A mob violently ransacked a Mumbai comedy club and its building has been partly demolished after one of India’s most prominent comedians performed a satirical song about a local ruling politician during a performance there.
Kunal Kamra has a reputation for his acerbic comedy which often pokes fun at political figures. Few comedians in India dare to make political jokes for risk of a backlash.
Kamra’s standup routine, performed in Mumbai’s well-known Habitat comedy club on Friday night, included a parody song about Eknath Shinde, the second most powerful figure in the Maharashtra state government.
The song referred to the deputy chief minister as a “gaddar”, meaning traitor, a reference to him switching his political allegiance in 2022 and helping to bring down the previous state government.
An online video of the routine prompted criticism from the leaders of Shinde’s Shiv Sena party. On Sunday night about 20 Shiv Sena supporters descended on Habitat and began to smash it apart, throwing chairs, tearing down posters and breaking light fittings.
The police have arrested more than 10 people for the incident, including the leader of Shiv Sena’s youth faction, Rahul Kanal.
The Shiv Sena-led government sought to blame Kamra for the violence. Maharastra’s chief minister, Devendra Fadnavis, claimed in the state assembly on Monday that people were free to perform standup comedy but added that “freedom of expression has its own limitations. You cannot insult anyone”.
“There is no need to spare them,” said Fadnavis. “We will not tolerate this and we will teach them a lesson.”
The state home minister, Yogesh Kadam, said the police were trying to trace Kamra and that the government would investigate his phone records and look into his bank account transactions to prove whether there was a “mastermind” or political conspiracy behind his jokes.
Shiv Sena also filed police cases against Kamra for defamation and public mischief.
In a statement on Monday night, Kamra said he would not apologise, emphasising that “as far as I know, it is not against the law to poke fun at our leaders and the circus that is our political system.”
He added: “I don’t fear this mob and I will not be hiding under my bed, waiting for this to die down.”
Ministers also claimed that the Habitat comedy club was “illegal”. A demolition team from the local municipal council arrived at the venue on Monday and began demolishing part of the building on the grounds that part of it had been illegally constructed.
In a statement on Monday, the venue said it was “shocked, worried and extremely broken by the recent acts of vandalism targeting us. We have never been involved in the content performed by any artist”.
The venue said it was shutting down until “we figure out the best way to provide a platform for free expression without putting ourselves and our property in jeopardy”.
Comedians and comedy venues have increasingly been caught in the crosshairs of India’s shrinking space for freedom of expression since the rise of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party, which has ruled for more than a decade. In Maharastra, Shiv Sena rules the state government in coalition with the BJP.
In 2021, a Muslim comedian was detained by police for weeks for alleged “vulgar” jokes insulting Hindu gods despite never having performed at the show. In the same year, the comedian Vir Das faced a backlash and police reports after a comedy monologue that dealt with politically sensitive issues.
Opposition politicians in Maharashtra condemned the violence and retaliation against Kamra. Shinde’s former political ally, Aaditya Thackeray, said “only an insecure coward” would react in such a way to a comedy song.
