show have received police notices.” That is a crazy amount of boot-licking of the current government done by the hands of the police. Now that’s how you kill a democracy!! When you do not know what policing is, and you issue notices to random people for laughing in a comedy show, you have definitely hit a new low.

Criticism is Soul of any Democracy.

-Narendra Modi (Prime Minister of India)

I hardly speak about our Prime Minister these days. The people here and on facebook, and many of you reading this are one of them, think of him as a messiah. I don’t have any problem with you. I too have spared my first vote for him. Anyway, I have been speaking since a long time about the way he has been destroying the Indian image. Modi recently spoke with Lex Fridman, a prominent podcaster in the USA, about many Indian topics. In this podcast he said with great intent, that “criticism is the soul of any democracy and I welcome harsh criticism.” Fridman too, spellbound by the lies of a towering figure like the Prime Minister of a wise country like India, didn’t care to ask him questions. He did not care to research— how he paints a different picture of himself in the West and then does the exact opposite when at home. His speeches in India have been nothing less than inflammatory.

The West, in general has been fascinated by India, and this is long before Modi came onto the scene. There are hoards of thinkers and writers speaking about the Indian mind and the mesmerising, spiritual paradise that India has been, for eons. The West (again, I speak in general terms) doesn’t care if someone lies to them. They are happy as long as they themselves are being flattered. Now, why do I say all of this? Because there is an obvious contradiction in the way one speaks and the way one reacts.

Kunal Kamra, an Indian comic, made a sketch in which he painted the correct picture of what has been happening in my home state. While walking, I have been reminded over and over, that every village and every household (again—general terms) has received some amount of money to vote for the ones who have come into power. I know, this is how the Indian Election works, nothing new here. Although the BBC and Guardian runs shiny imagery of India conducting the largest democratic elections, lets be honest here, this is not entirely true. MLA’s are bought and sold. They are given offers and sometimes even intimidated by the so-called “independent” organisations like the ED (Enforcement Directorate) and the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation). This is an open secret in all of India. Corporates are being sold all of the public land for pennies and still the people who believe in the far-right religious brainwashing laud them for having done that. The common citizen is taken for granted and now we have to accept religion as per their liking— not even the texts that make Hinduism a plural, accepting and loving religion. Young minds are disturbed, the Supreme Court gives orders which say things were wrong after 5-10 years and hence artists, intellectuals rot in jails without being proven guilty. Where are we heading with all this?

Is it really the same in the UK? Maybe. Maybe the society there is fucked too, but I definitely had the right to speak up and register my protest.

Let me take you back to the days when I was studying in England. I was merely a temporary resident in the UK and yet I realised for that first time that I had rights as a citizen. Never had I ever felt so free as a citizen. Where the Indian Police can stop you anywhere to get some “bakshish” from you, I met friendly police officers walking in the streets as if nothing was wrong. I was a young guy in the streets of London. The Climate protests had rocked the capital—this was before covid ofcourse. Photographing as an intern for Extinction Rebellion, I was only a few meters away from Boris Johnson’s residence, the then Prime Minister of the UK. People marched, shouted, sat on the streets, held placards that painted Boris in the worst of images, and yet Boris Johnson (as crazy as he is) took it with a pinch of salt. He never jailed someone without any reason and then let them rot for merely making jokes on him.

To be fair, the entire world, wherever democracy has prevailed, laughs on the heads of their state. That is what makes a democracy. The Greeks too had open theatre’s where comedians would make fun of their military chiefs and elected representatives. They laughed at them and made them realise their mistakes. We elected you to look after our problems— that doesn’t give you the right to do whatever you want. If we don’t like you, we protest. That was the basic rule of law.

How far have we come from this though? I am not able to speak openly and freely about the mishandlings that this government is doing. Every time I write, there is someone who writes— don’t speak of such issues, you will lose many of your followers. Some say that this is arrogance speaking, but that, I feel, is the Indian way of saying, just shut up! We don’t like what you say. The worst part of all this is, even after being proven wrong, many people do not apologise for their mistakes.

Kamra, for once, stirred the river that had gone silent. He opened the dam that had sickened the health of this river. He let people free. He let them laugh. This, in my view, was the best of Greek Comedy. The Greeks would have been proud of this. Showing a mirror to what societies mistakes and especially the government’s mistakes, is not criminal. It is the job of any wise citizen.

The government is almost on its way to pass a law which will give them a legal permission to surveil on its citizens. Giving it rights to eavesdrop on Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook and the rest. It always comes under a cozy title— to eradicate terrorism, but everyone knows where this ends!

Now, the entire audience who sat there and laughed, is going to be investigated as to why they laughed. The politicians of my state have a very thin skin if they can’t tolerate a joke. I know, and this is true from recent hearings from the Supreme Court, that this case too shall be knocked down my the judges in the name of “right to freedom of speech.” But, will that come 5 years later, when most of the audience members and the comedian himself will have been tortured in jail for a laugh? That is where India stands right now.

I speak because I think it is only right to speak on this. I still feel that there is a lot fo self-examination that all Indians— the politicians and the citizens alike, have to do. It is a deep spiritual crisis that we find ourselves in. We have to come out of it at the earliest. We cannot afford to lose this hard-earned freedom because some people want India to be turned into a dictatorship.

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Speaking this brings a lot of criticism on my plate. My nature conservation work and the general idea of bringing people together, can be heavily sabotaged by this. And yet, I feel that it is my duty to speak out this truth. I cannot support madness.

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