Ranveer Allahbadia was living the dream.

The podcaster had taken only about five years to notch up 8.2 million followers on YouTube. He was interviewing senior ministers in the Narendra Modi government – collaborations that scrupulously avoided any difficult questions. He was on stage receiving an award from the prime minister for being “disruptor of the year”.

As an upper-class, male youth icon, Allahbadia frequently platformed right-wing figures and made the current dispensation and its Hindutva ideology look good to a wide audience that believes it apolitical.

Then the 31-year-old appeared on a YouTube reality show called India’s Got Latent and made a crude joke involving incest. All hell broke loose.

India’s Got Latent is a pop culture sensation in its own right. It regularly features material that is politically incorrect and crass. But Allahbadia’s joke about the sex life of a contestant’s parents crossed the line – especially for supporters of Hindutva and the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Leading the charge of state governments who raced to file first information reports against Allahbadia were Assam and Maharashtra – both states ruled by the BJP. Not just that, the Mumbai cyber crime branch has begun to issue summons to everyone who had ever been featured on the show.

Why did the regime go after its cheerleader? “This should be a message to everyone,” said Shreyas Manohar, a screenwriter and stand-up comedian. “If you work for the empire, for the state, it doesn’t mean you will be granted protection. You will be thrown under the bus when the time comes.”

The show

When India’s Got Latent premiered in June 2024, creator Samay Raina described it as “your favourite pointless reality show”.

Viewers dedicated to the show (which has 4.9 lakh paid subscribers) often politically incorrect, crass humour would mostly agree with the description. This is a show where young, not-very-talented participants perform their sets only to get brutally roasted by a panel of judges. The humour often punches down – at fat people, women, the mentally ill or the disabled.

Raina’s show quickly became an internet sensation. Vaibhav Gathani, who has attended one shoot for the show, said the nature of content is supposed to be “funny, rude and abusive”.

“They still filter out a lot, what you see on YouTube is after several comments are removed,” he said. But, he reiterated, none of it should be taken lightly since it is a roast – a format in which the whole point is to ridicule a participant.

“I had fun while I watched it,” said Gathani. “His [Allahbadia’s] comment was filthy. But there are filthier comments made on other shows.”

Rattled by the outrage over Allahbadia’s joke, Raina has deleted all previous episodes from YouTube.

Stand-up comic Manohar said he suspects that the controversy is a “coordinated effort to gather public sentiments and usher in the draconian Broadcast Bill”. In its last term, the Modi government had proposed and then backtracked on a bill that would have imposed a “licence raj” or muzzle digital content creators who, unlike Allahbadia, have questioned the regime.

Influencers, their reach and propaganda

The kerfuffle also throws light on how YouTube has disrupted the news ecosystem – and made it easier for politicians to choose softball interviews with chosen YouTubers, rather than face uncomfortable questions from trained journalists.

Allahbadia is a good example of this. An engineering student, he forayed into the digital world with a YouTube channel on fitness and cooking titled BeerBiceps. He gradually expanded his content into self-grooming and styling. He then co-founded a talent company, Monk Entertainment, to bring influencers and brands together.

In 2019, he began podcasting. A podcast with Bollywood actress Priyanka Chopra shot The Ranveer Show to fame.

He soon began to charge people to increase their social media presence.

According to MediaAnt, an advertising agency that analyses the fees and reach of influencers, Allahbadia charges Rs 33 lakh for a podcast package. On Instagram, he charges Rs 8 lakh for a reel, Rs 6 lakh for a post and Rs 4 lakh for a story.

In 2023, his influence got him interviews with senior Cabinet ministers in the Modi government – S Jaishankar, Smriti Irani and Piyush Goyal.

The video podcast with external minister Jaishankar’s video garnered 9.8 million views, former women and child development minister Irani got 2 million views and railway minister Piyush Goyal 1.1 million views. Allahbadia said these were unpaid collaborations with MyGov, a government agency that creates digital content as a public outreach.

The flattering questions on the episodes made it clear that this was an image-building exercise for the BJP leaders.

At the time, it did not matter that Allahbadia had previously declared that he loved beef, an uncomfortable talking point for Hindutva supporters.

Now, Allahbadia stands to lose both clout and endorsements.

Qoruz, a company that tracks an influencer’s marketing ratings, has noted a slight decline in followers of Allahbadia’s social media accounts. His Instagram handle @ranveerallahbadia went from 34.3 lakh followers to 34.03 lakh. His other Instagram handle, @Beerbiceps, saw followers fall from 45.2 lakh to 44.8 lakh.

The BJP has distanced itself from its collaborations with the YouTuber, after his distinctly non-sanskari remarks about parental sex. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis commented, “Every person has freedom of speech but it ends when we encroach on another’s freedom.”

Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi called on the prime minister to be careful with the public endorsements he makes.

Manohar said he is not defending what Allahbadia said but points out that comics are a soft target. “It is easier to do this to us, because [we are] comedians. What can we do?”

Raina, who once claimed to be unfazed by any threat of being cancelled by the left, has issued an apology. Just wanted “to make people laugh”, he said.

Sridhar Manickan, a subscriber, said the show did its job. “It made me laugh,” he said. “People should not watch it if it hurts their sentiments.”

Here is a summary of the week’s top stories.

The Manipur crisis. The Union government imposed President’s Rule in the North East state. The Legislative Assembly, which has a tenure till 2027, was put in suspended animation.

This came four days after Bharatiya Janata Party leader N Biren Singh resigned as chief minister. He stepped down a day before his government was likely to face a no-confidence motion in the Assembly. The Opposition Congress described Singh’s resignation as belated and akin to “shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted”.

The ethnic violence between the Meitei and the Kuki-Zomi-Hmar communities, which began in May 2023, has left at least 258 persons dead and displaced more than 59,000.

The imposition of President’s Rule and Singh’s resignation have been the foremost demands of Kuki-Zomi-Hmar groups.

Rules bent? The Indian government in April 2023 eased national security restrictions along the Pakistan border in Gujarat’s Kutch region to facilitate a renewable energy park, official documents show.

The move initially allowed the Solar Energy Corporation of India to develop a hybrid renewable energy project at the site. The SECI had been allotted 23,000 hectares for wind energy, but defence restrictions on solar panels made the project financially unviable. After lobbying by the SECI and the Gujarat government, the defence ministry permitted hybrid projects within 2 km of the border.

Despite this concession, three months later, SECI surrendered the land on instructions from the renewable energy minister. The Gujarat government then reallocated it to the Adani Group, reversing its earlier policy of reserving the land for public sector firms. As a result, Adani Green Energy now controls more land in the park than all other developers combined.

Defence experts have criticised the decision to relax border rules for commercial interests.

The defence ministry, Gujarat government, SECI and the Adani Group have not responded to Scroll’s queries. However, the Adani Group told The Guardian, which first reported the story, that its land allocation adhered to all regulations and approvals.

Sheikh Hasina’s action under scanner. A United Nations report has accused the previous Bangladesh government led by Sheikh Hasina of suppressing dissent and killing protestors last year. The abuses could amount to crimes against humanity, the UN Human Rights Office said.

The UN agency said that it found an “official policy to attack and violently repress anti-government protesters” during the regime led by Hasina’s Awami League. The crimes require further criminal investigation, it added.

Hasina fled to India on August 5 after several weeks of widespread student-led protests against her government. She had been the prime minister of Bangladesh for 16 years. Nobel laureate economist Muhammad Yunus took over as the head of Bangladesh’s interim government three days later.

A team of the UN human rights agency had been sent to Bangladesh in September at Yunus’ request for an independent investigation of the events.

On Thursday, United States President Donald Trump said that the American “deep state” had no role to play in the political crisis in Bangladesh.

Also on Scroll this week

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