It is glaringly obvious that stand-up comedian Tanmay Bhat is trying hard to become a YouTube star again. He was once the brain behind All India Bakchod — AIB — but now relies on his friends in the comedy circle to support his comeback with online roasts and games of PubG.
However, his sketch titled ‘The AIB Hangover’ featuring the other AIB founder Rohan Joshi, is a prime example of what not to do when trying to make a comeback. He could be creating the funniest, most woke content in the country, but he should steer clear from trying to bring up AIB in his videos. The platform will always be a reminder of how the founders let women down and went against the very core of the content they created.
I am not calling for ‘cancel culture’ here. But Bhat needs to address his former fans honestly first before he attempts to move forward.
Also Read: One year after India’s big #MeToo wave, a reality check
The downfall of AIB
AIB — a Mumbai-based comedy group and YouTube channel — was launched in 2012, around the same time when the term “woke culture” entered our lexicon. Embodying the term that finds its roots in the African American Vernacular English, their content addressed pressing issues like rape, ragging in engineering colleges and online harassment. The comedy group also did a show called On Air With AIB on Hotstar.
While over the years they faced criticism from many for using feminism as just another meme-worthy narrative to tap into, it was not until October 2018, that the wave of the MeToo movement in India violently uprooted the rapidly expanding comedy group turned creative agency.
Two of the four founders, Gursimran Khamba and Tanmay Bhat, were accused of involvement and complicit behaviour in two separate sexual harassment allegations. While Khamba has mostly vanished from the comedy scene, Bhat has made a comeback with his own YouTube channel, which crossed a million followers.
The greatest argument around the MeToo movement was that the life of the accused would be altered indefinitely, that there is no coming back and their career stands forever tainted. I don’t want to waste my time by trying to argue against that. There are plenty of examples of accused men going on about their lives with zero or minimal repercussions.
Also Read: Year after #MeToo apology, comic Utsav Chakraborty calls out 4 women on Twitter for ‘lies’
No clarification
The AIB controversy began in October 2018 and by May 2019, the company had put out an official statement: “The AIB YouTube channel is for all intents and purposes, dead for the foreseeable future — there will be no new sketches anytime soon,”
While there was no allegation of sexual harassment against Bhat, he reportedly ignored complaints about the same, confronted the accused but took no official action. This does not make him any less complicit than the accused himself, but people have been quick to forgive him. Perhaps, too quick?
He marked his return to YouTube with a namesake channel roughly five months ago with gaming videos. Building on the momentum he has gained since then, he along with comedian Kaneez Surka and media and entertainment lawyer Amshula Prakash raised over 17 lakh to help fund the fight against coronavirus by organising a two-day streaming event featuring over 80 comedians and artists. The work he is doing may be good, but one cannot just forget what happened. Passage of time does not always amount to forgetting and then forgiving.
In a video released in June 2019, Bhat talked about his mental condition after allegations of complicity were levelled against him in the MeToo movement. He said he felt “mentally checked out and unable to participate online or offline”. He went on to say how a major part of his self-confidence — “growing up as someone who looked like (him)” — became his work. He stated that he was diagnosed with clinical depression and was undergoing medical treatment. “Nobody wants to work with a depressed comedian,” he said. An almost four-minute long video, but there was no explanation about what happened and his role in it.
The onus lies on him to address this issue, speak about how it changed him and what he did wrong. As someone who once used to follow AIB, I believe he owes an explanation to his one-million strong viewership. That is the least he can do.
Views are personal.