How Indian Dalit comics are exploring the 'blue' stand-up scene with laughter

Ravi Gaikwad is the co-founder of the Blue Material collective and is run by Dalit and Bahujan comics

Vitala is one of those villages in Vidarbha that is often the source of grim news. Other than farming, fishing in the Domi and Wardha rivers is the career choice for most villagers. This obscurity is also why Neha Thombre, popularly known by her character name "Thombrebai", doesn't give a damn about propriety in her videos on social media.

Some of these are about the irony of the Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana. "When the scheme was first announced," says Thombre, "many Marathi-language influencers called the beneficiaries of '1,500 gold diggers and shopaholics in reels. I went another way."

Ankur Tangade, a Beed-born-and-raised pansexual Dalit comic, has found her voice in stand-up

In her video, a woman in the village runs to the shops as soon as the money comes in, only to realise that the price of one kg of onions has gone from Rs 18 to Rs 80, and a kilo of garlic costs Rs 400. "Very few of us are taking the bull by the horn," says the engineering graduate who works at National Law University in Nagpur as superintendent. Her family depends on her financially. Thombre's humour directly addresses traditional civic infrastructure - roti, kapda aur makaan.

She has 1.4 lakh followers on Instagram, and this election season, has been approached by various political parties to be a part of their ‘mahila' initiatives. "They don't even request me to address the crowds; they are offering offensive amounts of money just to stand on the dais," she says. Her gender, in Amravati district, is the draw; her caste is not a surprise nor needs to be underlined.

Neha Thombre, Digital content creator

In fact, most of Thombre's video's are almost all anti-establishment, questioning usual political rhetoric like sops. "My work often questions the recent onslaught of these so called yojanas. Every party is doubling and tripling the remuneration for schemes, distracting us from real issues in the videos I keep circling back to the point that the common man cannot be bought, irrelevant of caste," she says.

Thombre has mixed feelings about being identified as Dalit.

"Sometimes, when people meet me in person, they say things like ‘Oh! You're from that category," she recounts. "I do understand that my life has informed my perspective, and to an outsider, my village and people in Vidarbha may seem different. But I do not understand why it becomes solely a Dalit perspective."

Siddhant Navale, an engineer by profession, says his humour is too dark for the community to digest

Thombre is a stage artiste at heart and did try to break into the Mumbai-Pune theatre world from 2011 to 2014, but was often rejected with the feedback that her diction was not "clean" enough or she was either "too rustic" or just not "right" for the part. She got her spotlight in 2019 in Bharatiya Digital Party (BhaDiPa)'s stand-up training programme that took 16 comics across Maharashtra.

Thombre is official selected social influencer by Election Commission of India in Maharashtra - she was also awarded the Radhika Sen Memorial Award for Digital Champion for Girls Rights for 2024 in August this year.

The Bharitya Digital Party (BhaDiPa) has recently begun to take on Marathi comics and standups including Dalits as their talent

Before the tour, BhaDiPa test drove Marathi stand-up acts and rappers over three weekends in Mumbai, with small audiences comprising mostly family and friends. The three-part series was called Secret Marathi Standup aka SMS.

"Until SMS, we were mostly writing, producing and marketing Marathi content for TV and films," says Sarang Sathaye, Co-founder, BhaDiPa. Once a stand-up comic himself, Sathaye has now transitioned to being the company's creative manager. "The point of entering this domain is to create space for everyone. We have comics who are Savarna and we have comics who are Dalit."

As a pioneer in the field, and as someone resolute about creating inclusive content, Sathaye shares an interesting insight about the self-effacing humour of Dalit comedians. "When a rich person talks about their privilege, they seem awkward," says the Bandra resident, "but most Dalit comedians have no problem making fun of themselves. They have found humour in the darkest of circumstances."

As a Dalit, this writer too colours her humour dark blue, asking colleagues if they know the implications of sharing a homemade lunch. Most times, this is met with an awkward chuckle or "shut up"; sometimes the shocked Savarna silence is satisfying. Consequences have also been fewer invitations to any auspicious occasion, and fewer people eating out of your dabba or borrowing a personal item. Thombre, who attributes her sense of humour to her parents, can relate.

Post the COVID pandemic in 2021, and much after the SMS tour, more Dalits wanted to get on stage, starting a wave of Blue Material. Ravi Gaikwad, Co-founder, The Collective, which hosts open nights at Dorangos in Bandra on Saturday, voices the confusion and dichotomy: "Is it Dalit comics doing jokes? Or comics making Dalit jokes? We feel it's the former. Savarna gaze of boxing a Dalit artist in a mould point is missing in making the dichotomy part more clear." He elaborates on the crucial difference, saying, "A Dalit comic should also have the freedom to make a haathi-chitti joke (elephant and ant joke), but certain jokes really hit the mark in a Blue Material open mic night, but fall flat in a regular room because of larger lack of caste context in the art/stand-up."

He gives the example of how during crowd work, he asked an audience member whether she was from the community. "What community?" she asked genuinely. Silence. "The cool community, ma'am," Gaikwad finished.

It's a tight-rope walk, he explains: "We need a space for us, but our jokes need to have a wider appeal." Gaikwad got acquainted with his caste only when he joined engineering college and was constantly reminded that he had "taken a seat away from a deserving person". Gaikwad eventually dropped out. "I don't know why, after suffering through three years, I didn't go that day [to write the exam]. I was just so over it," he says.

Some of Gaikwad's own material as a comic comes from this experience. A spontaneous moment on an open mic night, posted on Blue Material's Instagram (@bluematerialgigs), shows two people coming in late. "Find a seat for them, guys," Gaikwad says. "How can you not find a seat at a Dalit show?" The audience roars.

There is no fee for performing at a Blue Material open mic - caste, no bar. This mindfulness underlines the recognition that '200-'500 is a fee that most from the community cannot afford. "We know how much '200 means to a person who has very little," says Ankur Tangade from Beed. Tangade's parents, both human rights activists, supported her financially for a while as she tried to find her way as a stand-up comic fresh out of college. "I couldn't afford the rent in Mumbai," says the now 27-year-old, "When COVID happened, I came back and now work as a researcher and fact checker for an American newspaper."

She's back on the circuit with Blue Material, touring Maharashtra, and her set is a cross-section of Dalit and non-binary jokes. As a child, she consumed stand-up material voraciously on the Internet to combat severe depression. "I came out as queer before I came out as Dalit," she says, adding, "The former is much easier than the latter."

In Mumbai in 2019, Tangade felt alive when she heard fresh humour at clubs such as Comedy Ladder and Laugh Club. "I told a few comics that I write and
soon formed Blue Material with Ravi because after a few years of performing, I realised I would never escape the fact that I am a Dalit woman…. might as well embrace it."

The power of comedy is to make the Dalit narrative palatable. It's a double-punch to the majorly Savarna audience of Pune-Mumbai's Marathi theatre space. A punch up to the Brahmins/Savarna's, unclothing their ignorance or bias about the Bahujan/Dalit experience; and a deprecating punch down to the comic's own Dalit lived experiences, which makes the audience squirm uncomfortably. "We're introducing a kind of humour that most of Mumbai-Pune doesn't know how to react to," Tangade says.

Most comedians from the Dalit community feel that addressing Maharashtra's policies through the prism of caste directly puts off an audience who otherwise might be accepting if the message is not shoved down the throat.

I can't tell you my jokes," says Siddhanth Navale, "They will get me into trouble." All of 27 years of age, Navale lives in Vasai and works as a quality control engineer. "Most Dalit comedians punch up; I try to punch down and make audience laugh at that," he says. Navale's humour can go deep dark, down to referencing "impurity" of Dalit blood. "Even a blue material crowd gets awkward, but I don't mind. I will keep pushing the audiences to laugh at uncomfortable jokes," he adds.

The broader aim is to get Savarna crowds so used to blue humour that a joke by a Dalit comic is seen as just that: A joke. "Away from the [usual comic material about the] woes of travelling in a train or Mumbai life," says Gaikwad, "the point is to ease them into our humour and get to laugh with us, while they think they are laughing at us."

The next step in his vision is Blue Jam, a stand-up tour in collaboration with Dalit rappers. An ode to the '90s American Black comedy show - Deff Jam, considered a watershed moment for black stand-ups.