Kunal Kamra Wants You to Reconsider Saying “The Process is the Punishment” at Parties

In a way, Kunal Kamra has always been a lone wolf. Making a name for himself as an opening act in Mumbai’s stand-up circuit in the 2010s, he went viral with his first YouTube clip, Patriotism & Governance, in 2017. The comedy set lampooned the horrific aftermath of demonetisation and the callous rhetoric employed by the Indian government and its supporters who defended the mounting death toll. At a time, when many comics were falling over each other to milk stand-up specials commissioned by OTT platforms, Kamra produced a podcast, Shut Up Ya Kunal!, featuring guests ranging from Tejasvi Surya to Javed Akhtar to P Sainath. Kamra made 29 episodes with Ramit Verma, the founder of a satirical page, Peeing Human. As his contemporaries built empires serving brands, curating their social media feeds to showcase their high-flying lives, Kamra’s tweets evoked a middle-aged guy drinking on a weeknight, taking the mickey out of everyone—especially the trolls.

One could argue Kamra had inundated our social media feeds at one point. He was releasing videos, getting evicted by his landlady for being controversial, opining on burning issues, confronting primetime news anchors, getting banned by airlines, making memes, reacting to memes. That changed two-and-a-half years ago, when he moved to Pondicherry and took up farming. His digital footprint has significantly reduced since, but he’s made his presence felt with what he calls this phase as an ‘active citizen’. He recently participated in a gathering marking four years of Umar Khalid being an undertrial. Kamra also filed a petition against the government of India’s proposed fact-checking units as per the 2023 amendment to the IT Rules.

Such units would deter creators (influencers, publications) and disseminators (social media, OTT platforms) from spreading ‘fake news’ and ‘misinformation’. The amendment allowed the fact-checking units to take suo moto (on their own accord) cognisance of such instances, or act on complaints based on what any random citizen found offensive in a film, show or social media post. Kamra, with the help of his lawyer Arti Raghavan, filed a petition against it in the Bombay High Court in April, 2023. Eighteen months later, the HC bench struck down the amendment, citing that such a unit would infringe the constitutional right to freedom of expression. Whatever one might think of his comedy—the Indian Internet owes a debt to Kamra for challenging the government. What he’s accomplished is rare and unusual for most celebrities in India.

“I think one major realisation from the last six years,” Kamra said during a relaxed phone interview, “is that if you have a mic and an audience then you should make the most of it. If you’ve created something, no one else is going to give you the space for your ideas.” Having known Raghavan for close to a decade, Kamra admits that she approached him with the 2023 amendment to the IT Rules, telling him how it might affect his work and country. She sent him a draft of the petition, then Kamra suggested his own changes. After submitting it, Kamra trusted Raghavan to appear on the designated court dates. “Arti is a front-bencher, I know she will appear unless she has a medical emergency.”

The moral courage of Indian celebrities to speak out on socio-political issues has been hotly debated for the past decade, since Shah Rukh Khan made his ‘intolerance is rising’ comment— and later retracted it. Aamir Khan, after admitting that he and his ex-wife Kiran Rao had thought about settling abroad, was dropped from a lucrative endorsement deal. Learning from these two stars, most (even moderately) famous people have either endorsed the government or chosen to steer clear of anything topical or controversial.

Kamra doesn’t judge them today, something he said he used to do five years ago. “See, these guys [the Indian government] are nasty. They’re practically rogue elements in power. Anybody with kids will not have the courage to challenge them. Your progeny and loved ones, they’re what humanise you. What do humans have—fear, ambition?” According to the 35-year-old, celebrities like him don’t have the social or capital baggage, which many others do. He keeps insisting he’s just a citizen doing his part—by participating in the democratic processes available to him. When asked if he felt ‘heroic’ even for a moment, Kamra delivered a list of names that helped him recontextualise his uprightness. “P Sainath, even at 75, is still holding on to his college ideas. Anand Patwardhan, Nikhil Dey, Aruna Roy, Umar Khalid… I can go on. The list is endless. The only difference is I have one million followers,” says Kamra. “I think there should be a way to calculate our followers to decency ratio.”

Raghavan notes that many like Kamra have shown courage despite being threatened with loss of work opportunities, along with their personal liberty. Therefore, she concedes it’s never easy speaking truth to power—and it’s not about this government and it doesn’t happen only in India. “We witnessed the lonely struggle of Indian women wrestlers, where very few sports celebrities supported their cause,” she says. “Not everyone can be Muhammad Ali.” If Kamra’s journey has been lonely, he doesn’t wish to dwell on it. When I ask if there’s a lack of unity among his stand-up comedy colleagues from Mumbai, which makes them susceptible to goons who threaten comedians with violence, he laughs it off – “All the people are united... in their silence.”

However, one thing irks him constantly. The phrase ‘the process is the punishment’ has become an oft quoted thing in liberal circles these days. “We should stop repeating this line. All these years of the liberals saying this… the culmination is bulldozer justice, encounters, trigger-happy [officials]. The process might be a punishment, but the opposite of the process is a crime.” Raghavan’s believes the phrase is correctly coined in a specific context – “... where vagaries of the process (including bail, indefinite detention, prolonged trials) can wear a person out and make an eventual acquittal irrelevant.” Raghavan observes how those wrongfully prosecuted or incarcerated are never meaningfully compensated for what the system stole from them. She opines that our legal system needs a serious overhaul to make it more “accountable, accessible and litigant centric.” Kamra bats for legal processes, saying more citizens should approach HCs with petitions and “bring them back to life.”

Being a conscientious celebrity creates its own challenges. One slip-up, and the entire troll army takes off on the person—as filmmaker Anubhav Sinha found out recently. To be fair, in his case, it wasn’t even a slip-up, but a case of deliberate misinterpretation. Taking on the government or espousing progressive values can put a target on one’s back. Kamra isn’t bothered about it because it’s a target only if there’s a gap between your words and deeds. “Raise a bill, pay the GST, don’t take money in cash, stop at a signal, don’t drink and drive, don’t slide into the DMs of girls ten years younger than you—these are just normal things, man.”

The comedian believes only productivity can protect his mental health. Which is why he’s excited about his farming initiative—and what it will lead to. By his own admission, he’s constantly working on his craft, trying to share what he has learned through a series of YouTube videos. “I don’t do corporate gigs, I don’t do colleges, and I don’t do weddings. I do small shows—30 to 50 seaters. When the material is good, I’ll do 100 seaters. Then I’ll go abroad.”

Whatever money he saves, he pours into documentaries. He produced Varrun Sukhraj’s Too Much Democracy, one of the three noted documentaries about the year-long farmers’ agitation at Delhi’s border. He directed a documentary on the gig economy called The Dark Side of the Indian Start-up Ecosystem, releasing it on his YouTube channel this August. Another documentary by Sukhraj will document Shyam Rangeela’s strife to file his nomination papers as a candidate in Varanasi, opposite prime minister Modi. Rangeela alleged that the Election Commission of India kept inventing technicalities to reject his candidacy. The film is called Jamoora, and is expected to release this month. A documentary costs around Rs 20 lakhs to produce for Kamra—money, he admits, he’ll never see again. “This is my version of collecting art—rich people buy paintings, I make these movies. It’s great to have a catalogue of such movies available to watch on Google.”

The striking down of the fact-checking units is the second such verdict to go in favour of the citizens this year after the withdrawal of the Broadcast Bill 2024. Many writers and stand-up comics and NGOs, like the Internet Freedom Foundation, spearheaded the petition against it. Kamra isn’t celebrating his victory just yet. “Inko rokna easy thodi hai! [They won’t stop easily!]. I’m assuming they’ll go to the Supreme Court next. Dedh din ka hero banke kuch fayda nahin hai. [No point in thinking of yourself as a short-term hero!]”

Despite the common man’s widespread cynicism about Indian judiciary, Kamra and Raghavan insist that citizens can keep the powerful in check through courts. “It’s not a question of faith,” says Raghavan. “The judiciary isn’t a religion. As citizens, we must always hold our various organs of state to account, including the judiciary, demand transparency and push for reform.”