India’s Got Bad Humour: Notes on the BeerBiceps Backlash

Last month, Ranveer Allahabadia made headlines by dropping a controversial joke as a guest judge on a comedy show. The video, after getting viral on social media, earned Allahabadia a flurry of FIRs, and a legal battle was soon underway, determining the parameters of good and bad humour, and castigating the podcaster-influencer as bearing a ‘perverse’ mind. In this article, I try to examine what it is that makes the joke not merely obscene, but blasphemous, as judged by the standards of propriety that are idealised by the mainstream public morality.

Samay Raina’s comedy talent-hunt show, India’s Got Latent, burst into sudden popularity last year, when it was first launched in June. In no time, the show had made a name for itself as a space that dealt in crude humour, with the subject of jokes ranging from fat-shaming, to misogyny.

On February 9, an episode of the talent show featuring YouTuber Ranveer Allahabadia as a guest, became viral on social media, with several users amplifying a segment of the episode. Allahabadia, more popularly known by his YouTube moniker, BeerBiceps, is a role model and lifestyle influencer for many, bolstered by his political creds (having interviewed eminent politicians like S. Jaishankar, Piyush Goyal, Smriti Irani, and Rajeev Chandrasekhar). Besides, Allahabadia was also presented the ‘National Disruptor Award’, by the Prime Minister himself, at the National Creators Award 2024, which places him at the very apex of the Indian content creation scene.

Allahabadia is often portrayed on Instagram Reels as a no-holds barred, edgy spokesperson catering to the brand of affluent apolitical urbanites. At some level, we, as consumers, expect him to be an unfailingly righteous figure, going by the reputation he has built by associating himself with political figures, as well as by catering largely to the lifestyle sensibilities of the Gen Z.

The controversy was sparked off by an incestuous joke Allahabadia cracked in an episode of Samay Raina’s India’s Got Latent, wherein the former asked a participant whether they would rather watch their parents have sex for the rest of their lives, or join in once to stop it forever.

In the following days, Allahabadia was slapped with three FIRs, in Maharashtra, Assam, and Rajasthan, for his ‘obscene’ remarks on the show. Samay Raina responded to the controversy by putting out a statement that he would remove all episodes of India’s Got Latent from his YouTube channel.

On March 3, Allahabadia was finally allowed to resume his podcast show, on condition that he maintain standards of decency and morality, keeping in mind that his show reaches an audience of almost all age groups on YouTube. It is interesting to note that crude humour, in the form of explicit sexism and misogyny, is not something new in the discourse of Indian media. A good fraction of the humour that is passed on as ‘dark’ or ‘edgy’ humour, is, in fact, blatantly bigoted. Sexism, misogyny, homophobia, racism, xenophobia, have become an inextricable element of these comedians’ appeal to the youth of the country.

Only a few weeks before Allahabadia’s obscenity remark, a contestant by the name of Bunty Banerjee made an insensitive remark about the massive protests following the rape and murder of a trainee doctor at Kolkata's RG Kar Medical College, claiming that Bengalis must have gotten tired, after having engaged in so much dissent. It is interesting to note that the joke does not make any attempt to articulate a genuine fear about women’s safety in the country, but instead resorts to the cultural stereotype of Bengalis as inherently infused with argumentative and dissensual dispositions, to elicit mindless laughs from the judges and the audience.

In an episode of The Kapil Sharma Show, the eponymous comedian-anchor cracked a risqué joke, about a boy waking up to watch a cricket match early in the morning, and instead falling upon his parents having sexual intercourse.

The normalisation of misogyny through seemingly innocuous humour is, of course, not particular to India, although it does arise with startling regularity in the Indian stand-up comedy scene. It is also pertinent to note that the question which got Allahabadia into trouble was borrowed by the podcaster from an episode OG Crew’s ‘Truth or Drink’, from January of this year, which, interestingly, was not followed by any controversy.

It is important to ask, at this juncture, whether at all the controversy is centred around the inappropriateness of Allahabadia’s comment. Is it the content of the joke, or the cultural setting, which has earned him so much wrath?

One might argue that it was the incestuous nature of the joke that landed him in choppy waters, since it transgressed the limits of acceptable behaviour on a public forum, in the sense that it completely subverted the notion of ‘propriety’ as it is interpreted by social conservatives. This is because, in the schema of Indian public morality, the institution of the family is sacrosanct, and therefore inviolable. To make a joke about the family, around the idea of incest, translates, to the Indian mind, to an act of blasphemy.

As such, it is simply not expected of him to make a comment that challenges or transgresses the discourse of the heterosexual family unit. The joke, whether obscene or not, is a different question altogether.

This does not mean that we stop making jokes on topics that may be deemed offensive by the state authorities. Humour plays a large role in social and political critiques of the state machinery, which is why it is constantly under watch, lest it should overstep its boundaries and challenge the foundations of society.

As the online uproar fades, this incident stands as a warning for influencers treading the risky path of edgy content - highlighting that while pushing boundaries with humour can attract attention, it may also draw legal scrutiny. Comedians need to chart a fine line between provocative, and downright offensive. As rightly pointed out by Vaishna Roy, stand-up comedians need to refrain from reciting four-letter words in English and Hindi like ‘rebellious adolescents trying to shock their mothers.’

Prantik Ali is pursuing Masters in English from Jamia Millia Islamia

Edited by- Nausheen Ali Nizami