“If I had no sense of humour, I would have long ago committed suicide”, Mahatma Gandhi.
Can Indians take a joke? No, says Heather Simmons, in the New York Times, and lays the blame for this “serious humour deficit” on the ultra-touchy and near-senile Indian netas who are woefully on the wrong side of India’s demographic divide.
She may have a case. A case in which she finds Prime Minister Narendra Modi a kindred spirit.
“I think we need more satire and humour. Humour brings happiness in our lives. Humour is the best healer. The power of a smile or the power of laughter is more than the power of abuse or any other weapon,” the Prime Minister said recently at the 47th anniversary of Tamil magazine Thuglaq, founded by the late Cho Ramaswamy (the guru of political satire in India).
Our parliamentary cupboard of humour is shockingly and seriously bare. A Lalu Prasad Yadav may raise a laugh, but that is more because of his rustic delivery style than any genuine wit. It’s more style than substance.
The state of humour outside the walls of Parliament is no different. The one rare but genuinely funny and harmless aside from an MP (Congress MP Shashi Tharoor’s Tweet “in cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows!”) created an uproar, and shoved him summarily into hot waters. When actually what he deserved was a pat on the back for a touch of humour, and maybe 15-minutes of fame on the Kapil Sharma show!
Or, take the other brouhaha over AIB’s roast in Mumbai. While it had invective, innuendo, even obscenity, but most parts of it was uproariously funny. The criticism to the roast was not that it was it did not raise a laugh, but that it insulted some religious sentiment (this time Christian) or the other. No concession to the fact that like a roast in the world of gastronomy, a comedic roast will contain ingredients which is not palatable to everyone. So, if you don’t like what is on the plate, please don’t eat.
Comic shows and comedians, especially of the stand-up variety, are growing, and look like the fastest growing segment in the entertainment industry. Shows like the aforementioned and AIB offerings have seen eyeballs like never before, but when it comes to our societal and public space, even humour just does not seem to be in play.
India has had a rich comic past. The wit and wisdom of Tenali Ram and Birbal were devoured and revered. The state of Kerala had a golden run of movies in about a decade or so back with superb, well-written humour as their calling card, most of which became commercial money-spinners.
Why this ‘humour deficit’?
Then why have we come to be known as country, society with a serious ‘humour deficit’, which even a foreigner notices and the prime minister decries? Precise answers, unfortunately, are hard to find. However, an explanation or two can be tentatively offered.
First and foremost, humour is not just the quality of raising a laugh, it is more importantly, the facility of laughing at oneself. Of taking it when the joke is on you, not just on the other. Self-deprecating, if you are with me.
Now, that quality of taking a joke on you on the chin, preferably with a grin, is not a quality born out of thin air. It is usually born in a context. A context of being personally secure in one’s own identity, one’s own culture, of a certain rootedness.
This is also predicated in the context of living with fellow citizens, with similar confidence in its own identity and place, and where the right of free speech borders on the absolute. The right which extends right where another citizen’s dignity, and the law, begins.
However, in India of the last three decades or so, we have become, led by our netas, prickly, so politically correct, that anything said seems to go right in amongst so many. Groups, individuals, some already entitled, some searching for entitlement, are increasingly inured to take up cudgels against the slightest jab, real and perceived.
And then the various political and social groups pandering to various interest groups rush in, and then a narrative is built, a media circus invented, award wapasis and trips to Pakistan suggested, and facts and reason become the first casualty.
The media, in its search for instant gratification, and the TRPs generally runs with the dominant narrative, and rarely looks for fact checks and a post-truth ecosystem is born. The truth, in most cases, is with the hype.
In such an atmosphere of instant offense taking, the collateral casualty is also humour, or even an attempt at it. Think of the Shankar cartoon imbroglio a few months back as a case in point. What was an innocuous cartoon created by the doyen of Indian cartoonists decades ago, without anyone as much as raising an eyebrow until now, came to be seen as an insult and an innuendo?
Or, think of Winston Churchill’s classic retort when informed of his political rival Clement Attlee had suddenly taken ill and been rushed to hospital. “Nothing trivial I hope,” said Churchill. Good luck to anyone trying this brand of humour in India on his political rival, as a hapless Tharoor found out.
If we need to address this situation, we have to create an ecosystem when instant offense-taking is not on. As long as no law is broken, offense should not be a misdemeanor. For, who is to decide what is offensive? One man’s joke is usually another man’s offense. Take the above cited Churchill quip for instance.
Would have the Sarojini Naidu zinger about “you don’t know what it costs the Congress party to keep that old man (Mahatma Gandi) in poverty” been taken in the spirit that it was made in today’s world of ultra-political correctness? Not a chance. There would have been motives attributed and disciplinary action incited for insulting the leader.
The move towards a more humorous society should be an organic evolution. As we grow and modernise as a nation, and identities are freed from narrow confines of caste, creed and religion, we are likely to grow more comfortable within our own skin. And, that will lend itself to a more secure society which will see humour for what it really is, an ability to take it on the chin when the jokes are indeed on you.
In other words, as a society, as a country, we need to loosen up. Like freedom, humour is indivisible. Because the latter is an intangible but critical ingredient of the first. Maybe, like America, we need our own ‘first amendment’ (it would be to be 102nd amendment actually) to ‘preserve, protect and promote humour’, and to ‘ensure that taking offense is not a legitimate ground for violence or harassment, as long as it doesn’t violate the law’. And, I am only half-joking!