Indian comedian jailed for allegedly insulting Hindus

Munawar Faruqui, a 30-year-old cartoonist, has been in jail for more than a month for a joke he did not tell.

Faruqui began to make his name in the crowded ranks of India’s emerging stand-up comedians. More than half a million people have subscribed to his YouTube channel, where his performances contain a noble mix of social and political commentary, one-liners and removals of religious fundamentalism rendered in fast-paced Hindi.

The trouble started on New Year’s Day when Faruqui took the microphone at a cafe in the central city of Indore. When he started with his set, a man in a white shirt and an unborn jacket walked on stage and started harassing the comedian, accusing him of insulting Hinduism.

The crowd cheered Faruqui, who is a Muslim, and then the man left to applause. Minutes later, Faruqui and four other comedians and organizers of the event were arrested by police for allegedly making ‘obscene’ and ‘vulgar’ remarks.

Faruqui, who has been denied bail three times by a state court, has become a prominent example of what critics say is a growing repression of freedom of speech in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s India.

A growing number of entertainers, activists, lawyers and academics who have spoken out against Modi’s Hindu nationalist government have been arrested, charged with rioting and other serious crimes, or maliciously attacked on social media.

In recent days, India has filed criminal charges against journalists who protested on January 26 against farmers against the proposed agricultural legislation. It orders Twitter to block hundreds of accounts criticizing the prime minister and threaten the company’s employees with imprisonment if they do not comply. Last month, the makers of a fictional Amazon Prime Video series called “Tandav” apologized after politicians from Modi’s party claimed that the show offended Hindus.

According to friends of Faruqui, he was targeted in part because of his faith. The allegations jeopardized the promising career of a small town whose only offense, they argued, was fun from the powerful settlement in a country that increasingly has a sense of humor.

Muslims, who make up about 14% of the population, are the largest religious minority in the overwhelming Hindu India. Since Modi came to power in 2014 on a Hindu nationalist wave, members of his Bharatiya Janata party and related groups have promoted laws that marginalized Muslims and subjected many to vigilance.

Faruqui’s case shows that in India, the world’s most populous democracy, ‘the judiciary sometimes looks at the accused, not at the accusation,’ says Sanjay Hegde, a leading lawyer who is not involved in the case.

The man who charged him on stage, Eklavya Gaur, is the son of a local leader associated with the ruling BJP. Gaur is the leader of a group called the Hind Rakshak Sangathan, one of the many hard-line Hindu organizations that became known under Modi’s government and claims to defend the faith.

A video shot by an audience member shows Gaur addressing the crowd and saying, ‘This is Munawar Faruqui. He mocks our gods and goddesses and pays you to watch his shows. Do you have no shame? ”

“Sir,” Faruqui replied calmly, “I’m not raising anyone. I made jokes about Islam. I also joked about triple talaq ‘- a practice that until recently was legal in India, whereby a Muslim man could divorce his wife by speaking the word only three times (or texting).

Gaur said he does not care; he accuses Faruqui of mocking Ram, a Hindu god, which he finds unacceptable. Gaur seems to be referring to a joke, seen in an online clip, about a classic Bollywood love song in which a woman calls on Ram to celebrate her husband back.

Faruqui joked in English: “Ram-ji does not give – about your husband.”

In a complaint lodged with the Indore police, Gaur Faruqui accused him of ‘deliberately intending to induce religious feelings’, a criminal offense punishable by up to four years in prison.

Faruqui’s lawyer, Anshuman Srivastava, said Faruqui did not carry out the joke in Indore, and that Gaur only claimed to have ‘heard’ that he was practicing the line.

“The police registered the complaint without conducting a preliminary investigation,” Srivastava said. “It seems to be happening under political pressure.”

With barbed wire, timed battle lines, Faruqui did tread sensitive topics during his short time on stage. He starts with a joke about his home state. “I was born and raised in Gujarat,” he told the crowd. After a pause, he added, “Survive in Gujarat.”

The crowd laughed, but the joke was bleak: Gujarat, a prosperous state in the West Indies, was led by Modi for more than a decade before becoming prime minister. Under his supervision, religious riots in 2002 killed more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims.

Modi has been haunted for years by allegations that he did not act to stop the bloodshed. Although he has never been convicted of misconduct, the riots remain a blot on the prime minister’s career. Many Muslims in Gujarat associate Modi and the BJP with religious persecution.

“I think I survived,” Faruqui continued, “because I believe [the] the government is not good at achieving their targets. ”

Laugh whistle this time, then laugh and applause.

A few minutes later, he and the others were arrested.

Faruqui, who hails from the city of Junagarh, lost his mother at a young age and moved to Mumbai as a teenager to support his family. His first job was in a tool shop, where he earned about $ 1 a day for a 13-hour shift. At that time he could not speak Hindi or English.

Later, he got a job at a graphic design company, where he discovered that he was gifted at inventing witty monologues for posters. That was around 2017, when an increase in mobile internet access and the advent of international streaming platforms like Netflix had a boom in Indian stand-up comedy, and so he decided to tell jokes in front of an audience.

Around that time, he met another aspiring cartoonist, Saad Shaikh, at a show where they were the only Muslims. The bearded Shaikh said that many Indians did not immediately catch Faruqui, whose flashy stubble and baggy T-shirts give him the look of a distracted student., as a practicing Muslim.

Their difference in appearance may help explain their approaches to comedy: Shaikh said he tends to avoid political humor, while Faruqui took more risks with his material.

“It’s very easy for a Muslim comedian to be targeted,” Shaikh said.

Aditi Mittal, a stand-up comic strip in Mumbai, said political comedy is increasingly hampered under the Modi government. Since 2014, Mittal said, even jokes about rising gas prices have cried out in protest from the prime minister’s party divisions.

“You never know what could lead to a controversy, and it’s always behind me when I write jokes,” she said. “But it is our responsibility to speak.”

Last summer, comedian Agrima Joshua received rape and death threats for telling jokes that insulted Shivaji, the 17th-century warrior king honored by Hindu nationalists in the state of Maharashtra, which includes Mumbai.

Comedian Kunal Kamra is on trial in India High Court on charges of contempt for tweets that the court criticized after granting bail to pro-BJP news anchor Arnab Goswami in a case involving the death of a 2018 interior designer and the mother of the designer.

Kamra refused to apologize and issued a passionate statement in which he wrote: “If powerful people and institutions continued to show an inability to tolerate reprimand or criticism, we would be reduced to a land of captivity. artists and thriving puppies. ”

Sanjay Rajoura, a member of New Delhi, of the satirical group Aisi Taisi Democracy, said the case against Faruqui was a sign of a “rotten society” and would make him stand up even if he was released and of wrongdoing. remove.

“Who will give him shows?” Rajoura said. ‘Those who own places will be afraid of setbacks. So do the sponsors. This will have an impact on his career. ”

Ashutosh Bagri, the police warden in Indore, said he had undertaken a “fair and impartial” investigation. The court in Madhya Pradesh state sharply criticized Faruqui, recently in a trial on January 25, when a judge accused him of “taking undue advantage of others’ religious sentiments and emotions” in his act.

“What’s wrong with your attitude?” asks the judge. ‘How can you do this for the purpose of your business? Such people should not be spared. ”

The judge ordered Faruqui back to his cell in Indore, where he has been held in communication since the first week of January.

Shaikh said Faruqui began to realize in the months before the incident in Indore that many people in India feel the same way as the judge. Last April, trolls on social media threatened him over his jokes about Hinduism. A hat brand asking him to be arrested is briefly national.

“It shook him,” Shaikh recalled. “He even questioned his comedy at the time, but we told him to have confidence in the judiciary. Looking back, we were probably wrong. ”

Special correspondent Parth MN reported on Mumbai and Bengali from Singapore’s staff writer Bengali.