In December, an up and coming group of stand up comics put up a show called the All India Bakchod (AIB) KnockOut. The show was a roast, an unmistakable western import, where a whole bunch of rude jokes are made about the people willing to be roasted. The roastees in this case were young Bollywood stars — Arjun Kapoor and Ranveer Singh. Four thousand people paid ₹4,000 each to watch the show and everyone went back happy. Earlier this week, AIB uploaded the show on YouTube. Overnight it had a million views. That was enough to get the government’s knickers into a twist.

Vinod Tawde, the cultural affairs minister of Maharashtra, announced an enquiry into the event. Police complaints have been launched against the participants. The MNS has said they wouldn’t allow screening of any Arjun Kapoor or Ranveer Singh movies unless they apologise. Everyone has got into the offended-and-ready-to-do-something-about-it bandwagon. If you haven’t seen it, suffice to know that there were a lot of suggestions of homosexuality and non-marital sex. A lot of people did not find the jokes funny. But that does not mean that those jokes shouldn’t be made. Things got so bad, AIB has now pulled the videos down.

The point is, no one was forced to watch the video. Taking offence because it goes against “our culture” is the kind of moral policing we must leave behind. On the tickets of the show, as well as before the YouTube videos play, there are sufficient warnings about possibly offensive comments. If a viewer has watched on, it is because he/she has exercised that choice. Recently, in a hearing which sought banning the Aamir Khan movie, PK , the Supreme Court ruled that if a viewer is likely to be offended by the film, he should simply not watch it. That holds true for AIB. If a religious group or a political party is thin-skinned enough to not take a joke for what it is, it has the option of not watching it.

(Veena Venugopal Deputy Editor)

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