Ranveer Allahbadia’s Comment Has Us Up in Arms. Yet, Hate Speech Runs Unchecked

After the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) wrote a letter to YouTube on Monday seeking removal of the videos featuring YouTuber Ranveer Allahbadia on India’s Got Latent, the clips were promptly removed. In their letter, the NHRC noted that the “availability of such content on widely accessible platforms…poses a grave threat to the safety, dignity and the mental well-being of children, including women.”The phrasing aside (the word ‘children’ naturally doesn’t include ‘women’), the NHRC has a point – any content that poses threat to the safety and dignity of any citizen in a country does merit action.Interestingly, the same day as the NHRC's letter, a Washington-based research group, India Hate Lab, released an in-depth report, noting a 74 percent spike in what is considered hate speech against minorities in India in 2024.What does one have to do with the other?Big Tech’s Role in Spreading Hate Speech in India Is a Lesson for the WorldYouTuber Ranveer Allahbadia asked a contestant a ‘would you rather’ question that has (perhaps accurately) been termed ‘perverse’ and ‘vulgar’ amongst other choice words on social media and beyond. In November, a contestant on the show was criticised for mocking actor Deepika Padukone’s experiences with mental health. Raina, the show’s host, shared a Reddit thread about the same on his Instagram stories with the caption, "To everyone who is outraging on Twitter, one request: Could you please outrage in my YouTube comment section, so I get some ad revenue from the traction, at least?"This is, of course, the same comedian who equated deleting a joke to abortion in a ‘joke’ on X – and then doubled down on it when people called him out.Like that ‘joke’, Allahbadia’s comment on the show is not the first, and perhaps won’t be the last. And every time, audiences and judges alike will break into laughter and applause.I understand that this seems to teeter on the edge of sounding like a defense of what Allahbadia or Raina have said or will ever say. I assure you that in all ethical and moral connotations, being an India’s Got Latent defender falls right under sprouting wings and flying into a live wire on my to-do list. The show, ever since its inception, has been problematic – the panel of ‘judges’ thrive in this environment; the goal is ‘edgy comedy’ that causes outrage that brings eyeballs to their content.The debate over offensive comedy – its creation, propagation, and reclamation – is a much deeper conversation and is also outside the mandate of this article. What matters to the discussion at hand are the conversations that have inevitably been triggered by this whole fiasco.On Wednesday, 12 January, the same comedian shared on his story, "Everything that is happening has been too much for me to handle. I have removed all Indias Got Latent videos from my channel. My only objective was to make people laugh and have a good time. I will fully cooperate with all agencies to ensure their inquiries are concluded fairly. Thank you."Mere hours after the video of Allahbadia’s statement went viral, outrage poured in from multiple sources. Social media aside, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said, “Everyone has freedom of speech, but our freedom ends when we encroach upon the freedom of others".Twitter's Fight Against Blocking Orders is a Major Moment for Freedom of Speech It is the most basic of civic lessons – the citizen of a country enjoys certain freedoms (in an ideal world) as long as these freedoms don’t encroach upon others. One can’t help but wonder where this sentiment goes when multiple chief ministers in India use dog-whistling against one of India’s largest minority communities in their political campaigns. Or when the Prime Minister of a country repeatedly uses divisive rhetoric in his speeches, even referring to a minority as ‘infiltrators’.If we’re a country of good Samaritans who stand united against offensive speech, how then does hate speech increase by 74 percent in a year?When we are capable of bringing in state machinery to address a distasteful statement made on a random show, why does the State remain silent as this same dog-whistling snowballs into real-life consequences and hate-motivated attacks against minorities?It feels almost dystopian to watch politicians across lines and human rights bodies condemn a show this ferociously, and then flip the page to find out that the Chhattisgarh High Court noted, on Tuesday, 11 February, that “any sexual intercourse” by the husband cannot be termed as rape under any circumstance – and the absence of the wife's consent for an unnatural act loses significance.This is a judgment that’s hauntingly familiar to the one passed by the Uttarakhand High Court in July.Why is India Yet to Label Marital Rape as 'Rape' When Most Other Countries Do?It wouldn’t be far off to say that judgments such as these, and laws that allow these judgments to hold legal merit, pose “a grave threat to the safety, dignity and the mental well-being” of women. In comparison, however, the outrage will be minimal because it doesn’t lend itself to the same ‘visibility’. It isn’t as ‘easy’ to outrage over.It’s much easier, in fact, to be up in arms about something mindless a content creator has said than to actually examine the status of gender minorities in society. Because people actually concerned about the dignity of women understand that true change will come from a restructuring of society as a whole – from making peace with the fact that sometimes things that benefit the majority do not benefit humanity as a whole.But that’s not easy. And that is evidenced from the way the State often cracks down on people who decide to speak truth to power. It is evidenced from the way anyone bringing up women’s safety on social media is met with misogynist hate and trolling. What would the NHRC’s response be to the aforementioned court judgments? If I was to hazard a guess, it wouldn’t be much. And it won’t nearly be as loud as the response to Allahbadia. Multiple formal complaints have been filed against Allahbadia, Raina, and others since the incident, with comedian Sunil Pal asking that the YouTuber be imprisoned for 10 years. What does it mean for people, including journalists, to ask for, and perhaps celebrate, the censorship of a content creator? One that has apologised for the same before the clip was completely removed from YouTube. It’s normal to want to create a more politically correct environment – one that supports emancipation of the underprivileged, one that gives those without a voice more agency – but to champion the censorship of people we disagree with will do more harm than good, mostly because the reins of this censorship lie with the State.Over the past decade, this censorship has been used to curb criticism about the ruling government – multiple comedians have been arrested for ‘jokes’; and political activists still spend time in prison with continued rejections of bail while rapists are garlanded. Asking for a stamp down on content, or a gag order on people you disagree with, inevitably plays into the hands of a system that can easily use that regulation against you. This is the Allahbadia aka BeerBiceps of February 2025. Let’s take a look at the creator in July 2023. His podcast was criticised when he asked advocate J Sai Deepak for the names of ‘three Indians who should leave India and never come back’. The answer included journalist Barkha Dutt, renowned historian Romila Thapar, and historian Irfan Habib. The same machinery that Allahbadia has been criticised for supporting – one that implies that an Indian citizen should be asked to leave the country because you disagree with their views – is the same one that has now turned on him.Speaking of basic civic lessons, there’s one sentence that’s perhaps the civics equivalent of ‘mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell’; so often repeated in class that one could recall it in their sleep – media is the fourth pillar of democracy. And especially in times like these, and they reoccur disturbingly often, it becomes clear how much weight that sentiment carries.Whether we like it or not, what makes it to social media is heavily influenced by what can get more eyeballs; what’s trending. After all, a viral video clip is what brought you to this piece. But one would expect news to work differently – to filter out what the audience needs to hear from all the noise.But a media circus doesn’t face the brunt of that responsibility.Perhaps most ironic was news anchors criticising Allahbadia and Raina for making ‘obscene’ content to go viral. The irony naturally lies in the fact that these same news channels have spouted misinformation and hateful rhetoric (how many times have you heard the terms ‘land jihad’ and ‘vote jihad’ in the past few months alone?) to pander to the majority for views.Remember when a news anchor strode into a newsroom with a jhola of evidence? Or when an anchor wore a spacesuit on national television? Who decides what attempt at ‘virality’ is worse than the other?Media channels spent multiple minutes of their screen time talking about splurging the digital space of ‘vulgar’ content. One could argue that it is ‘news’ worthy of some screen time but by no measure is it the matter of ‘national importance’ these news channels make it seem like.Could this time have perhaps been spent at something better? Perhaps a look at the implications of Manipur Chief Minister Biren Singh’s resignation in the face of close to two years of civil unrest in the state. But news anchors have decided to focus on Raina’s subscribers instead because, once again, that’s easier.It’s much harder to focus on issues that plague the country – not only will it involve journalistic integrity, something that has woefully left the TV space, it would also require a level of self-introspection. And most importantly, it won’t go viral.

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Ranveer Allahbadia’s Comment Has Us Up in Arms. Yet, Hate Speech Runs Unchecked

A 'would you rather' question has been discussed on primetime news more than a chief minister's resignation.

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Topics: Hate Speech Cases Comedian Munawar Faruqui Haridwar Hate Speech Row