Shyam Rangeela shot to fame in India for his impersonations of the rhetoric and mannerisms of Narendra Modi, the country’s prime minister.
But the prospect of the Modi mimic challenging the subject of his satire on the campaign trail may have proved too much for the country’s more humourless bureaucrats.
The stand-up comedian’s nomination as an independent candidate in Modi’s constituency of Varanasi was first blocked and then rejected by election officials.
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“We are witnessing a strangling of democracy,” Rangeela said in an interview with The Times in the sacred Hindu city. “I wanted to stand here on the principle that, whoever the candidate, India’s voters have the right to make their own choice.”
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Once a Modi supporter, the slight, bespectacled 29-year-old from a poor Hindu farming family in Rajasthan is an unlikely competitor for a nationalist strongman who leads the world’s largest political party. But he threw his hat into the ring championing sensitive messages about freedom of speech and erosions of democratic rights after a decade of rule by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“The PM and the BJP may not be not afraid of established politicians, but they are scared of facing a young comedian who will push issues in a sarcastic, funny way, popular with the people, because they don’t know to counter that,” Rangeela said. “They can block my candidacy but they cannot silence our voice or stop us fighting for free elections and right of expression.”
In the 24 hours after Rangeela’s nomination was rejected, his social media postings attracted nearly ten million views, while political cartoonists had a field day.
Rangeela was vying for what seems a thankless task: challenging the country’s most powerful man in Hinduism’s holiest heartland. The nominations of six contenders were eventually accepted. But Rangeela was one of several independent candidates who said their applications were deliberately pushed past the deadline by government officials handling their paperwork at a snail’s pace.
The comedian gained national attention in 2017 for his performance mimicking Modi and Rahul Gandhi, leader of the Congress Party, on The Great Indian Laughter Challenge, a talent show. His impersonations won a standing ovation from the studio audience as well as the judges’ praise — but they were never broadcast, as the network deemed the material too sensitive.
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Nonetheless, the clip was leaked and went viral on social media. Seven years later, he is still being censored but performs in comedy clubs and reaches his 2.5 million followers online. He recently tagged Modi in a post saying he could not appear on television as people “fear you”, and asking if his “mimicry was a crime”.
As a first-time voter in 2014, Rangeela backed Modi and the BJP, disillusioned by the corruption scandals under the previous Congress administration and excited, like many young Indians, by the prospect of new leadership and national rejuvenation. Ten years later, he says freedom of expression in culture and the media is under threat. “Critical voices are being shut down everywhere, in every way,” he said.
What pushed him into running were shenanigans in the constituencies of Surat and Indore, where opposition candidates dropped out of the race against the BJP incumbents at the last moment. There followed murky events in Varanasi during the supposed week-long nomination window. Rangeela first tried to submit his paperwork on May 10 but encountered bureaucratic obstructionism and closed doors.
On May 14, the final day for nominations, Modi lodged his papers with ease, while Rangeela and other aspiring independent candidates were kept outside until the evening. They were eventually allowed to file their documents only for them to be later rejected as incomplete and too late. The local office of the election commission, headed by a career civil servant, has not responded to media inquiries about the rejections.
In Varanasi there were 40 candidates on the ballot in 2014, when Modi first ran, and 26 in 2019. Only seven made the cut this year, the lowest number in decades.
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Rangeela insisted his candidacy was not a publicity stunt, saying: “I was contesting this race entirely seriously because I am very serious about our country’s democracy.” Indeed, there are risks for comedians taking a political stand in a country where humour is largely absent from public life. Rangeela has twice faced criminal investigations over his material.
In 2021 Munawar Faruqui was arrested in the middle of a stand-up show in Madhya Pradesh, a BJP-ruled state, under hate-crime laws. The comedian, who is Muslim, was alleged to have offended Hindu deities and Amit Shah, Modi’s consigliere as home affairs minister. He was eventually released after spending more than a month in jail.
The leading opponent to Modi is Ajay Rai, 54, the Congress leader in the state of Uttar Pradesh, who contrasts his roots — having been born in Varanasi — to Modi’s background as an outsider.
Modi, then chief minister of his home state of Gujarat, chose Varanasi to take his political career to the national stage because of its religious significance on the banks of the Ganges in the Hindu heartlands. Modi claimed that Ma Ganga, a river goddess, had summoned him.
Last week, after Modi staged a massive campaign convoy through the old city, Rai said in the courtyard of his party offices: “I don’t have to reintroduce myself with some big roadshow every five years. I live here, while Modi has to make this fuss, saying Ma Ganga has adopted him. The roadshow was a waste of time and money that could be spent on projects to help the people of Varanasi. If he was performing so well as the MP, why does he need this big show?”
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Modi is campaigning on the back of upgrades to Varanasi’s infrastructure, with India enjoying the fastest growth of any big global economy. But Rai is hammering home the national Congress message that the boom is benefiting only the rich, not creating enough jobs for a growing workforce, while prices of staple foods have surged.
The city is also home to the country’s most sensitive religious flashpoint, a Moghul-era mosque separated by fencing and barbed wire from a Hindu temple to the god Shiva. Activists have lodged court cases pressing for the mosque, widely believed to have been built on ruins of a destroyed temple, to be be replaced by an extension of the Hindu holy site.
The row echoes events in Ayodhya where Modi in January inaugurated a grand new temple to the deity Rama, erected on the grounds of a mosque torn down by mobs in 1992. The prime minister has repeatedly invoked the Ram Mandir temple on the campaign trail, claiming Congress would raze it to appeal for Muslim “vote jihad”, even while insisting he was not playing the “Hindu-Muslim” card.
Rai was dismissive of that. “Politicians should not be involved in these things,” he said. “But all you hear from BJP and Modi is ‘Hindu, Hindu, Hindu’ about everything.”
Modi is the overwhelming favourite to win a third term in the BJP bastion, where his party has triumphed in seven of the eight elections since 1991. Five years ago he secured 63 per cent of the vote, with a majority of 479,000 in a seat with an electorate of 1.8 million.
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Varanasi will go the polls without Rangeela on the ballot on June 1, in the seventh and final phase of India’s 44-day election. The results will be declared for the country on June 4.
