Column | Missing: India’s comic sense
In 2021, I watched the comedian Varun Grover perform in New Delhi. As per usual, he had the audience in the palm of his hand. About 10 minutes in, Grover said (in Hindi), “Please understand the chronology. First, I tell the joke, then you laugh and finally, I go to jail.” The laughter was muted, not because people didn’t understand it, but because they understood it a little too well.
Varun Grover
The tension in the room was because back then, the comedian Munawar Faruqui’s legal troubles were hogging the headlines. Across January and February, he ended up spending over a month in jail for allegedly making offensive jokes about Hindu deities, a charge for which not a shred of evidence was ever produced.
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