‘Riot-instigating bigot’: Comedian put on no-fly list for heckling right-wing journalist on plane

A prominent left-wing comedian has been banned from flying by nearly every major Indian airline after he confronted a right-wing news presenter on board a plane.

In his first media interview since they shared a flight from Mumbai to Lucknow on Tuesday, Kunal Kamra told The Independent that he would “never be able to make peace with [himself]” if he passed up the opportunity to speak his mind to Republic TV’s firebrand anchor Arnab Goswami.

The comedian, who has amassed 800,000 Twitter followers with jokes often at the expense of the establishment, said that when he saw Goswami he decided “to behave exactly how a Republic TV reporter would behave” and question him on camera.

In the video, which has been viewed more than three million times, Kamra asks: “Arnab, are you a coward, a journalist, or a nationalist?” He adds that “the viewers want to know” – co-opting Goswami’s own catchphrase, “the nation wants to know”.

As footage of the incident was widely shared, the airline IndiGo issued a statement saying that it was suspending Kamra for six months on the basis that his behaviour on board its flight was “unacceptable”.

And three other airlines followed suit with their own bans, after the government’s civil aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri said he was “left with no option but to advise other airlines to impose similar restrictions on the person concerned”.

“Offensive behaviour designed to provoke and create disturbance inside an aircraft is absolutely unacceptable and endangers safety of air travellers,” he said.

Kamra joked to The Independent that the only major carrier not to ban him – Vistara – might as well “just go for it [as well]… it’s the best airline but they have the worst connectivity, they hardly fly anywhere anyway”.

He said that he had stayed off social media to avoid most of the social media backlash against him – “funnily enough I’ve been on airplane mode” – but was utterly unrepentant.

“I have waited for this moment for a very long time, to tell [Goswami] how I feel about his ‘journalism’. I’ve made memes about him, I’ve made jokes about him, and I thought – I’ve now got this window, and a captive audience… where he cannot escape,” Kamra said.

“Let me just go and honestly, candidly tell him ‘you are a f***ing riot-instigating bigot’. [His] work is affecting people’s lives, people’s relationships with their parents, people’s feeling towards each other. And if I’ve got that window to tell someone this from my heart and if I didn’t do this, then I don’t know how I would make peace with myself.

“I have had those windows in the past where I’ve just exchanged pleasantries, but I don’t think fascists are people you just ignore and exchange pleasantries with and move on, I don’t think we are that country.”

Some have questioned the speed with which the airlines – Air India, GoAir and SpiceJet, alongside IndiGo – have moved to ban the comedian following the minister’s statement.

A passenger can only be banned for up to six months if the pilot submits a formal complaint and an internal committee, to be set up by the airline, finds they exhibited “physical unruliness”. “Verbally unruly” behaviour can only be met with a three-month ban.

Arun Kumar, chief of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), told Huff Post India that IndiGo “should have waited for the internal enquiry to be completed before putting the passenger on the no-flyers list for six months”.

Kamra admitted that his comments to Goswami were “not polite”, but that he only resorted to filming the incident once the presenter declined to have a conversation and insisted he was watching something on his laptop.

And he strongly rejects the suggestion that his actions caused a major disturbance to the flight, saying no other passengers were affected and that he returned to his seat “within 20 seconds” of being asked to do so by a flight steward. He says that, at the end of the flight, he apologised to the crew and shook hands with the pilots.

In a video posted later to YouTube, Kamra showed a clip of a Republic TV reporter confronting a politician on board a flight. The reporter is told that “this is not the right place to talk”, and repeatedly ordered to take their seat by flight attendants, but continues questioning him regardless.

The comedian also said he “did it for Rohit”, a reference to the Dalit student Rohith Vemula, who killed himself in 2016 after receiving what he claimed was discriminatory treatment by the Hyderabad University authorities. The case has previously featured in Republic TV’s coverage.

Goswami, described by Firstpost as “easily India’s most infamous journalist”, was an anchor at the brash, conservative channel Times Now for a decade before launching the overtly pro-Modi Republic TV in May 2017.

Rana Ayyub, the prominent investigative journalist and Modi critic, wrote on Twitter: “That all commercial airlines have decided to put Kunal Kamra on their ‘No fly list’ to please the government just exposes the rapport Arnab Goswami shares with the regime.”

Goswami remained silent throughout the filmed confrontation with Kamra, has not commented to Indian media reports and does not maintain an active Twitter profile. He did not respond to a request for comment.