Patriotism & the Government | Stand-up Comedy by Kunal Kamra
What better time to release this video than now… My first stand-up video on Patriotism & Governance.
Loving your country means asking a lot of questions. Asking for peace, asking for better living conditions, asking for your right to voice your opinion if the taxes you’re paying are not leading to the life you ideally want to live. Thank you for watching. A video will follow every week for the next four weeks.
Venue: – Tuning Fork, Mumbai.
Shot by: – Nishant Tharwani (Tuning Fork Studios)
Edited by: – Suraj Jagtap (After Studios)
Sound recording mixing mastering: – Sohaill Gandhi (Tuning Fork Studios)
Special Thanks: – Varun Grover & Anuvab Pal
Posted by Kunal Kamra on Wednesday, March 1, 2017
What does patriotism truly mean? The question seems to be more important than ever in this day and age. A certain section of society would have you believe that patriotism is, essentially, blind adherence to the idea of the nation, and all its rituals, rules, and codes (somehow this blind adherence always seems to work out in favor of the Government). And so any attempt to criticise how the country is functioning or the policies undertaken by the Govt. is immediately termed ‘anti-national’. ‘Anti-national’ has become a convenient buzzword to silence any kind of dissent, and the self-professed patriots seem prepared to go to any lengths – even violence – to assert their idea of nationalism over others. The sacrifice of our soldiers, of course, becomes the scapegoat by which all such acts are justified. Suffering from inexplicable economic policies? Well, the soldiers are suffering, too, so you should suck it up. Questioning the state violence in Bastar or Kashmir? How dare you try to break this country.
But as comedian Kunal Kamra points out, with characteristic humor, in this video – shouldn’t loving your country essentially mean questioning how it’s being run? Why our living conditions are so radically unequal, and why the many are suffering for the whims of the few? Should patriotism stand for unquestioning attachment to the country’s symbols, or wanting to make the country better through constant criticism of its worst aspects? As Kamra points out with biting irony, when an entire country and its policies become prime “content” for jokes, questioning it becomes crucial.
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