January 22, 2025

It is very surprising that the Maharashtra government has lodged FIR’s against celebrities involved in the ‘roast’ comedy show by All India Bakchod (AIB).It has also gone after celebrities in the audience. Using cuss words or words that denote human genitals is as commonplace in India as dirt. Take a walk down any road in any town or city. You will hear people talking and most of their sentences will include one such word. I can vouch for Kolkata, where the hawkers and public transport operators (bus drivers and conductors) cannot speak a simple sentence in Bengali without lacing it with b**** or l****. That is, when they are behaving in a normal manner. If they are angry over something, they use the f word frequently and MC’s and BC’s flow off their tongues as if they are giving out compliments. Such language is used in full earshot of passengers, many of whom are women.

If a show is advertised as one that will use foul language and have such words and if the audience buys exorbitantly priced tickets to watch the show, it means that they are prepared to hear such words and be amused by them. If women also buy tickets to watch such a show, it means they too wish to enjoy it. Has any woman who had seen the show complained that it outraged her modesty, one of the reasons for filing the FIR’s? Really, it is taking things too far to penalize adults for putting up a ‘roast’ comedy show and other adults for watching and enjoying it.

Every entertainment programme has a niche and it gets its audience because of that niche. If I have an aversion to watching comedies that use foul language, I will simply not watch it. For instance, I do not like the way two male actors impersonate women and dish out comedy of the lowest standard in Kapil’s show. So I simply avoid it. I watch Kapil when he goes solo and enjoy his act. It is my preference and the government has nothing to do with it. I watched a small clip of the AIB Roast and found Arjun Kapoor and Ranvir Singh going c****** and found Dipika Padukone laugh her guts out in the front row. I thought it was totally normal and thought that finally, Indian audience was coming of age.

Then I read about the FIR’s and my first reaction was: what has the government got to do with this. It seems that the Mumbai police have said that the AIB did not adhere to the script submitted to them and that the show outraged the modesty of women. I beg to differ. If people on the streets continuously tell others that they will f*** their mothers or sisters and call people motherf****** and sisterf****** and the government cannot do anything about it, then it has no business taking cognizance of a show that says upfront that it will use such language. After all, how can what is spoken normally on the streets become criminal if spoken before a ticket paying audience?