Making Fun of Gandhi: An Object Lesson

So recently there's been a bit of a media ruckus over a comedian named Gautham Prasad. An NRI (Non-Resident Indian) living in New York, he posted some of his shows on Youtube a while back. One of them has him dressed up like Ghandi, performing a (PG-13) striptease, with a pole and everything. A couple Indian TV stations found out about this, and broadcast clips of the skit to the general dismay of many, many people.

The clip, which can be easily found on YouTube, is a whole lot of not funny. However, calls by politicians to punish the guy in some unspecified way or to make the TV stations that aired the clip apologize are hardly the right approach. The video is now banned from being aired on TV in India, so I guess most people will just have to imagine how bad it could be.

I bet Prasad is glad there are several oceans between him and the folks angry with him, and here's hoping it blows over soon.