On the surface, comedy is laughter, a punchline, a shared smile in a dark theatre. But at its core, comedy is a mirror. It reflects the awkward truths we refuse to say aloud. It sneaks into the cracks of a rigid society and gently – or sometimes loudly – pulls those cracks wider, letting the light in. Comedy is not just about amusement; it is about meaning. It is not just about mocking; it is about marking the line between what is bearable and what is not.
In societies around the world, comedy has often been used to say the unspeakable. When poets were banned and journalists silenced, jesters still whispered truth in the king’s ear. When rebellion was treason, satire was survival. But today, especially in India, comedy seems to be walking a tightrope where one wrong joke, one misread metaphor, one uncomfortable truth wrapped in irony, can lead to serious, even tragic consequences.
Look around and you’ll see it. A stand-up set delivered in a bar becomes the subject of national fury. A tweet, barely a few words, leads to legal cases. A joke made off-stage leads to a performer being arrested before even uttering a word. A web series’ name becomes a site of protest. A roast, designed to offend, becomes offensive beyond repair. A satire show, designed to laugh at the powerful, is accused of corrupting the nation. No names need to be taken here. You’ve read the headlines, watched the hashtags. The comedy is unmistakable. So is the tragedy.
Kunal Kamra’s Naya Bharat and the ones that came before
Like the recent controversy around Kunal Kamra’s show at Habitat Mumbai, ironically titled Naya Bharat. The name itself, layered with sarcasm, became a lightning rod. What was meant as a humorous reflection of new realities turned into a symbol of provocation. The joke began before he even spoke. The backlash was swift as always.
Or the case of Samay Raina and his show India’s Got Latent. The show drew sharp criticism from certain quarters, with accusations of disrespect and calls for censorship flooding social media.
Almost a decade ago, the AIB Roast ignited a similar controversy. Designed to offend, the roast format was honest about its intent. But it revealed something darker. The laughter wasn’t the problem – it was what the laughter represented: a clash between liberty and decorum, between what is funny and what is moral. Comedy, once again, became a site of ethical warfare. Can humour exist in a civil society if it offends? Or is its role precisely to offend so that civility can be re-examined?
Then there was Munawar Faruqui – booked, detained and cancelled – all for jokes he didn’t even get to crack. His case exposed the deep fault lines where religion and comedy intersect in a divided society. Who decides what is blasphemy? Who decides which god cannot be laughed at? Who decides what is comedy and what is crime?
And let’s not forget Vir Das and his Two Indias monologue. Performed on an international stage, it wasn’t just a set; it was a poetic lament dressed in satire. It made some uncomfortable not because it was false, but because it held up too accurate a picture. Once again, ire followed.
Comedy as the language of resistance
Historically, comedy has been the language of resistance. In ancient Greece, playwrights like Aristophanes used humour to mock war, criticise politicians and expose hypocrisy. His plays, while raucously funny, were deeply political. In one of his most famous works, Lysistrata, women withhold sex to force men to end a war, a comedic plot with radical feminist undertones, written in 411 BCE.
In medieval Europe, the court jester had an odd freedom. While others risked their lives for a misplaced word, jesters could mock even kings. But their mockery wasn’t senseless. It was coded. Their license to joke came from the recognition that laughter could be a valve for public pressure – a way to express dissent without violence. Even Shakespeare’s fools – like the one in King Lear –weren’t foolish at all. They were the only ones who could speak truth without consequence.
In colonial India, humour often hid rebellion. Satirical essays, plays and even cartoons mocked the British with subtlety and wit. Bengali playwrights of the 19th century, for instance, embedded criticism of colonial rule and social reform within comedies that seemed, on the surface, to be about domestic life. Bharatendu Harishchandra’s Hindi play Bharat Durdasha (The Misery of India), written in 1875, used symbolic characters to depict a nation suffering under foreign domination. Though tragic in tone, it employed moments of absurdity and caricature to depict the ignorance and complicity of both colonisers and native elites.
Why does comedy threaten the powerful now?
So what changed? Why does comedy, once a tool of the powerless, now feel like a threat to power itself? Why does it provoke such rage, insecurity and brutal retribution?
Part of the answer lies in how comedy has evolved. Stand-up, digital content, social media – these formats are faster, more accessible and often more personal. A joke doesn’t stay in a room anymore; it travels. It is clipped, shared, taken out of context and reinterpreted. What might have been a harmless punchline in a live set becomes a political statement online. And in a time when identity is everything, humour can be easily misunderstood or deliberately misrepresented.
The other is that comedy unmasks hypocrisy. It shows the audience what they might not want to see. A joke about a border becomes a question about nationalism. A skit on religion becomes an assault on faith. A comment on the government becomes sedition. But these jokes do not arise in a vacuum. They come from lived experiences, from disillusionment, from observation. The audience laughs not because the comedian is lying but because they are not.
Performers face arrests, death threats, venue cancellations. Their families are harassed. Their intentions are dissected. Everything is reduced to a question: Whose side are you on?
And that is perhaps the real tragedy of comedy today – it is being forced into binaries. You are either with the nation or against it. Either a moral pervert or a social reformer. Either a hero or a traitor. There is no space for ambiguity. No room for contradiction. But comedy was never meant to pick a side. It was meant to point out that sides exist. That people exist between those sides.
Comedians hold a mirror. But sometimes, societies do not like what they see in the mirror. And so, they break the mirror and arrest the one who holds it. However, broken mirrors don’t stop reflecting its surroundings.
Even in the Soviet era, where censorship was fierce, jokes thrived underground. Anecdotes about Stalin circulated in whispers. In Nazi Germany, resistance groups used cabaret performances to mock the regime. During apartheid, South African comedians used humour to confront white supremacy. These jokes are not always funny. They are often painful. But they persist.
In India too, through clever metaphors, absurdist sketches, puppet satire, old-school mimicry, or even silence, comedians continue to perform. Not because they are brave or reckless, but because society needs laughter. And here lies the contradiction.
People claim to love comedy. But they often only love the kind that comforts them, punches down and doesn’t ask too many questions. However, the real purpose of comedy is not to comfort but confront uncomfortable truths.
Maybe the tragedy of comedy is that it reminds us of things we’d rather forget. The people who get offended aren’t really hurt by the joke, they’re hurt by the truth hiding within it. Perhaps we are asking too much of the art form. To speak the truth, but also be kind. To provoke, but never offend. To comfort, but never challenge. It’s an impossible burden.
But comedy, like truth, has always been unruly. And that is why it matters.
Disha is a Ph.D. Scholar and Senior Research Fellow at Dr. K. R. Narayanan Centre for Dalit and Minorities Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India.
