The Indian internet is a boisterous place, not always for the faint of heart. But sometimes India itself turns fainthearted in the face of the internet. Or livid, when family values are at stake.
Until a couple of weeks ago, Ranveer Allahbadia, 31, was riding high as a podcaster, influencer and all-around successful hyper-bro — a Joe Rogan for online Indians, especially young men. His handle, BeerBiceps, presented him to his eight million followers as a lighthearted, overgrown boy’s boy.
He interviewed celebrities like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Priyanka Chopra, as well as government ministers who build highways and plot foreign relations. He signed deals with brands like Sony, Skechers and Spotify. Last April, he shared a stage with Prime Minister Narendra Modi while being named “Disrupter of the Year” at India’s first National Creators Awards.
It all came crashing down for BeerBiceps on Feb. 8, when “India’s Got Latent,” a YouTube-based talent show with a clever title and almost a half-million subscribers, broadcast an episode with him performing as a judge.
Mr. Allahbadia told a joke that sounded like a throwaway line, racy if unoriginal. But it landed.
“Would you rather,” he said, “watch your parents have sex every day for the rest of your life, or would you join in once and stop it forever?” The studio audience oohed, whooped and laughed, and the show went on.
Indians are extremely familiar with this form of obscenity — the two most common terms of abuse in Hindi refer to illicit sex acts within a family. But BeerBiceps’s jest seemed somehow a step too far. India has become fitfully intolerant of entertainment that offends certain sensibilities, often religious. Comedy, its reach lengthened by the ubiquity of YouTube and WhatsApp, has become riskier.
The outrage that descended on Mr. Allahbadia can hardly be exaggerated. It started with people on social media howling with offense at a clip posted online. Soon, minor celebrities chimed in, some with death threats: Saurav Gurjar, a former pro wrestler and TV actor, wrote on Instagram that BeerBiceps had “crossed all limits.”
“If I see him at a party, show or anywhere,” Mr. Gurjar said, “neither his security nor any force in the world will be able to save him from me.”
He was joined by political leaders. Devendra Fadnavis, an ally of Mr. Modi and the head of the state of Maharashtra, home to Mumbai and the Hindi film industry, said that such “vulgar, blasphemous content, passed off as comedy,” must be prevented from influencing young minds. Supriya Shrinate, of the opposition Congress party, wrote online that “we can’t normalize perverted behavior as cool.”
Next came criminal charges. A cyberpolice unit in the state of Assam filed a case on the basis that BeerBiceps had used an obscenity in public. Maharashtra lodged charges against Mr. Allahbadia and 30 other people involved in “India’s Got Latent,” and other states prepared to follow suit.
Worried about having to defend himself in courts around the country, and about threats to himself and his family, Mr. Allahbadia asked the Supreme Court to consolidate the cases and protect his personal safety.
It obliged, grudgingly, saying that the government should censor such crude content in the future — or the court would do so itself.
Justice Surya Kant threw in his own opinion of BeerBiceps. “There is something dirty in his mind that has been vomited,” Mr. Kant wrote, and as a result, “parents will be ashamed, mothers and sisters will be ashamed.”
The court asked Mr. Allahbadia to surrender his passport and ordered that “he shall not air any show on YouTube” or other platforms until further notice.
Mr. Allahbadia offered profuse apologies, conceding that “humor is not my forte,” and for the moment, he remains a free man.
But what of freedom of speech?
A well-known comedian, who was afraid to speak on the record, told of a chilling effect as audiences become more likely to take offense. The circle of what is acceptable to joke about is shrinking, the comedian said, as first religion and then politics have been marked out of bounds.
One fear is that politicians will see the BeerBiceps uproar as an opening to regulate online content. Mr. Modi’s government has already blocked dozens of news channels on YouTube and has its sights set on other parts of the web.
Apar Gupta, a lawyer and founder of the Internet Freedom Foundation, argued in The Hindu, an Indian newspaper, that Mr. Allahbadia and his friends were “mere pawns in the great game for control of our digital media.”
Whatever happens next, the outrage has already had a harsh and immediate effect on the careers of the team behind “India’s Got Latent,” where up-and-coming performers were judged on their “latent” talents.
Arti Raghavan, a lawyer defending a famous comedian who was accused of criminal contempt in 2020, said that in India’s legal system, once charges are brought, “you’re talking about at least a decade of hardship for the accused.”
“Speech laws are wide and vague, and that makes them ripe for abuse,” she said. That affects everyone.
