A Silly Season

IS INDIAN POLITICS going through a silly season? I ask the question because I could hardly believe it when the Maharashtra legislative assembly passed a privilege notice against a comedian last week.

- Tavleen Singh

This came after Shiv Sena goons owing allegiance to the deputy chief minister turned up at the studio in which the comedian told his joke and started throwing chairs and tables around and vandalising anything else they could get their hands on. Now that is something that should have been discussed in the assembly since vandalism is a crime but instead, it was the comedian who continued to be under attack all week. He has been warned not to come to Mumbai because if he does, he will be arrested. Wow! Over a joke? Have our political leaders forgotten that India is a democracy?

In most democratic countries, and in some not so democratic countries, political leaders learn to deal with jokes and satirical jibes against them. And with being lampooned. Donald Trump is lampooned daily on American late-night TV shows and Alec Baldwin's impersonation of him is a class act. In most democratic countries, satirical magazines flourish and often get closer through satire to the truth of a political problem than us 'serious' hacks. Satire used to be appreciated once upon a time in our own dear 'mother of democracy'.