Bhuvan Bam Pahadi Women Controversy: When Does Comedy Stop Being Funny?

It's like comedians everywhere have taken a collective pledge to coarsen their comedy. Just days after Chris Rock pulled the distasteful stunt of joking about actor Jada Pinkett Smith's hair loss problem at the Oscars, over in India, comedian Bhuvan Bam is being pulled up for his latest sketch that appears to objectify women.

Bam in his video titled Automatic Gaadi uses double entendre to insinuate that women are being sold at a car dealer's. "Pahadan chalegi?"  Bam asks in the video. Another character goes on to mention in the video, "He is saying it is a great model, you can take it from behind also."

While after the National Commission for Women (NCW) took cognisance the bit about the pahadi women has been edited out, the latter dialogue that uses crass sexual humour allegedly directed at women still remains, as per reports.

It's not new for comedians to get away with saying what most of us would think about twice before uttering. Because the tradition is, in comedy, everything goes. But how far should it go? Is it still comedy if it toes the line of decency and steps boorishly into the zone of insensitivity?

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Who's laughing at Bam's joke? Unfortunately, a lot of people. The 28-year-old's BB Ki Vines YouTube channel has an imposing subscriber count of over 25 million, which guarantees him a lot of loyal fans. Many are coming out in the comments on his video shared a week ago and on other social media sites like Twitter to defend him over the pahadan joke.

"Me being a girl never found your videos or any particular line offensive, you're just doing this for the sake of entertainment," one YouTube comment reads. "When rapists roam freely in the country, no one takes any action and when a man just uses normal jokes to make people laugh, everyone falls behind," another on Twitter reads. And so on.

Blinded by adulation for their favourite comedian, what many people are failing to see is how it is precisely this kind of discourse that sets the foundations for ">rape culture to breed and thrive. When we objectify and sexualise women, either explicitly or even through innuendos that may seem harmless.

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This is not about clamping down on freedom of speech that not just comedians but everyone is entitled to. This is just about opening a dialogue on whether what constitutes humour today comes at the price of strengthening patriarchy's grossest aspects - where women's bodies become commodities for men to own, not unlike cars.

Is that the kind of message comedians like Bam, who otherwise present appearances of standing up for social causes, want to propagate to millions? Why would comedians want a hand in something that encourages the degradation of women, or any other marginalised group? This is not the first time, anyway, that Bam has been embroiled in such a controversy where women are likened to vehicles.

"I’m aware that a section in my video has hurt some people. I have edited it to remove that part. People who know me know I have utmost respect for women. I had no intention to hurt anyone. A heartfelt apology to everyone whose sentiments have been disregarded," Bam's apology to NCW on Twitter reads.

It's great he apologised but the clip is there to stay on the internet where nothing is ever forever deleted. Perhaps that will serve as a reminder and check for him, and other comedians, to make content more consciously.

Views expressed are the author's own.