‘Munawar didn’t want to be just a Muslim comic’

Illustration/Uday Mohite

Before he got into trouble in Indore for allegedly making a joke about Hindu deities, comedian Munawar Faruqui was living a regular life in Mumbai. A resident of Dongri at first, and then Virar, Faruqui had been dabbling in comedy since 2018. Originally from Junagadh in Gujarat, where his home was burnt down during the Godhra riots, he came to Mumbai to live with his father's sister in 2012. He had lost his mother early on, and his father who came to stay with him later, also passed away in 2020. "He didn't have lofty dreams. He just wanted to make some money," says friend and fellow comic, Sagar Punjabi. And, he did it by working at a utensils store, where was paid R60 for a 13-hour shift. While he sent most of the money home, he used his meagre savings to do an online graphic design course.

But, it was comedy that attracted him the most. "He just wanted to tell his story - from Junagadh to Dongri, to whatever happened later. He wanted to talk about things that could only happen in Dongri and Junagadh, because they don't happen anywhere else. I don't think he ever thought about offending anyone," says another friend and comic, Saad Shaikh. No wonder Faruqui's most popular set was called "Dongri to Nowhere". Shaikh, who met Faruqui in 2018 at an open mic in Andheri, which was only the second time they were both going on stage, says they both connected, because their material centered around the "mundane problems of Muslims." "You know, things like what's the pressure around getting married. In Muslim households, the struggle starts early on. We used to talk about all that. With Munawar, what worked was also that, unlike me - a man who has a beard and wears a kurta on stage - he didn't really look Muslim," he recalls of the open mic, where he and Faruqui were also the only two Muslim comedians on the roster.

But, what they really bonded over was food. Both of them loved Delhi food, and committed much of their time making Mumbaikars say that food was better in the North. "We used to go to Bhiwandi every now and then, as the dhabas there serve excellent food. Or, we would go to this tiny bakery at Millat Nagar,
or Good Luck restaurant in Bandra," says Shaikh. What he liked best about Faruqui, though, was that he was a quick learner, and kept to his own business. "When he first came to Mumbai, he didn't even know Hindi or English. He only knew Gujarati. He didn't take tension, aur apne kaam se kaam rakhta tha." Ask him if Faruqui ever thought much about his content, and what it could be perceived as, and Sheikh says, "You know what happens when context is lost. I just think making any kind of video where your content is online is dangerous these days, because people can misrepresent that. And, though most of his content was about Muslim life, later, he started branching out, and he didn't just want to be a Muslim comic."

It must have worked, as audiences liked Faruqui's stage presence. "Cute sa ladka hai, so he was popular," says Punjabi, who at first thought that 29-year-old Faruqui was younger to his 25. "He is smart, like a Gujarati businessman. He is emotional, but also knows how to control it and say what in front of whom. Even with the joke the court has had a problem with, he had no intention of talking about Hindu gods. He was commenting on the song ‘Mera piya ghar aaya, Oh Ramji'. It was a comment on Bollywood."

Comics Sagar Punjabi (from left to right), Anish Goregaonkar, Saad Sheikh and Munawar Faruqui were all good friends

In the comedy circles, and the spaces that promoted it, Faruqui was known as a happy-go-lucky young man. Balraj Singh Ghai, founder of The Habitat in Khar, says that even if Faruqui was sometimes troubled by criticism, he never let it get him down. "He always said, ‘let's give people time to understand'. He was a positive guy. He was also very humble, and easy to have a conversation with. As Ghai explains, once Faruqui released his first video in 2018, things changed for him. "That's a landmark move for a comic. It means you now have enough material for an hour. It's like your trailer," he says of Faruqui, who has 178k followers on Instagram. "His social media game was very strong," reaffirms Shaikh. Ghai adds that even if all the comics may not have liked Faruqui, they were certainly cognisant of the fact that he existed. "But audiences loved him - Gujjus, Sindhis, families, college students - he connected with everyone." Pankaj Sharma, who runs the J Spot in Bandra, says that Faruqui's popularity was evident once when as he introduced him, Sharma made a joke about him. "Munawar laughed, but the audience was quiet. I realised then, that they were loyal to him," says Sharma, who also says that Faruqui would drop by even when he wasn't performing to observe other comics. "That made him unique. He was passionate about his work. Yes, some curators may not have liked him, or given him stage space, and we don't know why that was. But, we loved having him."

As of Friday, Faruqui has been granted interim bail. What he feels right now, after spending a month in jail for a joke he never really cracked, is anyone's guess. As Punjabi sums it, "He is strong and will get through it, because he has been through a lot in life. But, he will be emotionally scarred, and there is bound to be a certain amount of fear now. I think the Muslim, and otherwise, artistic community as a whole, is living in fear."

The case

The 29-year-old comedian was arrested on a complaint by a BJP MLA's son over a show in Indore on January 1. Four others were also arrested. All of them were accused of making "filthy and indecent jokes" about Hindu gods and goddesses, as well as Home Minister Amit Shah, according to the complaint by Aklvaya Singh Gaur, the son of a BJP MLA, Laxmi Singh Gaur. Faruqui had been denied bail thrice before. The Madhya Pradesh High Court refused to grant him bail on January 28. "The evidence/material collected so far, suggests that in an organised public show under the garb of standup comedy at a public place on commercial lines, prima facie; scurrilous, disparaging utterances, outraging religious feelings of a class of citizens of India with deliberate intendment, were made by the applicant," said the High Court order. On February 5, he was granted bail by the Supreme Court, which also issued notice to the Madhya Pradesh government and put on hold a warrant against him
in Uttar Pradesh. Issuing a notice to the Madhya Pradesh government on the comedian's request that the FIR (First Information Report) against
him be cancelled, the Supreme Court agreed with his lawyer that procedure was not followed while filing the FIR, which was very vague.