A stand-up comic is being abused for ripping apart fake patriotism

“Whenever you evaluate patriotism with logic, there’s an old Indian uncle who appears.”

When it comes to the sickness that exists in the governance of our nation, laughter clearly is not the best medicine. While we are totally okay with casual sexism and rampant homophobia and transphobia in our movies, somehow, pointing at the government’s lack of apathy for the people that voted them in, is completely and utterly unacceptable.

Having done and dusted the whole Gurmehar Kaur chapter, the latest victim of “having an opinion” is a stand-up comic named Kunal Kamra.

On March 1, the comic had resealed a clip from his stand-up act on YouTube. The hilarious bit was a concise critique of the government’s ill-planned demonetisation drive and its hypernationalistic defence on any criticism. The comic made fun of the usual nationalist and patriotic soldier defence and ultimately came to the conclusion that perhaps the government possibly needs Pakistan to exist just for the sake of making the “soldier” argument.

Kamra’s clip blew up on the internet and was widely shared by many.

Of course, as is the case with any form of criticism thrown at the government, it is always met with a retaliation from the government loyalists, who choose to fight it with reasoned debate and open-minded discussions.

Just kidding. They send threats and harass people.

And they did the same with Kunal Kamra. On March 15, the comic tweeted about receiving threats, including ones that had his address and his phone number. According to him, he has been serially harassed by being added to WhatsApp groups where he has been abused.

The comic stated that he won't stand for bullying of this sort and has filed a complaint with the police. He also added that threats like these are not at all likely to stop him from speaking his mind. 

Incidents like these have become almost typical in our country now. It is saddening to see that something quite as trivial as a humourous critique of a government initiative is met with targetted harassment instead of reasoned debate and discussion. The whole Gurmehar Kaur fiasco has been testimony to the amount of insecurity Indian patriots harbour within themselves.

Epecially in this day and age, when the avenues of expressing your opinions are infinite and yet, and ones with gags even more, it is important that we stand-up and express ourselves, no matter how much we aare criticised, bullied and harassed.

More power to you, Kunal. 

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