Almost nobody had heard of Tanmay Bhat till May 30, 2016 evening when the media circus and so called debates about his Snapchat video started airing on every national television channel. I had never heard of Tanmay Bhat, and my wife had never heard of him. My neighbor had never heard of him, and neither had his two year old poodle, Poochie. I doubt if Sachin Tendulkar had ever heard of him, and I am quite sure Lata Mangeshkar had never heard of Tanmay Bhat.
Then suddenly on May 30th evening Tanmay Bhat forced himself into the national consciousness as public enemy number one. Predictably, Raj Thackeray’s MNS threatened to break his bones, a BJP corporator (or was it an MLA) in Mumbai filed an FIR against him, and somebody else wanted him arrested and booked under MOCCA.
I had seen a few AIB videos on Youtube before, and I thought they were puerile and tasteless at best. Somebody sent me the “Sachin-Lata Civil War” video on WhatsApp and I thought it was in atrocious taste with no trace of humor. It was evidently made as a clever ploy to get into the news, and get into the news he did.
I personally think Sachin is one of the greatest cricketers ever born, and I am a die-hard fan of Lata Mangeshkar and owe her an enormous debt of gratitude for contributing to making my life worth living. If I ever meet her, I will be so overwhelmed that I will probably prostrate myself at her feet out of deep respect and awe. But after watching Tanmay Bhat’s crass and tasteless video, did I feel the urge to go after him with a hockey stick and break his legs, or to write to the Prime Minister and have him booked under the MOCCA act? I dismissed the video as worthless and soon forgot all about it. Until I saw the “breaking news” on Monday evening, that is.
After the elections in the five states there must have been a lull in breaking news stories, so the story about the AIB video must have come like a shower on a hot May afternoon for all the TV channels, and they all pounced on it with glee. Of all the TV channels though, I think Arnab Goswami’s show was ahead of all the others by miles. Arnab was evidently enjoying himself to the hilt and had a mischievous smile on his face throughout. His panel had the regulars like Shaina NC of the BJP, Abha Singh, lawyer and “social activist” and a few others like Vinod Kambli and another former cricketer and conversationalist (whatever that means) called Saad Bin Jung, comedians Rakesh Bedi and Raju Shrivastava, and four representatives of the newly sprouted media houses that specialize in standup comedy.
Watching the News Hour debate, I couldn’t help thinking that the debate itself was much funnier than the offending video. All panelists arguing for banning the video and prosecuting Tanmay Bhat believed that national icons like Sachin and Lata (who are Bharat Ratnas at that) were beyond the pale of humour, and making fun of them was somehow insulting the nation! I will not go into what all the panelists said, but I thought “conversationalist” Saad Bin Jung was the most hilarious of all. According to him, Lata Mangeshkar is the best singer in the world, has never, never “done anything wrong in her life”, and, hold your breath for this, “had never made a blue film in her life”. Hence the video was a threat to “national integrity” and an insult to our 5000 year old culture which must be respected. He then went on to say, “we are not whites, we are not goras, we are Indians, and we have to respect our culture. The goras can do anything. If you want to be a gora, you go and do an MBA.” Phew! I think he was unquestionably the joker in the pack.
At this point Arnab Goswami “pivoted” the debate towards the question of which of the wrongs was greater, Tanmay Bhat making the offensive video and putting it on Snapchat, or Shiv Sena vandalizing a hospital in Palghar because it was somehow connected with a girl who put some disparaging remarks about Mr. Bal Thackeray, or Giriraj Kishore telling people to go to Pakistan if they didn’t support Narendra Modi. He took some digs at Shaina NC whose audio connection had dropped (at an opportune moment for her, according to Arnab). At this point I decided to switch off the TV.
So the world demands to know, to copy Arnab’s daily question on his show, can we claim to be a civilized people who have inherited a great 5000 year old spiritual tradition of knowledge and enlightenment, if we respond to a stupid video made by a publicity hungry idiot, by threatening to break his bones and put him behind bars and book him under a law meant for controlling organized crime? Can a 2 minute video be a threat to our hoary civilisation and tradition, and be a threat to our national integrity?
Let the debate begin.
Nandu Kulkarni 