Kunal Kamra (born 3 October 1988) is an Indian
standup comedian
Stand-up comedy is a comedic performance to a live audience in which the performer addresses the audience directly from the stage. The performer is known as a comedian, a comic or a stand-up.
Stand-up comedy consists of one-liners, stories ...
known for his
observational comedy about absurdities of life. His performances include jokes about politics, cabbies, bachelor life and TV advertisements.
Early life and education
Kamra was born and brought up in Mumbai. He attended
Jai Hind College
Jai Hind College ( Marathi: जय हिंद कॉलेज) is an autonomous college in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India, affiliated to the University of Mumbai. It was established in 1948.
In 2000, ''India Today'' named Jai Hind College as o ...
for a degree in
Commerce
Commerce is the large-scale organized system of activities, functions, procedures and institutions directly and indirectly related to the exchange (buying and selling) of goods and services among two or more parties within local, regional, nation ...
. He dropped out in his second year to start working as a production assistant in
Prasoon Pandey
Prasoon Pandey (born 1961), is an Indian director of advertising films. Advertising Age listed him among the Top 100 advertising film directors of the world. Gunn Report ranked him at No. 24 in a list of the best and most awarded ad film direc ...
's ad film production house Corcoise Films, where he worked for eleven years.
Career
He started performing as a stand-up comedian in 2013, with a gig at the Canvas Laugh Club in Mumbai. A clip of one of his gigs, uploaded on YouTube in 2017, lead to him receiving death threats for his satirical take on Indian hyper-nationalism.
He started his eponymous titled web-series ''Shut Up Ya Kunal'' in July 2017 along with Ramit Verma.
The episodes typically feature a conversation with one or more invited guests, interposed with clips of news segments or debates, edited for humour. His best performances include jokes about cabbies, bachelor life and ridiculous TV advertisements.
On 1 March 2017, he released a comedy video titled "Patriotism and the Government" on
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
mocking the
Indian banknote demonetization, the government and the attitude of Indians towards the army.
He received several death threats for uploading the video. In 2018, he shared that he was asked by his landlady to vacate the premise due to "political issues".
Shut Up Ya Kunal
In 2017, Kunal launched a YouTube podcast titled ''Shut Up Ya Kunal'' along with his friend Ramit Verma. The show features Kamra engaged in an informal discussion with politicians and activists from both ends of the spectrum.
The videos are interspersed with news clips of the guests contradicting their own statements to comic effect.
Ramit Verma of the satirical Facebook page PeeingHuman is the show's creative director and editor.
The first episode aired on 20 July 2017 and featured
Madhukeshwar Desai, the vice-president of the Bharatiya Janata Party's youth wing.
The episode featuring JNU students
Kanhaiya Kumar
Kanhaiya Kumar is an Indian political activist who served as the president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union and leader of the All India Students Federation (AISF). He served as National Executive Council member of Communi ...
and
Umar Khalid
Umar Khalid (born Syed Umar Khalid) is an Indian student activist, former research scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University, former leader of Democratic Students' Union (DSU) in JNU. He was allegedly involved in the Jawaharlal Nehru University ...
reached around a million views within hours of release.
Controversies
Incident on IndiGo flight
On 28 January 2020, Kamra, while travelling on an
IndiGo
Indigo is a deep color close to the color wheel blue (a primary color in the RGB color space), as well as to some variants of ultramarine, based on the ancient dye of the same name. The word "indigo" comes from the Latin word ''indicum'', m ...
flight, confronted the news presenter
Arnab Goswami
Arnab or Arnav is a first name popular in India, and means "ocean" in Sanskrit. It also means "rabbit" in Arabic. Notable people with the name include:
* Arnab Basu, game designer, video-games producer; known for Tomb Raider series
* Arnab Chakra ...
, inviting him to debate with him. Kamra had raised questions about Goswami's coverage of issues on national affairs and the
suicide of Rohith Vemula.
Kamra later released a 1.51-minute long video of the incident on Twitter, which showed a non-responsive Goswami while being questioned by him. The next day, Indigo banned Kamra from boarding its flights for a period of six months.
The same day, government-owned airline
Air India
Air India is the flag carrier airline of India, headquartered at New Delhi. It is owned by Talace Private Limited, a Special-Purpose Vehicle (SPV) of Tata Sons, after Air India Limited's former owner, the Government of India, completed the ...
banned him indefinitely. India's aviation minister,
Hardeep Singh Puri
Hardeep Singh Puri (born 15 February 1952) is an Indian politician and former Indian diplomat who is currently serving as the Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas and Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs in the Government of India. He present ...
, tweeted that other airlines should follow suit and ban Kamra to ensure that an example was set.
The next day,
SpiceJet
SpiceJet is an Indian budget airline headquartered in Gurgaon, Haryana. It is the second largest airline in the country by number of domestic passengers carried, with a market share of 13.6% as of March 2019. The airline operates 630 daily fl ...
and
GoAir
Go First, founded as GoAir, is an Indian ultra-low-cost airline based in Mumbai, Maharashtra. It is owned by the Indian business conglomerate Wadia Group. In October 2017, it was the fifth largest airline in India with an 8.4% passenger ma ...
also banned him indefinitely. The ban was criticized for being excessive and against the rules of the
Directorate General of Civil Aviation.
Filmmaker
Anurag Kashyap refused to fly with IndiGo due to their decision to ban Kamra.
Two IndiGo passengers also protested and displayed placards on a plane in support of Kamra.
Kamra issued a legal notice to IndiGo against the travel ban demanding a compensation of .
On 11 September 2022, after his comedy shows were cancelled in
Gurgaon, Kamra wrote an open letter addressed to the
Vishva Hindu Parishad
The Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) () is an Indian right-wing Hindu organization based on Hindu nationalism. The VHP was founded in 1964 by M. S. Golwalkar and S. S. Apte in collaboration with Swami Chinmayananda. Its stated objective is ...
(VHP). He challenged VHP to condemn
Mahatma Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (; ; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948), popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist Quote: "... marks Gandhi as a hybrid cosmopolitan figure who transformed ... anti- ...
's assassin
Nathuram Godse
Nathuram Vinayak Godse (19 May 1910 – 15 November 1949) was the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi. He was a Hindu nationalist from Maharashtra who shot Gandhi in the chest three times at point blank range at a multi-faith prayer meeting in B ...
.
Accusations of contempt of court
After Republic TV editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami was granted interim bail by the
Supreme Court on 11 November 2020, Kamra made a series of tweets critical of the Supreme Court. Eight people accused Kamra of contempt of court and sued him. The Attorney General
K. K. Venugopal
Kottayan Katankot Venugopal (born 6 September 1931) is an Indian constitutional lawyer and a senior advocate in the Supreme Court of India. On 1 July 2017, he was appointed as the Attorney General of India and retired on 30 September, 2022. He ...
gave his mandatory approval to initiate contempt proceedings related to the tweets.
Kamra said he continued to believe that "the silence of the Supreme Court of India on matters of other's personal liberty cannot go uncriticised." He does not intend to retract the tweets nor apologise for them. He asked that the time that may be allotted for hearing his contempt case should be spent on more important cases pending before the court.
Filmography
List of ''Shut Up Ya Kunal'' Episodes
Other Works
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kamra, Kunal
Indian comedians
1988 births
Living people
Indian YouTubers
People from Mumbai
Jai Hind College alumni
YouTube channels launched in 2017