FLAME Univeristy, Pune

The interaction between Stand-up Comedy and Caste In India

Shrutika Parli

11th Feburary 2021

Abstract

From the 2010s, a new comic trend spread across India, dealing with a single comedian and an

audience. This was a stand-up comedy, and it did not take long for it to become accepted among

urban youth. However, long after its advent in India, the stand-up scene does not seem to have

gained much intersectionality, especially with regard to caste. There is little to no representation of

Dalit and lower caste voices. The comedians as well as their audiences are mostly upper-caste

people living in urban environments. There also seems to be a lack of caste consciousness among

comedians and audiences alike. Comedians often make jokes that have casteist undertones and

make references to their own upper-caste identities in their routines. This article analyses popular

standup comedians and their stance on caste, as well as instances in which they have mentioned

caste in their shows. It also outlines the broader issues of caste in Indian society. An attempt is also

made to look at alternative comedians and routines which deviate from upper caste-dominated

comedy. Further, it reflects on the ways that such comedians and routines are only a microcosm of a

larger society and a reflection of a bigger problem.

Keywords: caste system, stand-up comedy, Savarna, Dalit, discrimination, Brahmin, Indian

society

Introduction
Stand up comedy is a genre or form of comedy, in which the comedian addresses a live

audience directly from a stage. It is usually performed without the use of props, or any

supportive materials, with the comedian being the only thing on stage. An advantageous

feature of stand up comedy is that it can be performed anywhere there is a live audience and a

makeshift stage, such as clubs, parties, festivals, colleges or theatres.

This form of comedy has often been associated with subversive elements and elements of

satire. This is partly due to the idea of jester’s privilege, drawing upon the concept of Jester’s

in medieval Europe, who performed comedic routines in royal courts. Using comedy as a

shield, these performance artists were often the only people allowed to allowed to critique or

insult the royal family and king without facing legal repercussions for the same. According to

Jester’s privilege, audiences during a stand up comedy performance enter into an unspoken

agreement with the comedian, which allows the comic to suspend social norms and introduce

controversial or scandalous subject matters onto the stage. (Otto Beatrice.2007)This allows

for critique of existing power structures, as well as political and social satire.

In India too, comics, as well as audiences have hailed stand up comedy as a progressive

medium which has the potential to address and criticize wider social issues and practices.

(Film Companion. 2017) However, while the nature of stand up comedy can be used for

subversion, and often is, many comedians in India maintain caste as a blind spot which is

rarely if ever addressed. This might be due to their own caste locations, and that of their

audiences, which causes them to replicate power structures within their own comedy which

are prevalent in larger Indian society.

Stand up comedy in India-

The history of India comedy as it exists today, is vague. Comedy had always been popular in

Indian media and entertainment, with sitcoms such as Tarak Mehta ka Ulta Chasma being

household pastimes for the entire family. In Bollywood, the funny sidekick often served as

the right-hand man of the hero, or even the villain, merely there for comic relief. However,

before the rise of the internet, and the boom of the 2010s- stand up comedy- the medium of

delivering comedy to a live audience from a stage, was still a niche phenomenon in India.

Comedians were mostly included as side acts, taking in the ten- to fifteen-minute slots in

between the performances of other acts at festivals, pubs, election rallies or birthday parties.

They were rarely, if ever, the main event. Johnny Lever, who would soon enter Bollywood,

first displayed his incredible comic timing by doing stand up in 1980s Mumbai.( Jha 2021).

The current scene of Indian English stand up comedy can be traced to the establishment of

The Comedy Store in 2009. The Comedy Store, began as a platform hosting solely British,

comedians, but soon started hiring local talent. The 2000s also saw the rise of three popular

comedy shows on Indian television, The Great Indian Comedy Show, Comedy circus and The

Great Indian Laughter Challenge. Two of these closed shop with a few years, but made quite

a mark on the comedy scene, with the The Great Indian Laughter challenge effectively

launching the career of the infamous Indian comedian Kapil Sharma. He later went on to

create his own comedy show ‘The Kapil Sharma show’, broadcasting on the television

channel Colours , which became hysterically popular among Savarna middle class

households. (Jha 2021)

With the boom of the internet in the 2000s, tech savvy Indians, especially in urban areas were

exposed to Western standup for the first time, watching the shows of comics such as Vir Das

and Russel Peters for the first time. Russel Peters, in particular, became an overnight

sensation, with clips of his 2006 show Outsourced going viral among India college students.

When Russel finally performed in India in 2008, he promptly sold out every high-capacity
venue he performed in. In 2010, Vir Das returned to India, and promptly started performing

in The Comedy Store every Wednesday. (Jha 2021). In cities such as Mumbai, Delhi and

Bangalore, which had something of a pub culture, stand up comedy became a routine sort of

novelty act. All of this soon developed into the opening of clubs in major cities, entirely

dedicated to stand-up comedy. Comedy kicked off on Youtube with collectives such All India

Bakchod (AIB), EIC, and SnG posting videos of their comedic sketches and routines, as well

as doing regular live shows. These collectives lived and died in controversy, but they had

already ushered in the Golden Age of standup comedy in India. (Jha Aditya. 2021.)

Today standup comedy in India flourishes within its still narrow confines. The medium has

established a concrete online presence. Netflix and Amazon Prime have moved swiftly to

capture the market, setting up comedy specials for specific artists as well as general

programmes, which draw in audiences in the droves. For those who aren’t on Netflix or

Prime, there is always YouTube, a platform where virtually every comic posts his work in

hopes of reaching the stardom of Vir Das or Zakir Khan. There are brand endorsements,

corporate offers and a huge amount of money involved in the industry. Stand-up comedy is

no longer restricted to ten-fifteen minute intervals between events, it is now the main event

itself.

Yet stand up comedy in India continues to suffer from many issues. One that has caught the

ire of many of its fans is the censorship against prominent comics who made religious or

political critiques. It is not at all uncommon to hear about comics embroiled in police cases,

or death/rape threats. AIB’s greatest claim to fame still remains their 2014 roast on

Bollywood stars, the reaction to which forced them to take down the video. Kunal Kamra, a

sharp critic of the BJP government is always involved with some legal case or the other, and

is often in and out of jail, facing travel bans, FIRs and onstage evictions. Agrima Joshua who

allegedly poked fun at Chhatrapati Shivaji received graphic rape threats on video, threats that
did not decrease when she apologized for the video, she had made two years ago. The most

recent and outrageous case was that of comic Munawar Faruqui who was hauled off stage

and thrown in jail for allegedly making malicious jokes against Hindu deities and members of

the BJP government. Though finally granted bail and now out of prison, Faruqui’s arrest

shows that even the limited scope on which the Indian comedy scene focuses is not without

its dangers. (Rawal, R. 2021.)The 2015 documentary ‘I am Offended’, aptly demonstrates the

intolerance Indians have towards comedy that disturbs deeply held worldviews, especially

religion. (Ganguly, S. 2020)

Faruqui has since become the posterchild for an online campaign against censorship. People

are hailing the job of a comedian as that of a social critic, that of finding the flaws in society,

and unabashedly calling them out. Comedians seem to always be pushing the narrative,

testing the edges of what is acceptable in India society. It’s interesting to see that such a

medium, which has long been used to make relevant social commentary both in India and

abroad still remains complicit in the invisibilization of caste in India.

Caste in contemporary India

Caste in India is not only a social evil, it is an inescapable facet of Indian society itself.

Atrocities relating to caste are showing an upward trend in recent years, with the much-

decried Hathras tragedy being only one of many. In rural areas, life is still segregated into

various lower caste and upper caste communities, with people being progressively pushed to

the outskirts of the village the lower their caste is. In urban areas, casteism has taken more

discreet, yet still deadly forms. One of these is the forced endogamy present in nearly all

Indian urban upper caste families. Children are pressured to meet, flirt, date with and

eventually marry within their own caste. Any potential person that the child takes an interest

in must be screened to ensure that they are not from a ‘disreputable family’, (lower caste), but
most parents just take matters into their own hands and forbid the child from having any

relations of their own until they can find a suitable person from the same caste for them to

marry. (Akbar 2017)

Reservations remain a hot topic among India Savarnas. The Mandal Commission riots in the

1990s were perhaps the first-time upper caste silence on caste was broken so vehemently

since Independence. As students immolated themselves and buses were burnt, there was an

undercurrent of anger throughout the demonstrations, which the protestors framed as not the

fear of Savarnas threatened by lower caste upward mobility, but as a fight between

meritorious and lazy students. The urban legend of the meritorious general category student

losing a college seat because a lazy SC/ST student whose father drives a Mercedes Benz is a

tale as old as reservations itself. In reality, the merit-undeserving divide is used repeatedly as

a cover for casual casteism, which starts with derisive conversation about underserving

reserved category students and ends with hiring discrimination, bullying and discrimination

by students and faculty in colleges, and student suicides. This discrimination bleeds out into

housing and renting. (Akbar,. 2017)

In homes, Savarna upper caste people often treat their domestic help (maids) abysmally, not

allowing them to sit on the furniture, or use the toilet, or take any vacations- or even take the

weekend off. They use different utensils if they ever have to give them food or water. In

many housing societies, they make the domestic helps use separate lifts or stairs, a clear

message that they are not worthy of using the same elevator or entrance as their upper caste

employers. Manual scavenging, garbage collection, cleaning sewers, sweeping and other

sanitation work is still largely dominated by lower caste people, whom Savarnas generally

consider unclean. Media houses and magazines talk about every topic under the sun, but

studiously ignore caste issues such as manual scavenging, caste discrimination in hiring, and

the denial of food to Dalit children in schools. Bollywood movies, have never featured a
leading actor/actress belonging to a lower caste, or even introduced such a character in the

storyline in a positive light, happy to go on believing that caste doesn’t exist. There is a

deafening silence among authorities relating to caste and atrocities in contemporary society,

and little to no redressal for people who suffer from the same. (Ganguly, S. 2020)

However, even amongst this, Savarna denial of caste remains strong. There is a strong

consensus among city dwelling upper caste people that caste no longer matters within the

Indian urban context. Caste based endogamy is preserving one’s community and culture, or

finding a match who will have more ‘compatible values.’ They seem to fail to see the

underlying caste-related undertones of Savarna endogamy, even though such endogamy is the

bread and butter of caste, the mechanism through which it perpetuates. The casual ill

treatment of house helps, sanitation workers and others are class issues, not caste ones.

Opposition to reservation is not casteist, because they apparently only target ‘underserving’

students, and aim to preserve ‘merit.’. Caste might not be talked about directly, but is instead

discretely referred to as someone’s ‘family background’, ‘community’, or ‘social origins.’

(Akbar, 2017)

When upper caste people do acknowledge caste, it is usually in response to some atrocity that

happened in a remote village. This response is typically articulated as shock that such a thing

still happens in modern society. This distance that they reinforce, of caste as some rural

phenomenon, the last remnants of an almost extinct monster, is crucial in maintaining the

silence around caste. In academia, there may still be some scope to speak about caste, but

outside this narrow field, looking at societal issues through a caste lens is considered

regressive, and in the worst case, divisive. (Akbar,2017)

Stand-up comedy and Caste

An overview of the standup comedy scene is India shows most comedians are not paid for the

first few years that they start their work in comedy, as most of their earliest shows will be

open mics set up by clubs and comedy companies. If they are paid during their earliest days,

it is only a nominal amount. Thus, a comedian entering the standup comedy world must first

establish adequate financial security even before his begins comedy, either through savings or

a part time job. This is apart from the fact the comic must invest an initial amount of money

from their side in advertising themselves, in the hopes that it will pay off in the long run.

Inevitably, most stand up comics come from privileged upper class upper caste backgrounds,

and come to the comedy scene already have accumulated enough financial and cultural

capital to tide them over those initial breakthrough years. A large section of comics join

comedy after leaving engineering or MBA, or deciding their current well-paying job is not

fulfilling enough them anymore. Whatever the case, it is a career that can require a great deal

of investment when starting out, and this itself serves as a barrier that keeps less privileged

sections off the stand-up comedy stage. (Shivaprasad, M. 2020)

Booking sites such as BookMyShow regularly advertise dozens of comedy shows in big

cities every month. The prices for many of these shows, even open mics, are not the most

affordable. If a well-known comedian comes to perform, the prices can skyrocket to

ridiculous amounts. These shows are held only in select well to do neighborhoods of the city,

usually with a lot of pubs and clubs, where the city’s elite frequent. It is expected that the

audience will be moneyed, dress and speak well, and understand every pop culture reference

that the comedian throws at them. Thus, the audience of live comedy shows also comes from

upper class Savarna households. They do not expect the comedian to broach the silence

around caste that keeps them in power, and they get what they demand. (Shivaprasad, M.

2020). Even on online non paid platforms, such as Youtube , which is considered easily
accessible to anyone with an internet connection, comedians do not change their habits,

stubbornly ignoring caste until, of course, there arrives an opportunity to punch down.

Stand up comedy has long distinguished itself from TV comedy as the more woke, more

progressive medium.(Gandhi 2018) TV comedy, especially shows such the Kapil Sharma

Show have long been notorious been for their sexist and homophobic humor. Before the

advent of stand up humor the standard form of humor in India was making fun of poor, far,

dark, and LGBTQ people, by turning them into cheap caricatures of themselves for cishet

people to laugh at. (Shivaprasad, M. 2020) Stand up comedians soon diverted from such

comedic routines, and devoted themselves to ‘punching up’ instead of down. Punching up

means making fun of people more privileged or powerful than oneself, while punching down

is making fun of already marginalized people, and thus contributing to their marginalization.

Thus, stand-up comedians made every effort to seem sensitive to issues concerning

patriarchy, religion, and the LGBTQ community in their comedy. Whether this led to any

actual change in questionable. Many comedy creators who regularly put out ‘feminist’

content were caught up in sexual assault allegations, the most popular being the AIB

collective which dissolved after two senior partners, Tanmay Bhatt and Gursimran Khambha,

were accused of wrongdoing during the #MeToo wave. Despite efforts towards

representation, women still play second fiddle to men, with none of them reaching the heights

of fame that popular male comics possess. There is almost no representation of LGBTQ+

comedians on any platform. It seems that most stand up comedians have realized that

feminism is good for business, but do not have actual interest or commitment towards the

cause. (Gandhi 2018)However, in terms of caste, this minimal courtesy does not seem

necessary or wise. Thus, there is no anti-caste humor in stand up comedy. There is however,

the opposite kind of humor, the kind that was supposed to have been left behind on big TV

shows, punching down, thinly veiled casteist jokes.

In May 2021, many popular comedians such as Varun Grover and Abish Matthew landed up

in the middle of controversy after they made several jokes on former Dalit Chief Minister

Mayawati. These jokes included several comments about her appearance, and mocked her for

spending money to make statues of herself. It is important to note that they do not go after

other upper caste politicians in the same manner as they do her, despite the fact that they too

are unquestionably embroiled in corruption and other scandals. (Etikala, 2021) In the same

month, another comedian Neville Shah apologized for his old anti-reservation jokes, where

he made fun of doctors who had availed of reservation, calling them incompetent. (Sharma,

2021.) While all of these comics apologized, it was not after much outrage on social media.

it is important to note that making these jokes were not isolated incidents but a common

feature of the Savarna dominated stand up comedy network. Even Kunal Kamra, who once

famously said ‘Rohit Vemula is my hero.’ (in reference to the college student who committed

suicide under casteist institutional pressure.), said on his show ‘Shut up Ya Kunal Kamra, ‘

that he thinks reservation should be on economic grounds. (Shivaprasad, M. 2020)

Another common trope in casteist humor in stand-up comedy is the stereotype of the rude,

lazy, entitled maid, who does none of her work, turns up late and yet demands a high salary

for her work. (Shivaprasad, M. 2020 )‘Gully Bai’, a popular spoof which takes its name from

the Bollywood movie, Gully Boy, has as its central character, a domestic worker, who is

rude, lazy and incompetent. She’s always late, keeps on demanding more money, uses Tinder

and Swiggy, and burns all the food she makes. She speaks rudely to her employers, and

refuses to come on time even after they cut her salary. Her indolence is supposed to be funny,

relating to all those people in the audience who complain of their lazy maids. (Alagarsamy,

2019). Comedians joke about their maids, about them being kaamchors, they joke about

autowaalas, about how irritable and arrogant they are, they laugh about their chowkidars, who

refuse to salute them, they laugh about janitors and sanitation workers. (Shivaprasad, M.
2020) They never speak of caste, and they always deny it, but a cursory glance shows us that

most of India’s 10 million domestic workers are SC/ST/OBC, and so are many of the people

embroiled in the other mentioned professions. (Alagarsamy, 2019).

The attitude of most stand-up comedians on legitimate caste-based issues is the same as that

of most urban modern Savarnas, which means they harbor the misguided delusion of living in

a post caste society. In the paper, ‘Laughing about Caste’ the author, Shreyashi Ganguly,

reviewed the work of 15 popular Indian comedians, and found that only 4 out of fifteen

mentioned caste, and that only in passing. There is a silent understanding that there is no need

nor want to talk about caste. Comedian Abishek Upmanyu in his gig titled, “Breakup,

Respecting Elders & Discrimination”, makes fun of discrimination, alleging that it a small

matter, and that there are many more important issues that need to be tackled by the

authorities. In this same segment, he also makes a racist/colorist joke about a police man

calling a man ‘kaale kaulte’, and telling him to go home before dark so that cars don’t hit him

because they wouldn’t be able to see him. (Ganguly, S. 2020)

When comedians do directly mention caste, it is only to declare their caste dominance, or to

victimize themselves. There is a constant assertion of the minority status of Brahmins. For

example, Sundeep Rao, once called being Brahmin a ‘disability’, and invited all the Brahmins

in the house to a caste party where they would read religious books like the Ramayana. Sneha

Suhas, a Brahmin comedian, once joked about not wanting to do an MBA as she realized that

she ‘belonged to a minority community with no reservation’. Prasad Bhat talked about how

hard it was to start a comedy career when coming from a Brahmin family. (Shivaprasad, M.

2020) Sundeep Sharma in his ‘Bombay ka Brahman Bro’, jokes about how Brahmins were

once at the top of the caste ladder, but now the order has been reversed. According to him ,

Brahmins no longer have any monetary power, and no hero in a Bollywood stereotypically

Brahmin last name . (Ganguly, S. 2020) The victimhood in these jokes is part of the larger
discourse surrounding caste in the country, a sob story about how Brahmins have now

become the real minority, and are being shuttled out of the country by underserving

reservation students stealing their seats.

Anti caste comedy

It is clear to see from all this that Indian standup comedy is still dominated by upper class

elites. There is little to no intersectionality here, especially about caste, and even among the

smaller number of women comics. It is possible that true anti caste comedy, or true

progressive comedy shall be available only when a Dalit/OBC comic comes on stage to make

jokes on the caste system. However, there is still no presence of such comedians in the scene.

This of course, has to be looked at from a broader sociological perspective, where the lack of

internet exposure, financial and social capital, and a dreath of English education keep the

Dalit comedians off the stage. Few stand up comedians today acknowledge caste is a real

issue, let alone critique the structure. Among these is Sanjay Rajoura, who often makes fun of

his own caste and male privilege in a self-deprecatory way. He acknowledges that caste is

one of the biggest issues that is not talked about in our society, and says that there is a lack of

conscious critique amongst Indian comics. There exists a comedy YouTube channel called

Temple Monkeys, the creators of which often make satirical videos centered on caste, and

criticize the dominance of upper caste narratives in comedy, especially in the Tamil scene.

(Shivaprasad, M. 2020)A notable comedy performance from them Sit down Comedy, includes

a criticism of the Tamil comedy scene, which is under heavy brahmin domination. The Dalit

character in the scene has no choice but to sit along with the primarily upper caste audience

and laugh at the comedian’s casteist jokes. When he finally gets a chance to perform, there no

one around to listen to him. (2019, The News Minute)

Deepika Mhatre, a cook during the day, and a comedian by night, was introduced to comedy

through a talent competition organized for domestic workers by her employers. After being

discovered at the performance, she started doing stand up comedy nightly, while also cooking

in four houses to supplement her pay. Mhatre observed that most stand-up comedians made

derogatory jokes about their maids. Deciding to flip the script, Mhatre started to make

comedy routines about her employers, or memsahebs, adopting a critical tone towards the

urban Indian Savarna middle class. (Sahoo 2018)However, it should be noted, that nowhere

does Mhatre mention caste in her comedy, neither is she clear about her own caste position

with regards to that of her employers. ( Shivaprasad, M. 2020) Nevertheless, as small as the

current scope of non-Savarna stand up may be, it is refreshing to see that there are alternative

voices coming up in such a heavily hegemonized place.

Conclusion

Yet, we still should be aware of the fact that stand up comedy in India does not exist in

isolation. The lack of representation of Bahujan voices, the casteist humor, the assertion of a

post caste society and the victim narrative of upper castes in Indian comedy is just a

reflection, of Savarna beliefs and culture. The comedian on stage making jokes is no less nor

no more casteist than the man who sits in the audience laughing at his witticisms. Comedians

make such jokes not only because they themselves have fallen prey to caste bias, but also

because they are aware that their audience shares their prejudices. For them, this is a safe

space, an echo chamber in which to air their regressive views and reinforce them. Even

comedians who do not make casteist jokes, never speak about the system, because to speak

about it the way it exists, would make their mostly Savarna audience angry and
uncomfortable. Caste thrives in the invisibilization that we have garbed it in, and it isn’t only

the comedians who are to blame. They are only the symptom of a problem, children of a

disease that continues to torment lower caste people even as it tells them caste doesn’t exist.

In the case of standup comedy, there has been much assertion by Bahujan social media

handles, and a mass calling out of comedians who use casteist jokes. One can only hope that

in the near future, caste will become finally become a PR issue for comedians, though

whether it will lead to any real change is doubtful. After all, Savarna society seems more than

content to draw its blinders against caste, for after all, if one doesn’t acknowledge it, then one

can’t be held responsible for it.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Professor Maya Dodd for her support and encouragement while writing

this paper, as well as for providing her valuable comments and insights. I would also like to

thank Sneha Parli, Neelam Lour Ravi and Srinidhi Ramakrishnan for their suggestions which

helped with providing better conceptual clarity.

Declaration of Interests

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

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