Market-driven comedy: Make fun, nothing is sacred || Acharya Prashant, Advait Mahotsav (2021)

Questioner (Q): Acharya Ji, I watch stand-up sometimes to check what's going around, I see comedians using satire and sarcasm for India in their comedy. Big companies like Amazon, Netflix are hiring big content creators for promotions and making videos and they are shifting from their channels to the company's channels and those with individual channels who have their content also say that they do comedy to explain misery of India which is just comedy and an exaggeration which is their profession.

Recently there was a controversy of a comedian who performed in the Kennedy center who compared “two Indias” and which looked like true to me some of the points. Do they not know about India as a nation since they re-travel (1:26) and they know the impact that will create to the followers including in the foreign soil or they have they sold themselves for the content? How to understand this? So if you allow, I would like to share a few lines that he spoke in the Kennedy centre.

“I come from two Indias where children in masks hold hands with each other, and yet I come from an India where leaders hug each other without the masks, I come from an India where the AQI is 9000 but we still sleep on the roof and look up at the stars. We scoff at sexuality, yet we produced a billion people.”

“We have largest working populations under 30 on the planet, but still listens to 75 year old leaders with their 150 year-old ideas. We kicked out the British and called the government the ruling part. Women wear sarees and sneaker and yet have to take advice from the old men who have never worn a saree, and will never get to take one off in their entire lives. India that self serves and self preserves. India that does not shut up and yet does not speak up.”