Imagine that you are a fan of a comedy show with rather questionable humour, which mirrors that of its host. Now, you weren’t able to watch the latest episode, but you go to bed, thinking that you will catch up with it the next day.
However, when you wake up, you find that the episode of the show, its creator and the guests featured on that episode are all being panned for their comments, and have First Investigation Reports (FIRs) registered against them.
This was how Ashley Sonawane, an engineering graduate and aspiring rapper from Mumbai was in for a rude awakening (quite literally, one might add) about the controversy surrounding stand-up comedian Samay Raina and his show, India’s Got Latent.
“It is unbelievable how serious the matter had become overnight,” he sighed.
To the uninitiated, India’s Got Latent is a reality show launched by Raina in 2024. It aims to uncover talented individuals à la India’s Got Talent. The show blends comedy and performance, and participants are evaluated not only for their talent but also for their self-awareness. The panel of judges, which changes every episode, contributes by adding their own commentary and humour to the evaluation process.
A few prominent guests featured on the show include comedians Kunal Kamra, Atul Khatri, Tanmay Bhatt and Amit Tandon, actors Bharti Singh and Gulshan Devaiyah, filmmaker Anurag Kashyap and musician Raftaar.
The controversy
The show became the talk of the town ever since its first episode aired on Raina’s YouTube channel — however, for all the wrong reasons.
Viewers panned the show for its vulgar, below-the-belt and crass humour, which included slut-shaming, perpetuating negative stereotypes about people from Arunachal Pradesh, and jokes that allegedly mocked people with disabilities. These remarks were seemingly endorsed by the guests of the show, and Raina himself.
In the meanwhile, the show also garnered fanfare, with viewers praising its diversity in showcasing talent from across India, as well as Raina’s quick humour. Following the show, Raina’s YouTube channel sits at over seven million subscribers and has generated a revenue of Rs 1.5 crore through YouTube memberships.
This would take a left turn after an obscene comment from the show’s most recent episode became viral, and garnered widespread condemnation.
One of the guests of the episode, Ranveer Allahabadia (or BeerBiceps) asked a contestant, “Would you rather watch your parents have sex every day for the rest of your life or join in once to make it stop forever?”
Ranveer Allahabadia, who began his YouTube career in 2015, is best known for his podcast The Ranveer Show, which he touts as “India’s smartest podcast”. In 2024, he was awarded the Disruptor of the Year award at the first edition of the National Creators’ Award.
This remark received shock and criticism against Allahabadia, who was known for his spirituality, motivational, and infotainment-oriented content, for being crass and inappropriate. Raina also drew the ire of critics, who slammed him for platforming Allahabadia’s comments.
The fallout
Both the Mumbai Police and Guwahati Police filed FIRs against Allahabadia and Raina, along with social media content creators Apoorva Makijha (aka TheRebelKid) & Ashish Chanchalani, and comedian Jaspreet Singh, and the National Commission for Women issued summons to Allahabadia and Raina on Monday, February 10.
The issue even reached the Parliament, with the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology reportedly expected to summon Allahabadia for an explanation. The National Human Rights Commission also directed YouTube India to take the episode down.
While Allahabadia issued a public apology amidst the backlash, the fact remains that his comments were not a deviation from India’s Got Latent’s brand of vulgar humour. In fact, Raina’s infamy for making crass jokes originated during the COVID-19 pandemic, with his fans, prominently those belonging to Generation Z or Gen Z (1998-2012) defending his jokes as free speech.
However, the backlash against Raina was so severe that he took to X yesterday, February 12 and announced that he would take down all episodes of India’s Got Latent off his YouTube and cooperate with the authorities.
This episode, therefore, begs the question: What attracts younger people to questionable and even vulgar humour? Where do they draw the line between free speech and vulgarity?
Samay Raina and the gap he fills
For fans of Raina and India’s Got Latent, the show offers something missing from India’s comedy scene: novelty and a willingness to push the envelope.
“Comedy in India has become stale. Every stand-up comic and content creator does the same type of safe, harmless humour that has been done to death. Samay Raina’s quick timing and dark humour make India’s Got Latent feel fresh and exciting amidst all other comics,” Ashley says.
He further compares Raina’s brand of foul-mouthed, unapologetic comedy to that of Western comics like Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais. “I don’t know if we have too much censorship, or the West’s censorship laws are too lax,” he exclaimed.
Gen Z’s sense of humour being crass, vulgar or even dark humour is no surprise, says Dr Aaradhana Reddy, a Hyderabad-based counselling psychologist.
“Children and young adults from Gen Z, and even Gen Alpha, grew up with unrestricted access to the internet and are exposed to newer and more diverse ideas. Generally speaking, their tolerance is higher than their predecessors,” she says.
She adds that despite their lofty ideals and newly found ideals of freedom, Gen Z cannot act upon them as the Indian moral sensibilities are still dominated by the older generations, who are yet to catch up. “Vulgarity and crassness have become Gen Z’s way of being rebellious and subversive against the stifling moral chokehold of those before them,” she observes.
Given the financial, social, and political instabilities in the world that Gen Z children have grown up with, their outlook on life has become extremely nihilistic, she suggests.
“Children who grew up in the 21st century only know war and economic instability. I mean, most of them were told that the world would end in 2012,” she quipped. She suggests that the constant layoffs and unavailability of jobs add to this outlook, making them more fatalistic.
In addition, Gen Z also enjoys this humour because their friends and peers do too, and they don't want to miss out on the fun, Dr Aaradhana says.
Another reason that could explain Raina’s fame is a rather simple one — vulgarity sells.
“Attention is the currency in today’s creator economy, and the quickest way to grab eyeballs is through shock value. Samay Raina understands this, and uses it to grow his fanbase through edgy humour,” says Amrit Amlan Pattanaik, final year PhD Fellow at the Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, BITS (Birla Institute of Technology & Science) Pilani, Hyderabad Campus and former lecturer of Mass Communication & Journalism.
Delving deeper into the appeal of Raina’s brand of comedy among youngsters, he says that it is for the same reason you’ll find more teenagers outside cigarette shops than in gyms. “They are drawn to enjoying things that are considered taboo or could be bad for them,” he explains.
While vulgarity is an undeniable part of India’s Got Latent and Raina’s humour, some maintain that being crass alone wouldn’t have resulted in his meteoric rise to fame. “Every other streamer, YouTuber, and creator in India uses cuss words. While Samay does too, you cannot deny the fact that he is a talented comedian,” says Akash Singh, an aspiring stand-up comedian from Visakhapatnam.
It is worth noting that Raina is the co-winner of the second season of Comicstaan (2019), a stand-up comedy competition series.
Freedom of expression… of vulgarity?
In India, being a comedian comes with a price — you never know whose sensibilities you will end up offending.
“In one of my sets, I made fun of the mass recruitment process at IT companies and made several software employees angry. You cannot keep everyone happy if you are a stand-up comedian,” laments Akash.
Therefore, when you add crass humour, profanity or vulgarity into the mix, you would have a recipe for controversy and outrage. Stand-up comedians and content creators often learn this lesson the hard way.
In 2015, the now-disbanded comedy company All India Backchod (AIB) released AIB Knockout, a celebrity roast, inspired by the Comedy Central Roast show.
The show involved members of the collective, as well as other renowned comedians, taking potshots at the celebrities invited to the show, ie actors Arjun Kapoor and Ranveer Singh and filmmaker Karan Johar. The self-avowed roasters also made fun of the celebrities in the audience, including actors Deepika Padukone, Alia Bhatt and Sonakshi Sinha.
Uploaded on YouTube in the form of three episodes, the Knockout invited swift backlash from both the Bollywood fraternity and religious & political groups, forcing AIB to take the show down.
“The AIB controversy happened 10 years ago. We are still not ready for profanity and crass humour,” Akash says.
Adding to this, Ashley retorts that the Indian public must rein in its tendency to take offence. “The jokes are written by adults, delivered at the expense of consenting adults, and for the entertainment of an adult audience. As long as none of these parties is directly offended or harmed by these jokes, nobody else must get offended on their behalf,” he elaborates.
However, masking vulgar humour as free speech is a slippery slope. Even though the right to freedom of speech is enshrined in Article 19(1)(a) of the Indian Constitution, “reasonable restrictions” have been placed on free speech under Article 19(2).
These restrictions include considerations of public order, decency, morality, defamation, and incitement to an offence.
“If comedians want to enjoy their right to free speech, they must also remember their responsibility to consider these restrictions,” Pattanaik says.
He also adds that drawing the line between freedom of expression and vulgarity is difficult, given the subjective nature of the latter. “Ranveer and Samay’s comments have garnered more outrage than hate speech in the Parliament, or the fact that marital rape is not a crime. Clearly, the latter have escaped people’s definition of vulgarity, despite their odious nature,” he comments.
Pattanaik also explains that not all that is deemed “vulgar” is subversive. “Even Manto’s writings were deemed vulgar during his time. He was charged with obscenity for his stories. But he was only addressing the ugly truths of the Partition and the communal violence that followed. Raina and Allahabadia do no such thing,” he says, alluding to Manto’s controversial short story Thanda Gosht (English: cold flesh).
“Whose standards of vulgarity and profanity are we following? Who are the guardians of morality? These questions need to be asked,” he adds.
Paying the price for a joke
While morality and standards of vulgarity vary, the outrage against Allahabadia and Raina seems near-unanimous.
With FIRs from two state police forces and possible summons from the Parliament, all parties involved in the controversy, particularly Allahabadia and Raina have been receiving condemnation from the media, politicians, and the general public, as a clear consequence of an incestuous joke.
“Through this, the government sends a clear message to content creators — we will hound you if we don’t like you,” Akash says. He adds that several comedians, like Munawar Farooqui and Kunal Kamra, faced similar backlash, and were even jailed for their jokes.
This fear was certainly palpable, as several prominent comedians EdexLive reached out to hesitated and refused to comment or “entangle” themselves in this issue.
“We are forced to avoid certain topics deemed sensitive, to avoid such backlash, police action, or violence from radical religious organisations,” Akash says.
Before this outrage cycle began, however, Raina enjoyed a great deal of notoriety as a provocateur, whose “humour India was not ready for”. His critics often termed his jokes as sexist and crude, and Samay doubled down on his alleged crudeness in his show.
“His style of comedy has been built on attacking people and using abusive language, and his fans love him for it,” says Siddhi Patil, an undergraduate student of journalism from the Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Bengaluru.
Siddhi, who is an avid consumer of stand-up comedy, says, “Samay Raina is famous because people like watching others get verbally beaten down and roasted. It is an extremely unkind genre of comedy, and is indicative of how hateful we’ve become.”
She adds that this roasting takes the form of sexism, casteism, ableism, communalism and queerphobia. “Such comedy only enforces negative stereotypes about oppressed communities,” she laments.
She narrates, “In a class debate, my opponent, who was a male student, asked me to go back into the kitchen when I presented my arguments, and he thought he was being ironic. He was influenced by Samay Raina’s brand of comedy.”
The creation, dissemination and popularity of increasingly crass humour and content also impact the cognitive and emotional faculties of its viewers, particularly teenagers and young adults, Dr Aaradhana believes.
“Adolescents and young adults still have developing prefrontal cortexes. This part of the brain governs their pattern-forming, decision-making and emotional regulatory aspects. When they consume dark, edgy and crass content, they are bound to get further desensitised towards vulgarity, pushing them further into pessimism. They might even try to replicate what they see and hear, without understanding its weight,” she explains.
Supporting this, Pattanaik says, “There has been an onslaught of vulgarity on social media. People are used to consuming and normalising it, but have not paused to see how it impacts them.”
Comedy after India’s Got Latent
While this controversy is still raging, what would be more interesting to see is how this episode would change Samay Raina, his show, and Indian comedy in general.
“This issue has been overblown out of proportion by the government and a compliant TV news media, probably as a divert public attention,” Pattnaik says, adding that it would be forgotten about after a few days of outrage.
Pointing at the brighter side, he adds that this episode would be a good case study for institutions to draft legislation to deal with vulgarity and crass humour.
Akash speculates that Raina could tone down his humour after this controversy. “Even AIB changed their style, and moved away from the roast format after the Knockout controversy,” he reminds.
“There are so many comedians and content creators in India, who have established themselves as talented comedians without resorting to vulgarity,” he says.
In the meanwhile, it is being speculated that the Parliamentary panel for IT might write to the Central Government, advocating for stricter digital laws, re-igniting fears about the Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, 2024.
The Broadcasting Bill, which is now withdrawn by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, ignited fears of censorship and stifling of online content creators, as critics argued that hat the bill grants excessive regulatory powers to the government.
Thus, with the sword of censorship hanging on their necks, content creators must act with a certain degree of responsibility, Pattanaik says.
“The internet content economy might be growing, but nobody knows when its haydays will end. TV news organisations and daily soap opera producers thought that they were irreplaceable, but they are being pushed to irrelevance by streaming. Internet content creators would meet a similar fate,” he adds, explaining the unpredictability of the business.
He adds that content creators should not “repeat the mistakes of TV news channels” and create obscene, vulgar content to grab eyeballs and make profits. “If one creator or comedian’s behaviour becomes an excuse to censor the digital content economy, every creator would be affected,” he says.
As viewers, it is also important for youngsters to recognise the harm caused by consuming vulgarity, Dr Aaradhana says.
“If such content affects your self-image, your relationships, and your outlook on the future, it is time to stop consuming it,” she adds.
