A serious outbreak of viral laughter threatens public docility

Mitali Saran

When I think of the BJP-RSS worldview, the word that always springs to mind is joyless. I mean, this is the personality type whose whole political schtick is to nurse a grudge for a hundred years.

It can’t stop with the dreary rules and the moral policing and the purity anxiety—and that’s its sunny side. It also has to abuse, harass, troll, gag, threaten, misinform, beat, sue, imprison, disenfranchise, and occasionally kill its citizens into compliance. Yet, much hard work later, Indians are back to being shouty and disruptive. Forget the GenZ cockroaches, even tiny Alphas have gotten into the act—pigtailed little girls in school uniforms are complaining to TV stations about horrible bathrooms.

Why can’t everyone understand that if they’re not part of the final solution, they’re part of the problem? And ffs, what to do about the memes?

In this One Nation, One Hellscape (ONOH), wisecracks are where the light gets in. If the state has a monopoly on violence, ridicule is the citizen’s guerrilla resistance. Authoritarians survive on fear. People who laugh at you even after you batter their bodies, even after you make them kneel, really hurt your street cred. After a bajillion cockroach memes, many more people are laughing.

Laughter is the shortest distance between two people, said Victor Borge. It’s true. A shared joke is the fastest way for people to warm to each other, and even faster if that joke insults a commonly reviled third party. Laughter is contagious, and bonding. So suddenly there’s viral solidarity, with couch potatoes backing up street protesters. When little cockroaches who stood with the CJP were beaten, detained, and slapped with FIRs, CJP leaders stood with them in turn, in police stations, in hospitals, in courtrooms, before the press, online and offline. When the government violated promises made in return for ending the protest (obvs!), the CJP held the government’s feet to the fire, saying they’d go back to the streets. Follow-through is solidarity.

With a few exceptions, resistance in the Modi years has been too atomised, or too niche. In this current moment, not only do students display solidarity over a wide social and political variety, both on the streets and online, but so do their parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins and partners, in a perfectly natural pyramid scheme of emotional investment. After Amit Shah’s police treated protesters to brutal violence—possibly his misinterpretation of #thug life—the memes became fanged, and public disapproval went nuclear. Even the invertebrates in Bollywood peeked out from the woodwork.

No wonder the Modi government is attacking solidarity. It is harassing restaurants who served protesters food, trying to discredit the CJP leadership, getting universities to issue shameful statements about protests. And no wonder it is scurrying around trying to scrub the internet of all the derision.

But it’s not working. The roasting continues, and is now being fed by students’ forced apology reels, online censorship, and the government’s pitiable attempts to make relatable Instagram reels. Propaganda being the BJP-RSS’s core competence, it is now earnestly making Gen Z propaganda. I am Gen Z, I don’t swear. I’m a Gen Z parent, I don’t bring up irreverent children. I’m going to make a reel so relatable, you’ll be relating to my nostril hair. Naturally, the kids are crying with laughter. The BJP official handle is running montages of the Pradhan Uncle marching around in sunglasses, petting bits of military hardware, while unselfconsciously appropriate rap lyrics (“I am a criminal”) scroll below. It’s like watching a dolphin try to knit socks, but without the dignity.

May the force be with the giggling insurgent. “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win”—but also: “First you laugh at them, then you win.” If the police are going to put you in hospital, some of your stitches might as well be caused by laughter.

Long may the Modi sarkar pour evermore public money into making cringe reels and ads. Long may it act like an angry toddler. Long may it underestimate Indians. When it is working so hard to make itself look ridiculous, it’s only fair that we step up and help. If you’re dying to contribute to your country, remember that public memory might be short, but public memery is long.

from Mitali’s Substack

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