Amrit Dhillon is a journalist based in New Delhi.
Behold, a new generation in India has been born with a new trait: a sense of humour. Young Indians are making fun of themselves and pulling one another's leg. They don't take themselves too seriously and can laugh at the customs and foibles of their society and culture.
"You call this news?" I can hear you ask. It is indeed because, while privately Indians can be very funny, Indian public life is devoid of humour. There are no famous comedians or comedy shows. Among stuffy politicians and civil servants, humour cannot survive because the air is too thick with self-love and egotism.
Public events are characterized by overweening self-regard and, in a weird sort of equivalence, slavish deference towards others. Pomposity and bombast rule, always. Levity, never.
When former cabinet minister Shashi Tharoor made a harmless remark some years ago about travelling "cattle class," few got it; many Hindus thought he was being rude about the cow. The film industry is not much more evolved. Bollywood's idea of humour still revolves around banana skins.
That's why the new new humour is a blast of fresh air. The best example of the new phenomenon is a comedy collective called All India Bakchod (AIB) which has fallen foul of right wing Hindu groups and the Mumbai government for a 'roast' it held last month in the city. Famous film director Karan Johar roasted Bollywood actors Ranveer Singh and Arjun Singh in rude and smutty language. The audience loved it.
It was a private event attended by many Bollywood celebrities who, incidentally, also seem to have acquired a new sense of self-deprecation after decades of being treated (and often behaving) as demigods to be revered. But when the video was uploaded onto YouTube, all hell broke loose among those who think they can dictate, in paternalistic fashion, what is funny and what isn't.
Various groups in Mumbai filed police complaints about the alleged obscenity of the show. Some TV anchors foamed at the mouth over how the "modesty of Indian culture" had been desecrated. The police are investigating the 'crime.' A regional political party threatened to disrupt the screening of the movies of the three men unless they apologized.
In a controversial decision, AIB removed the video, which received 8 million views, from YouTube, a move many criticized as a caving in to the loony brigade. They have set to make a statement on what they plan to do.
It's a pity they felt it necessary to remove the video because the group have become insanely popular. The videos I have seen are brilliant spoofs. One pokes fun at the Indian habit of travelling abroad while carrying Indian food and shows a man filling his suitcase with Mummy's home-made pickle.
Another, made after the Delhi gang rape of 2012 when many Indians said women should dress modestly to avoid being raped, is pointedly titled "Rape? Ladies, it's your fault" and shows the provocative clothes that can spur a man to rape – a short skirt, a dress, a tank top and then... a hooded mackintosh, a burqa, and an astronaut's outfit.
India badly needs this kind of satire to dent the widespread view that "Indian culture is the best and purest in the world," as is so often repeated, despite evidence to the contrary (nothing serious, just a few things such as aborting female fetuses, refusing women to marry without a dowry, burning a bride for more dowry, dumping a wife for not producing a son, general corruption). The AIB roast is a "national shame," as some said, but these customs aren't?
The thrust of the complaints against the AIB event seems to be the use of abusive language and how it would "corrupt" the young. Who are these fogies to tell Indian youth how to speak – particularly as Indian politicians often use insulting language about their rivals, but no one protests against that?
In fact, the AIB roast should have been celebrated as the coming-of-age of intelligent and wicked Indian humour, replacing the pathetic earlier genre of inane mishaps and general buffoonery. It showed a new capacity for self-deprecation that is badly, badly needed in a society that puffed up with boasting and self-glorification, to the point where people refer to themselves in the third person, as opposition Congress Party leader Rahul Gandhi did in a television interview last year.
Indians need to reach the stage where they can hold an event like the White House Correspondents' Association annual dinner (where the US president is the butt of merciless leg-pulling), broadcast it and revel in it.
Until we get there, thank goodness for the Internet. It has provided a new universe of humour for upcoming comics for the younger generation to enjoy, outside the mainstream media. The fossils don't seem to realize that this universe is beyond their reach….now that's a nice topic for a spoof. AIB come back. Fast.