(Mohd Asim is Senior News Editor, NDTV 24x7)
The AIB Knockout is now off YouTube. But if you happened to be one of the eight million net users who watched it earlier, this message greeted you: "The following video is filthy, rude and offensive. You know like... a roast." And after you confirmed to the computer baba that you were actually above 18, you were directed to the show.
Then the show host Karan Johar gave you another exit point. "Some really foul and horrific things are going to be said tonight... If you are easily offended and even really difficultly offended, you should leave right now." None of the audience guys ran away, and most of the online viewers also laughed their wits off over those 40-odd minutes.
Now some 'easily offendable' types (and there is no dearth of this kind of people in our country) felt, well what else, so deeply offended by the abuse, crass language, dirty jokes that they want the AIB team punished. To them I'd like to ask, have you never laughed at an adult joke in your life? Never abused anyone?
The Maharashtra government promptly ordered an inquiry into the show. The generous Maharashtra Cultural Minister Vinod Tawde then assured that "we will only enquire if the AIB had taken appropriate certificate. No moral policing..." Thank netas for small mercies!
The Minister had announced the inquiry following a police probe into a complaint against the participants for allegedly using "filthy and abusive language."
According to the written complaint by Akhilesh Tiwari, president of Brahman Ekta Seva Sanstha in Mumbai, filed at Sakinaka police station on Monday, Karan Johar, Ranveer Singh and Arjun Kapoor, along with other performers, had allegedly passed abusive and offensive remarks against one another and at the audience present there.
A small question to Mr Tiwari. The audience and the participants who, and you are right, used filthy language and cracked abusive jokes at "each other" were not offended. Why are you? Is there some outsourcing of the offence? Why do Mr Tiwari and many others of his kind have to be offended for the "insults" heaped on some people, and there was loads of it, when both the audience and the performers had bought tickets and signed up for just that?
People knew what they were in for. The AIB participants and their audience didn't walk into that arena expecting an Alok Nath sermon. And millions others logged on to witness what they'd missed.
Now the 'young' Maharashtra Chief Minister has also joined the anti-AIB bandwagon and Raj Thackeray's MNS has threatened to stall the releases of Ranveer and Arjun movies till they apologise. Apologise for what? For agreeing to have fun at each others' cost?
It takes guts to let people laugh at you and much more to laugh along. If anything, Ranveer and Arjun must be applauded for being such sports. We must laud AIB and these guys for introducing to India a form of humour that has been popular in many parts of the world for long. They have shown the courage to act raw and crude; a welcome change from the dull and repetitious scripted acts at award shows and charity events. As AIB said in a statement, they "wanted to push the envelope of comedy in this country. But then the envelope pushed back".
May be this rude, crude and abusive shock was needed for the "moral and cultural" crusaders with wafer-thin sensitivities who keep on shouting "anti-Indian" about anything that doesn't fit their version of humour or creativity. AIB has delivered a cathartic Knockout punch.
It's a roast, not a stir fry. It will leave some burn marks.
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