Rage

April 2, 2025

I don’t know if this happens in your country but a few weeks ago a comedian in India was targeted by Hindutva, religious far-right, groups for a joke he made about a political leader. A gang of hooligans trashed the comedy club the show was held in while police stood by allowing them to damage private property. The comedy club announced it would shut down. So effectively the hoodlums prevented the club from running their business. I wonder what the business owners will do to make a living now, how will they support their families. I wonder what they may be feeling

These Hindutva gangs have done this before. They have even halted comedy shows before they happened often because the comedian was Muslim, in fact one Muslim comedian spent some time in jail for a show he did not even perform because the Hindutva gang thought he might insult the Hindu religion during his show. 

            Does it happen in your country? Preventive arrest, vandalism, both with Police complicity, for a comedy show? Some Indians, mostly political leaders, their followers, and their troll armies, have lost their sense of humour and Hindutva gangs operate with impunity in my country.

            Later the comedian received hundreds of phone calls threatening him and his family. But when a court granted an interim anticipatory bail order until April 7, and the police could not arrest him, the police summoned the audience of the show for questioning. A person expressing outrage about this on an independent media article on Facebook asked, will they be spared if they did not laugh at the joke?

            It’s funny—not—that now in India we are told which jokes to laugh at. 

            The ruling party leaders regularly thrash the opposition, our previous PM’s, and even the freedom fighters who got our independence, and their political mates laugh loudly. These are the jokes we are allowed to laugh at. They are not funny—I mean even if I supported their party I would find those ‘jokes’ vile. They are misogynistic (calling women leaders bar dancers or prostitutes), insulting (calling opposition leaders names that demean), dehumanizing (calling Muslims termites or baby producing machines etc.). On social media the ruling party trolls abuse those of us who voice a different opinion and then add laughing face emojis. I asked one yesterday why they laugh at their own statements. He told me to stop crying and added a gif with a crying woman.

            It is not funny. It is a slide into an Orwellian state. Does this happen in your country?

            I have been waking up and falling asleep with terrible headaches. I realized a day or two ago that I am in a constant state of rage. There is rage about some personal stuff relating to some things that my family is going through. There is rage because I was informed about some disrespectful and dismissive things someone had said about me. Most of the rage though is about things happening in the world. Trump’s tariffs, the way Ukraine has been cornered by Trump and Putin, the IDF and their assault on Gaza, the stoked islamophobia and rise of fascism in India. My rage levels, on a scale of 1-10, would be close to 50. 

            This quartet/poem by Lemn Sissay comes to mind.

            I am the bull in the china shop

            With all my strength and will

            As a storm smashed the teacups

            I stood still. 

            I don’t think this was written as a rage poem, perhaps a poem about paralysis or restraint, or being mislabeled? But the imagery of the bull in a fragile space and a storm smashing teacups conjure up a destructive force that leaves one devastated. I feel devastated daily. 

            Yesterday I had coffee with a friend I hadn’t met in years. While catching up when I admitted how obsessed I was about going-ons around the world, she asked, but doesn’t that leave you angry? Don’t you want to withdraw from the news just to cope? 

            I said softly, I’ve tried and but like an addict I keep going back. 

            Some other things are not going so well too. My ankle and knee are healing much too slowly, and I truly am like a bull on a rampage, and the china shop is my home, and the teacups smashed are my spouse. I hate myself once the rage calms and I see the destructiveness with which I have used words. I wake hating myself, I am in tears as I reach out to touch my spouse in tenderness. What use is an apology when I behave the same way later that evening? And the rage could well be a coverup for depression. Rage momentarily makes you feel an adrenaline rush; depression is just a heavy, low state. One is directed outward and the other inward, but both damage the body and mind and relationships.

            The comedian, not a very popular or well-known one or as far as I know even a rich one, was asked to apologize by the political party in question, but he refused. A popular and influential, and I believe rich, actor from Mollywood made a film with a political message critical of a violent event that the ruling party was involved in. Hindutva gangs trolled and threatened him. He bowed down and made twenty-five cuts to his film. 

            I’m not sure the comedian I am writing about is funny, but he had understood what is going on in India. How free speech is controlled with violence. How violence is used to shut down what the ruling party does not want. How people, what they speak, feel, and laugh at are controlled. Is the comedian merely being stubborn or is he standing up the way all of us should do? I admire the fact that he won’t back down and fear for what these Hindutva gangs will do to him or his family. I fear for his life and the lives of his family. 

            This is the New India, Hindutva spokespeople say. We are brazen and bold and we don’t fear wearing our civilizational values written in blood on our outerwear. Apparently, Hindutva groups around the world are tying up with other extreme right Islamophobic and racist groups to protect and project their civilizational values to the rest of us. They organize and propagate. I sometimes imagine a fascist world where those who would rather not be so cower and stay quiet to stay safe. 

What do the rest who are not hard-core rightists do? Some sigh and say those values are not so bad and besides I’m part of the mainstream, so I won’t be persecuted. Then perhaps add, just don’t make such jokes, eh. Some of us think that the values we believe in, based on equality and inclusion, do not need work to remain stable, and will always be the guiding light for civilization. We are wrong, they are dying and like the right-wing groups seek other right-wing groups we need to seek and work hard to keep the values we want alive. We need to work together towards the world we want to live in. 

            How is freedom of speech allowed or controlled where you are? How does one start a non-violent movement to stand up for it? Perhaps if I can figure this out my rage will ebb.