It is rare for India’s politicians to laugh at themselves, but a row over an act of mimicry has exposed the extent of the lack of humour and intolerance of satire in the country’s political and public life.
Over the past two weeks, politicians have traded insults over an impersonation of India’s vice-president, Jagdeep Dhankhar, by the opposition MP Kalyan Banerjee.
Banerjee mimicked Dhankhar’s voice, walk and mannerisms on the steps of parliament in New Delhi on 19 December, during protests at his suspension from the lower house – along with 142 other opposition MPs – for alleged unruly behaviour.
Dhankhar, who is also chairman of the upper house of parliament, called Banerjee’s performance, caught on video, “shameful, ridiculous and unacceptable”. “I am a sufferer,” he said in a speech a week later.
Prime minister Narendra Modi reportedly phoned Dhankhar to express his pain over the incident, while Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) ministers attacked Banerjee for abusing the vice-president on the steps of the sacred “temple of democracy”.
Banerjee insists that he has a right to freedom of expression and has called mimicry an art form.
“If someone does not understand art, what can I do? If someone does not understand humour, if someone does not have a cultured mind, I am helpless,” Banerjee says.
“The arrogance of the BJP is so great it has lost its sense of humour. Humour is also a form of protest. Politics doesn’t always have to be about fighting and arguing.”
Humour in India is dichotomous. Privately, Indians can be very funny (Sikhs in particular are famous for telling jokes about themselves). In public life, though, humour is harder to find.
As the social commentator Santosh Desai says, one factor that militates against humour is the cultural bias towards deference which is “almost a reflex”.
“The social instinct is to play it safe and avoid stepping out of line. You don’t want to offend the wrong person and lose that promotion because of an adverse comment,” he says.
Indian politicians and officials tend to take themselves very seriously. One notable exception, long ago, was Mahatma Gandhi, who had a quick wit. When asked what he thought of western civilisation, reportedly replied: “It would be a good idea.”
A lot has changed since then. A few years ago, when the Congress MP Shashi Tharoor poked fun at himself for having to travel “cattle class”, millions did not understand and many more felt indignant on behalf of the cow.
Some Indians believe the capacity for political humour in the country has sunk to a new low under the current government. There is no Indian equivalent of a satirical magazine such as Private Eye, Charlie Hebdo or Le Canard Enchaîné, or the US president’s comedy skit at the White House Correspondents’ Association annual dinner.
Standup comics are nervous about performing in some parts of the country for fear of being charged with a crime, such as offending a particular community. The anxiety stems from the example of the comic Munawar Faruqui who spent just over a month in jail in the BJP-ruled state of Madhya Pradesh in January 2021 after members of a local Hindu nationalist group complained that he was offending religious sentiments in one of his shows.
Elsewhere, political cartoonists have lost their jobs after complaints from the state about their work. The popular cartoonist Manjul had his contract with the online platform Network 18 terminated in 2021. He told the Guardian that it was ended soon after Twitter informed him that it had received a legal request from the Indian authorities to take action against him.
“No reason was given by Twitter and I can’t provide you with any evidence linking the Twitter notice and the termination because that’s not how things work,” says Manjul. “What happens these days is that an editor gets a call from an official expressing displeasure with a story, column or cartoon and the editor acts against the person. I call it undeclared censorship.”
He says it is hard to find newspaper cartoons mocking Modi or home minister Amit Shah. “Most cartoonists just avoid it. It’s too much trouble,” he says.
BJP supporters are constantly on the watch for comments that undermine the official line that India is an emerging power deserving of respect, whose culture is greatly admired by the rest of the world.
“India has always had humour, but in recent years a kind of literalism has spread, a very literal interpretation of the world, and humour has been a casualty. It’s dangerous to be funny. Humour is a powerful form of dissent,” says Desai.
The cartoonist and editor Ravi Shankar contrasts the current pompousness with what Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister after independence, told Kesava Shankar Pillai (no relation), the father of political cartooning in India: “Don’t spare me.”
“Humour and cartoonists have been punished or censored by all political parties, across the board. When politicians are in power, they don’t want to be made fun of,” says Ravi Shankar. But it’s not just politicians, he adds. “Indians, too, can’t laugh at themselves … can’t take even a ribbing.”
