INDIAN MANDALA Fight against discrimination through jokes. The Dalit Comedians

Manjeet Sarkar, Manaal Patil and Ankur Tangade are just a few of the “untouchable” caste comedians denouncing the unfair system they grew up in through stand-up comedy. The audience laughs, but sometimes they do so feeling a little guilty. In the big Indian cities, discrimination is more subtle. In the rise to success, Dalits have fewer footholds than higher castes.

Milan () – On Saturday night, in a small bar in a large Indian city, the audience received thunderous applause for Manjeet Sarkar, comedian and Dalit, the caste that upper-class Hindus once called ” untouchables”.

As soon as the applause ends, Manjeet begins the show: “If someone doesn’t laugh at my jokes, I’ll play it.” The public laughs amused.

The program continues with the humorous account of the discrimination suffered by Dalits. Officially abolished by the Indian government after the country’s independence, the caste system actually continues to permeate Indian society.

For Manjeet Sarkar, however, everything changes on stage: “I can express my thoughts regardless of whether the crowd will want to lynch me or someone will come to beat me,” he says. “Being on stage gives me a sense of freedom and equality.”

In the coming weeks, the comedian will begin the first Indian tour of his show, entitled “Untouchables”, but for now there are only a handful of Dalits who, thanks to their visibility on social networks, denounce through humor the injustice of the system of castes.

Manaal Patil is 25 years old and was born in Hyderabad. He jokes about the places reserved by the government for the lower castes, to enter the University or the civil service: “My father says that we Dalits have a superpower because we belong to the scheduled castes. If you order a pizza, your entrance to the university It will arrive before the pizza. Again the audience laughs.

When Manaal started performing as a stand-up comedian in 2015, he was the only Dalit on stage. “People joke about the reserved seats because they think the person taking advantage of them is incompetent,” explains Manaal. “My friends made me feel guilty for resorting to the college admission fee.” At that moment he realized that the key to conquering the public was irony about himself.

From time to time, people who attend the performances in the city come and confess that they have been impressed by the story of some incident. For example, when Manjeet recounts that a woman washed a public water tap with Ganges water after he had drunk. “In most cities the public is from the upper castes. When people laugh at my jokes they wonder if they should laugh or feel guilty,” says Manjeet, who is only 24, about the same age as Manaal.

Discrimination is less obvious in the big cities, but it does exist: “I was performing in Mumbai once and the venue owner told me I should be washing the dishes, when he found out I was a Dalit,” Manaal says, “even though that night I was making jokes precisely about the caste system”.

Stand-up comedy shows became very popular in India after 2010, mostly thanks to videos being uploaded to YouTube. What inspired Manjeet was America’s black comedians, who “talk about how their people have had to deal with oppression for generations,” she says. “I understood that comedy is an art form where you can talk about things that are taboo.”

Manaal created a show, “Blue Material”, which brought together various Dalit comedians. His dream is for it to become something akin to Def Comedy Jam, a ’90s series that launched many black American comedians.

But there are also representatives of minorities within minorities. Ankur Tangade is female, Dalit and queer: “I can make fun of whoever I want,” she explains jokingly. But at the beginning of her career she had not considered that she could make people laugh with jokes about her identity and she limited herself to typical upper caste arguments. She now wants to “tell people that they cannot ignore us and that we are the same. Each one talks about his own life, but nobody talks about minorities”.

In his shows, he often recounts the episode of a production company that only chose Brahmin artists for important projects, despite also working with many Dalits. “People want to help themselves,” says Ankur. “Dalits don’t have anyone to give them a hand. If you are Dalit, you have to make your own way.”

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