Organisers of the recent Pune Comedy Festival 3.0, which was held over the weekend, cancelled a scheduled act by one of the performing artistes — stand-up comedian Rahul Subramanian. The decision was made in light of recent outrage over Subramanian’s comedy special ‘Kal Main Udega’.
In a segment of the comedy special, Subramanian details how he “hates DJs”. The video, which was uploaded on March 25, sparked immense social media backlash from DJs, who also threatened the comic. Considering the threats, organisers of the third edition of the Pune Comedy Festival decided to pull Subramanian’s act at the very last minute from a line-up of popular stand-up comics including Abish Matthew, Atul Khatri, Kanan Gill, Sumukhi Suresh, and Zakir Khan. The event was organised by The Classic Rock Coffee Co from March 30 to April 1.
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Addressing the “enormous & venomous hate” he received on social media, Subramanian had shared a post on Facebook along with screenshots. “You have full right to dislike my comedy, cuss me, hate me, say the worst possible things to me – that’s your freedom of expression and I completely support that. As long as you don’t threaten me,” he wrote in the post.
Subramanian also goes on to mention that some of the people who had threatened him were waiting outside a venue where he was performing. “I was performing in Gurgaon and I was informed that there were some people waiting for me outside the venue, one of them being a guy who had apparently threatened to beat me up if he ever met me (of course after a handshake and a couple of drinks).”
According to Subramanian, he has performed the same act across the world, however, he hasn’t gotten such a response from anybody over criticising other people’s professions.
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Addressing the crowd at the event on Sunday, the organiser and master franchisee of The Classic Rock Coffee Co Avinash Agarwal said, “Many of you are aware of the threat from DJs that he received. We were forced to cancel his performance owing to security concerns and to avoid any disruption to this event.” According to an Indian Express report, Agarwal goes on to mention that people should learn to take “comedy in its spirit.”
