Manjeet Ki Baat will leave you in splits, while questioning integral parts of being an Indian

This show mostly talks about democracy, India, NRIs, how I have been attacked by multiple communities in the past, and how the voters and politicians are running this country. In my earlier shows, I talked about my personal experiences and anecdotes, but here, I solely talk about my observations and democracy. I was initially thinking of naming the show Democrazy, but ended up with Manjeet Ki Baat.

The style is the same — the way I perform, the kind of humour, and the insight I try to bring — is still retained. In the previous special, the anecdotes were longer and more personal, I shared everything I had to say about myself and my experiences.

I get bored very easily, so for this one, I wanted to do something different. While writing this special, I was in Canada for my tour. I was observing how outsiders perceive our country, keeping up with the news from a distance, and looking at things from a larger perspective. Thoughts like ‘Our country is so different, stupid and funny’ would cross my mind. All these thoughts then became a set.

I didn’t want to solely talk about politics because politicians will come after me; I talk about the voters, the reason behind these people being in power. I mostly verbalise about what bothers me, and the last few months, this has been a nagging thought.

You need to understand two things here: one is someone feeling bad because they felt called out, and the other is someone feeling bad because they were being bullied. If someone is feeling bad because they were called out in a joke — that’s a really good joke. But if someone is hurt because some joke has made fun of their disabilities, or oppression, that’s where the offense lies. This is an art form, and I strongly believe if you have a mic and if you’re making fun of women, the LGBTQ community, or marginalised people, you are just a bad comedian. Anything other than this, is a joke to me; if someone feels entitled to be offended, that’s a joke too.

The thing is, I was called that, it’s not something I put on myself. And honestly, I don’t appreciate it. I’ve come to understand why my community does that, because they’ve never seen representation in this field. When you put a prefix before my art form, it boxes me into a certain category. The value of art comes with a filter. People think, ‘Oh, he is a Dalit artiste, so he must be talking about one particular thing.’ That’s one of the reasons I do a segment in the show where I just perform simple jokes to prove that I don’t have to adhere to a particular kind of comedy. It would actually be much easier for me to make money if I didn’t talk about caste.

I remember one of the comedians I admire, saying ‘Your art is meant to be challenging. You don’t do art just to tickle people.’ For example, my favourite Indian comedian Varun (Grover) once told me that if a comedian says, “I made someone laugh, that makes me happy,” that’s fine, but Indian audiences are very privileged. They can look at their bank statements and laugh, they don’t need your comfort. I believe any kind of art should offer insight. If you’re not creating something new, just comforting the audience, then you’re basically serving them ‘relaxation music’. The standards of art today have lowered so much! Just the other day, I sent a reel to my best friends, and said, ‘I don’t like this guy’s comedy at all, but I’m really happy for him.’ Because now, the bar is so low that if someone is doing comedy that isn’t harmful, I’m happy.

I think I’m used to it now. I get backlash from every community equally, so it’s not like I have a problem with one particular group. And now that I have a decent number of followers on Instagram, there are so many notifications, it’s funny sometimes (laughs). People write thousand-word comments — authors writing essays. But I don’t read them because there are just too many notifications. Sometimes I feel bad that people have spent so much time and effort to write them, and I didn’t even read them! But yes, when it becomes really heavy, it causes a lot of anxiety. But I realise that it is all just cloud talk, and I’m really privileged that they don’t do any physical harm. Initially, it was very scary, I had also preponed my trip to Canada because I didn’t feel safe. I do talk about all those experiences in my show.

I think we don’t have enough comedians talking about political issues in this country to even know the answer. There are just a handful—maybe five comedians. It must be Kamra (Kunal), Varun (Grover), Masoom (Rajwani), maybe Azeem Banatwalla, and I. We also don’t have diversity; it’s mostly upper-caste straight men. Most comedians would say it is difficult, but I don’t think that’s an appropriate answer. Right now, only three or four comedians are doing it, so obviously, they’ll come after us. After the Kunal Kamra video, everyone started making jokes like, “Oh, it’s so hard for us to do comedy in India.” But it was never hard for them because they never talked about real things anyway. Why would a comedian whose entire joke bank is about MBA, engineering, Tinder, be affected by IT cells or mobs? It’s nothing but hypocrisy.