Ranveer Allahbadia Controversy: Debate on Artistic Freedom and Cultural Values Continues

Ranveer Allahbadia Controversy:  By now everyone who is in touch with the internet has been remotely aware of the ongoing Ranveer Allahbadia controversy that started on Samay Raina’s show India’s Got Latent, a popular subscription-based YouTube product.

Post the backlash of obscenity and degrading Indian values and cultures Allahbadia issued a public apology, and Raina was compelled to remove his entire show from YouTube under the pressure of trolling and political and social criticism. 

And amidst it all, larger questions were brought to life like, Is Indian culture too fragile to be distorted by a few crass jokes? Is putting a ban on artistic freedom actually a marker of a free republic, and Is our government too complacent to take into consideration the very real issues of the country like marital rape, mob lynching and the frugal state of women state in the Nation. 

Let's take small steps to understand this larger picture. 

How did it all start?

Indian YouTuber Samay Raina hosts a show called ‘India’s Got Latent’ where a panel of judges including other YouTubers and social media influencers put to test the weird and sometimes vain talents of the participants. It is to note that the show is a subscription-only with the audience aware of the adult themes it touches upon.

Raina holds a reputation for making “dark” or “dank” jokes which may not sit well with some of the people but his audience pays to be a part of his repertoire. 

In one of the episodes of the show, he invited YouTuber Ashish Chanchalani, Ranveer Allahbadia, and social media influencer Apoorva Makhija aka “The Revel Kid” on his show where in a segment, Allahbadia asked one of the contestants, “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?”

In a country like India, where sex and parents are not to be joined in a sentence let alone speak it, Allahbadia’s question was discomforting indeed. But it was an old joke popular in the West and erupted into a volatile controversy in the South East.

Aftereffects of the “vulgar” remarks

In the aftermath of the question, his video asking it went viral sending shockwaves in the country with people from the field of politics, religion, spirituality, and general mass expressing their anger and disgust on the matter. 

Things escalated soon when this massive outrage led to FIRs on the three parties involved. Allahbadia issued a public apology, Makhija recorded her statement with the Khar police stating that the show was “not scripted" and the final nail in the coffin was Raina removing all his videos of the show from his channel.

Many debates the controversy ignited 

Since the controversy, several influencers and personalities have shared their opinion on the matter. Some have acknowledged that the jokes were of poor quality but that does not allow the government to take away their artistic freedom. Others argued that the Indian government is willing to put matters of ill-tasting jokes in the parliament but not the actual concerns. Amidst the ongoing controversy the news of the Chhattisgarh High Court decision saying, “sexual intercourse or sexual acts by a man with his own wife is not a rape and therefore if any unnatural sex as defined under Section 377 is committed by the husband with his wife, then it can also not be treated to be an offense” hence freeing a convicted man from jail further provoked the internet.

Memes flooded the internet surrounding the debates of artist freedom, cultural values, and the government’s complacency to matters of “actual concern”. 

The controversy continues to be talked about with politicians asking for the imprisonment of the comedians. As the investigation continues, the audience too continues to share their opinion via memes, reels, and tweets. 

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