We asked India’s comics if they fancied their comedy as liberal or conservative. Here’s what they had to say.
In a country like India, where taking offence is a national pastime, how political can the comic scene be? Is it okay to make jokes on politicians and their politics, or is everyone too scared of Jaya Bachchan?
We sent email questionnaires to India’s leading comics and satirist to get answers to these questions. We also asked them to rate themselves on our liberal-conservative scale.
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ContributeNext on our series is Amit Tandon, aka, The Married Guy. He’s a Delhi-based comedian and wants to bring comedy to the corporate world with this company “Grandmasters of Comedy”.
After Bollywood, politics is our second-most popular time pass (I also consider cricket as politics). So, there is always some amount of politics in comedy. Almost everyone will have a Rahul Gandhi joke. However, very few comedians have read enough to have a clear point of view on politics and, therefore, political comedy is limited to the use of stereotypes about politics as punchlines.
So, I don’t see as much maturity about politics in comedy as we see in hasya kavis. I still believe hasya kavis are able to make their points more clearly than stand-up comedians.
It’s not important at all. Although comedy is an outlet for all the frustration and anger felt by the comedian, the only measure of good comedy is that it should make people laugh. I haven’t seen people changing their thought process because of a stand-up comedy show. They might agree with you, but they will go home and forget about it. At the most, they will say you were good. But if you are not funny, then they will hate you and even heckle you to leave the stage.
Anyone doing comedy on TV is a conservative comic. When you are doing corporate shows, you HAVE to be conservative. It is only in ticketed public shows among cosmopolitan crowds where you can afford to be completely liberal. I am also conservative up to a certain extent.
I would be an eight.
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