Delhi administration is right in denying Munawar Faruqi's permission to perform

There is a certain section of liberals in India who laugh at jokes about religion, not because they find them funny but because their status as a ‘liberal’ depends on how hard they laugh at humour based on our religion and culture.

In my opinion, any self-appointed humorist who sees the humour in the Godhra carnage deserves a lifetime ban from all comedic aspirations.

This is what Munawar was quoted as saying at one of his ostensibly funny stand-up gigs: “I was watching The Burning Train on TV. My father came and told me not to watch such nonsense and turned off the channel. I was like, ‘why so?’ He was like this is the video of Godhra kaand. And this is a news channel. I thought it is a movie directed by Amit Shah, produced by RSS… I don’t know….”

He also joked about Hindus being burnt alive in Godhra. “But aren’t they burnt after dying?”

As an agnostic Hindu, I find Munawar’s comedy sickening distasteful and highly inflammatory. He should be grateful he is born in India where he gets to pull his incendiary stunts. Would Pakistan allow such “harmless” Islamic jokes? More importantly, do we need to find humour in religion?

And it is not only about Munawar’s motor mouth.

Dr Chandraprakash Dwivedi’s Mohalla Assi about the touristic desecration of Varanasi, released in 2018 evoked extreme reactions from conservative elements in the censor board when it was shown to the Central Board of Film Certification in 2016. Mohalla Assi based on the well-known novel by Hindi litterateur Kashinath Singh was a scathing critique on the touristic commercialization of the Holy city of Varanasi. In the film, Sunny Deol played a self-righteous priest fighting against the ecological and moral pollution of Varanasi.

The film’s all-pervasive mood seemed to have infected Deol. Never known to use even a single profanity in his entire career, Deol is heard calling himself a ‘chu..ya’ in the trailer and commenting on the rampant “guru-shishya ke naam pe pela peli” (fornication in the grab of teacher-pupil.) in Varanasi.

Worse still and potentially blasphemous were the references to Lord Shiva who is seen appearing in Sunny Deol’s dream and berating the bhakt in highly unparliamentary language. There were many such infinitely inflammatory inferences in Mohalla Assi. Had they been not censored there would have been blood on the streets.

Censorship is not always a wrong thing. Munawar Faruqui may think the cancellation of his Delhi show was denying him his freedom of expression. But someday soon he will thank the Delhi police for it.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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