What Tanmay Bhat thought of as a hilarious take backfired when his snap chat video started drawing flak from the industry. Sharang Bhaskaran and Shrabasti Mallik find out where comedians should draw the line

You can either love him or hate him, but you certainly can’t ignore him. Tanmay Bhat, the AIB co-founder-creator, has done it again, and this time sans his AIB team. With his new video titled ‘Sachin vs lata: Civil War’ on Snapchat, he has managed to offend nearly every Indian. The video, which has Bhat posing as Sachin Tendulkar and lata Mangeshkar using the face swap feature of the app shows them debating over the topic, ‘Virat is better than Sachin’. And no, this is not the ‘offensive’ part.

In the video, Bhat makes fun of lata Mangeshkar, remarking why the 86-year old singer is still alive and mocks lata’s wrinkled face and age, and that has agitated Bollywood celebrities and politicians alike, with Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) even filing an FIR against the comedian. While all this was happening, Censor Board of Film Certification’s member Ashoke Pandit compared the video to anti-national activities. In his tweet, he said he couldn’t spot the difference between anti-India slogans raised in JNU and this spoof video. However, Pandit deleted it from his Twitter timeline minutes after it was posted.

In a series of other tweets, the Censor Board member has defined Bhat’s video as an element of cultural terrorism, tweeting, “The video by @thetanmay is a classic example of #CulturalTerrorism in the name of humour & FOE.#TanmayRoasted (sic).”

CBFC chairperson Pahlaj Nihalani calling for Bhat’s arrest said, “Banning this character (Tanmay Bhat) in Maharashatra is not enough. lataji and Sachin Tendulkar don’t belong to Maharashtra only, they are a part of every Indian’s life. This fellow has insulted every Indian. He should be arrested immediately without any further delay and dealt with severely. Doing this to institutions who have devoted their lives to doing our country proud…shame!”

However, all politicisation aside, an important question that the video has posed is whether Bhat went too far this time, mocking an elderly person and ridiculing her physical appearance. Sorabh Pant of East India Comedy (EIC) commented on the issue, “This kind of reaction has just gotten boring now. Frankly, I haven’t seen the video because I’m so exhausted with the outrage. I have others things to do. Obviously, most Indian political parties don’t. They’re just looking to find the moral high ground on any issue — just so they can pretend they have ethics.”

So is there anything like taking a joke too far in comedyIJ “Yes, which is the point of comedy, in some cases. Some people like to push the boundaries and that’s good for them. But, the problem is if you draw the line for one person’s feelings, you draw the line for anyone’s! After a point, you can’t joke on anything except cats. And, maybe carrots, or something. Because cats and carrots are uncontroversial,” he added.

Popular author Ravinder Singh in a clever tweet said, “Terribly bad humour! But I’ll ignore it. Political parties that claim our sentiments are hurt-Dying farmers in Maharashtra need you first (sic).”

Comedian Kenneth Sebastian also wrote in a Facebook post, “‘Comedians have to hide for cover from their homes after making jokes in my country.’ Me explaining how comedy works to comedians abroad.#TanmayBhat (sic).”

What no one else seems to see, is the hypocrisy of chasing Tanmay Bhat with pitchforks for this, and not doing the same to Kapil Sharma whose show is an assortment of racist, homophobic and transphobic “jokes”. Just because the content is dumbed down and targeted at a wider audience, doesn’t mean it should be treated differently.

Remember, in comedy, there are no holy cows or untouchables. If you can make fun of one person, you can do the same to anyone else. If you try to change that, comedy will lose its main essence.