Popular comedian Samay Raina teased the second season of his controversial show ‘India’s Got Lant’ in a new stand-up special in which he spoke about the controversy that led to several FIRs against him and other panelists of the show.In February last year, a joke by YouTuber Ranveer Allahbadiya led to widespread outrage in the country and several FIRs against every comedian who was part of that particular episode of ‘India’s Got Latent’.
He watches
Samay Raina returns with the song ‘Still Alive’, breaking the silence after the latent controversies in India
In his new special, Raina invokes George Orwell and his Kashmiri Pandit heritage to talk about the aftermath of the storm that led him to delete the entire show from YouTube.“I don’t think my show could have ended on a bigger note,” he said in the special uploaded last night.Before rephrasing it to, “I don’t think the first season of my show could have ended on a higher note than this. I’m definitely bringing the show back because I enjoyed doing this show. I want to do a wild show and you watch the light version after the censorship.” In an emotional moment in the act that lasted more than an hour, the 28-year-old comedian recalled how he finally broke down when he saw the parents of his friend, and Habitat Club owner, Balraj Singh Ghai, in the crossfire.
“Ranveer is getting death threats, his family is scared and everyone is messaging me: ‘Bro, what happened?'” I was feeling guilty that morning that something I had uploaded had caused all this… Then I saw a video that Balraj’s wife had sent me and it completely shattered me. That was the final nail in the coffin.” “Inside Habitat, Balraj’s parents, who are in their 70s, had done nothing wrong, just ran the comedy club where we used to shoot, and they would fall at the feet of young policemen and ask, ‘Sir, please let us go, we haven’t done anything.’”
“I broke down when I looked at the video, I was crying,” Raina said.The comedian said that when his mother called to check on him, he was so upset that he did not answer her video call. But when he did, she was trembling with fear and anxiety.He also spoke about how Apoorva Makhija, who was also at the receiving end of the backlash and was named in multiple FIRs, was only defending herself from a misogynistic comment. “I now have three FIRs against me. I always knew this would happen but I thought I would get in trouble for something I said. In that episode, I didn’t even say anything. I was just sitting in the corner. We Kashmiris always die in the crossfire.” The comedian said that the Assam Police kept asking him whether he was ready to apologise or not and he kept repeating that he did not say anything and that the joke cracked by Allahbadia was also old.“But they repeated their question again and I thought about it because whether to apologize or not is a serious question for a comedian. I remembered a line by George Orwell. He was a great writer, and he once said: ‘Every joke is a small revolution and the revolution must never stop.’“But the Assam Police also said a line, ‘We will put you in jay******.’ I thought about those two lines and realized that saying sorry is better here.”
You can’t revolutionize your community with a joke. If George Orwell were in Assam, he would have said: “Every revolution is a little joke.” You only fight when the fight is fair and you have a chance of winning. When the fight isn’t fair, get out of there. “The wisdom of Kashmiri Pandit,” he said.The comedian also criticized the media, politicians, comedian Sunil Pal, singer B Praak and ‘Shaktiman’ actor Mukesh Khanna in his unique style. “Braak came to me to criticize us. He said, ‘He will never come to our podcast.’ Who called you bro? They were all ready to eat us alive. Politicians, celebrities, Sunil Pal. ‘They should learn from Kapil Sharma,’ he said. Kapil Sharma was the next guest on the show and was messaging me how he loved my show. Shaktimaan was also there. What do you say to him, ‘Sorry Shakitmaan’?” “He said it would be a bad influence on the kids. Really? I don’t know how many of you watched TV in the Shakitman era.”
Every couple of months, there was news of some kids jumping from a building after watching the film Shakitmaan.” Raina also addressed the elephant in the room when he answered why he decided to keep the controversial Allahabadia script in the first place.“But what you don’t know is that he said that eight times. He said a lot of other platitudes that I deleted. From my personal perspective, I killed 99.9 percent of germs.” The comedian said that he was determined to defend Allahbadia until the end but he could not even defend the YouTuber at home.“Ranveer Allahabadia has broken his character, that’s why people couldn’t understand what he said,” he added.The special clip, which was uploaded last night, has received more than seven million views.
