by In the summer of 2010, Anuvab Pal was writing an article about the opening of the Comedy Store in Mumbai, impresario Don Ward’s attempt to bring British-style stand-up to India. Pal, who was working mainly as a screenwriter at the time, went to interview Ward, whose great London venue was a cradle of alternative comedy in the 1980s. He told Pal that the press coverage was all well and good, but what he really needed were the performers. The initial plan – to fly British comics out to India – would be too expensive to maintain long-term, which meant finding talent, fast. Would Pail listen to him?
Pal agreed but remained skeptical. “I remember saying to my family: ‘This is just a little hobby, I don’t think English comedy will take off in India,'” he recalls. “Fourteen years later here we are talking. I still wake up every morning thinking: ‘Of course this will end.’”
That seems very likely. Not only has the stand in India grown exponentially in the intervening years, but with a satisfying twist on its British export base, it is now making its way back to the UK on an unprecedented scale. Last year, 28-year-old Mumbai-based Urooj Ashfaq won the best newcomer award at the Edinburgh suburbs. A week later, Zakir Khan became the first Asian comedian to headline London’s Royal Albert Hall, and in December, Vir Das – a superstar in his home country – sold out the Hammersmith Apollo. And after becoming one of the founding fathers of Indian standup – Ashfaq calls him a “legend” – Pal has also made a name for himself in the UK, thanks to appearances on The News Quiz, QI and The Bugle podcast. This month, he embarks on a 16 date UK tour.
Like all pop, standup is a global enterprise, but Indian comedy is gaining ground in terms of popularity. Why? “The whole industry has gone from nothing to gigantic in ten years,” says Kanan Gill, a star from the Indian scene who is also touring the UK this month. Of course, there was live comedy in India before 2010, but it was nothing like the standup as the British know it today. There were no dedicated comedy venues; Pal recalls individual acts renting out halls to perform in, and the content was “personalities, voices, a lot of anecdotal storytelling”. Anglo-American art has not heard of any-(wo)men and their sons “telling it like it is about their daily lives”, says Pal. When he arrived, “he broke a lot of taboos. In the early days, we would have a lot of walks, people shouting: ‘What is this?’ It was the oddest heckle.”
People in India are more easily swayed by liberal ideas and people in the UK are more shocked by traditional ideas
Uroj Ashfaq
At first, this new style of comedy “felt like a British export”, says Gill. “The Comedy Store had this very specific idea of a stand-up show structure, which stuck around for a while.” It is still performed mainly, though not exclusively, in English, another reason for its transcontinental range. (English also transcends the multiple languages spoken in parts of India, says Ashfaq.) With the more traditional style of comedy shown on television – mostly done in Hindi – this new form found a natural home on the internet. As it expanded online, a real-life infrastructure grew around it, with comedy clubs “in every city in India”, says Pal.
When those Indian comedians who did it first started coming to the UK, it was to perform to South Asian diaspora audiences in specific areas, many of whom knew the standups from social media. That is changing. Pal – who has always wanted to court “the Radio 4 audience and go to towns that don’t usually like the Tunbridge Wells Indian comedian” – has been making steady progress for years, and the victory proved the edge of Dun Ashfaq admits that, with a subsequent UK tour, the wider British audience was very much in the market for Indian standup. His success meant “a lot [Indian] comedians are now looking at this as something we can do”, says Sapan Verma, standup and co-founder of the East India Comedy collective. “It’s a career goal to make it to the rim.” Recently, Verma was interested in finding two Mancunians in the front row of his gig in London. “I understand Indians – they follow me on Instagram or they’re a little nostalgic – but I always ask non-Indians how they decided to come, I think it’s exciting.” (The two stumbled upon one of Verma’s YouTube videos. “They said: ‘Long story, but we really liked it.’”)
Verma was performing at Soho Theatre, the central London venue that is doing a lot to facilitate this cultural exchange: it has hosted more than 20 Indian standups in recent years. At first, these acts were “mainly connecting with the huge South Asian audience in the UK”, says executive director Mark Godfrey, who started the Soho Theater India project partly for personal reasons (“It’s Anglo- My father and I wanted to do it”. Gradually, these comedians help to keep Soho Theater at the forefront of comedy. “We want our comedy program to feel fresh and if new things are happening in the world it is important that Soho finds them.”
In the early days, we would have walks, people shouting: What is this?! It was the oddest heckle
Anuvab Pal
Humor tends to operate on two paradoxical axes: it relies on relatability, but it offers new perspectives. It is these two dueling aspects that have helped Indian standups connect with UK audiences. Ashfaq says she feels more “unique” performing in the UK than in India, able to fill gaps in perception that make the audience think: “Wow, we’ve never thought of this before!” Sometimes jokes need to be changed to reflect different cultural sensitivities – early on, she blocked divorce when she spoke of it “as if it’s a taboo that’s as frowned upon in the UK as it is in India” – but humor is essential . translation is rarely required. In her last show, Ashfaq read from her childhood diaries and was surprised by the universality of the philosophy: “I thought I was cringing in a very Indian way – but really being a child is the same everywhere.” Godfrey says they encourage acts not to change content too much to suit a British audience to “maintain authenticity”. As Pooja Sivaraman, the theater’s creative partner, says, “specificity breeds universality”.
That said, there are specific overlaps between British and Indian culture. This is partly due to the structural impact of colonialism, but also a shared sensibility: Ashfaq notes the “cynicism” that prevails in both countries, while Pal focuses on the “pessimism” – the “Oh, don’t bother us , it’s just rain. ” attitude (both standups are also fluent in self-deprecation). Not surprisingly, there are also differences. Ashfaq feels that “people in India are much more receptive to liberal ideas and people in the UK are much more fascinated by traditional ideas”. She noted that London crowds are less willing to laugh at “marginalized people and minorities” than Indian crowds, which makes sense because “a lot [Indian audiences] who are also marginalized and minorities, so you get ridiculed among peers”.
Part of the reason Indian comedy resonates with UK audiences is obviously because it draws inspiration from our own. Pal (self-effacing “fare” such as The Office and Alan Partridge as well as Eddie Izzard and Dylan Moran) definitely has it all, while Ashfaq entered “dry and sarcastic” British comedy as a student, watching James Acaster , Stewart Lee, Bridget Christie and Josie Long on YouTube, as well as panel shows like Hypothetical and 8 Out of 10 Cats. means he’s still taking notes from the UK’s wider and more experimental offerings: Ashfaq was “stuck” by the cover at last year’s fringes, and Verma’s visit inspired him to use props, which he “wouldn’t have thought even if I did the show for the next 10 years”. However, the prop in question – the Clear machine – makes a joke that a British comic would never have written. “I had tweeted something against a political party back home and they started spreading fake news [story] saying that Sapan Verma uses laughing gas in his comedy shows,” he explains. At first, it ended with “standard punchlines, but now I say: ‘Guys, I would never do that to you.'” Cue the Clear machine.
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It is impossible to talk about comedy in India without mentioning the state’s policing of the art form. In 2021, Munawar Faruqui was sentenced to 35 days in prison for allegedly insulting Hindu gods at a comedy night in jokes he never showed. In the same year, Vir Das made his monologue Two Indias – a catalog of the hypocrisies and contradictions of his native country (“India has the largest working population under 30 on the planet but still listens to 75-year-old leaders with 150. -year-old ideas”) – in Washington DC, which prompted several legal challenges from politicians.
The reality on the ground is knotty: Ashfaq says she avoids criticizing the government. Pall, meanwhile, “joke[s] often about politics. Although I am careful about what I post on social media. I spoke about the growing political vigilance among artists, through the medium of jokes, in front of the Prime Minister of India and various other ministers, and there was a lot of laughter.”
That said, jokes about the Indian government are not a priority for Indian comedians operating in the UK. Instead, another political dynamic is inevitable: colonialism. Pal’s act from the UK revolves around the subject – in his 2018 show The Empire, he takes the ironic form of an obsessed British Indian; From the “terrible things” Britain said to the popularity of Dishoom, the 1950s-style Mumbai cafe chain, this is a fascinating insight into the British-India dynamic, something Pal has long been inspired by. in “hipster form”. Her new show, The Department of Britishness, makes a tongue-in-cheek argument for the export of British culture to India again.
For Sivaraman, opening up a conversation about colonial history is not limited to a literary discourse on empire—it can be initiated by comic success alone. She describes the “glorious and compassionate feeling of confronting colonialism in Britain” when Indian comics are being laughed at in the UK. “When Zakir Khan performed at the Royal Albert Hall, he had this moment that was just like: look what we’ve done, we’ve taken the steps! It means a lot to anyone who identifies as South Asian and is here – it’s this great reclamation.”
Anuvab Pal is on tour 17 May to 8 June; Kanan Gill is on tour 15 to 26 May. Urooj Ashfaq is at the Soho Theatre, London, 5 to 14 August.
