Having a laugh in India

It probably wouldn't have them rolling in the aisles in London or Los Angeles, but if all politics is local, then so is a great deal of comedy.

And a new craze is beginning to sweep urban India - stand-up comedy. In English.

On stage in a small open-air auditorium is Papa CJ, an Indian comedian who's appeared regularly on the British comedy circuit.

"What you've got to manage in the Indian audience is some of the hypocrisy. People are very conscious of who is looking at me laugh at what," he says.

Even for him, this is relatively new territory. For Indian audiences more than anywhere else, it's all about knowing where the lines have to be drawn.

"But it's fascinating because it's at such a nascent stage," Papa CJ says.

"The only reason I got inspired to really do stand-up is that I sat in the audience and heard all this female bashing"

And it's not just established stand-ups who are clambering up on stage.

At an open-mic night in a Delhi bar, the drinks are flowing, there are some fairly risque jokes being told, and a woman has just started singing on stage about the infamously bad attitude of the Indian man.

Devika is a lawyer by day and a would-be comedienne at night. And her inspiration? Breaking a few taboos.

"The only reason I got inspired to really do stand-up is that I sat in the audience and heard all this female bashing, and more female bashing," she laughs.

"It went on and on and finally I said 'you know what? I can give an answer to that. Let me get up and do it.'"

There is of course a huge comedy scene in India already - Hindi comedy in the north, Tamil comedy in the south, a dozen other regional linguistic laughs and a long Bollywood tradition of slapstick.

But some things don't translate well, as India's deputy foreign minister Shashi Tharoor found out recently.

On his twitter page he said he was flying cattle class in solidarity with all our holy cows. Cattle? Cows? Can be a sensitive subject in India.

Many people weren't amused, and Mr Tharoor was briefly inundated with calls to recant or resign.

"The problem with a politician trying to be funny," he admits ruefully, "is that you have to be funny across all these linguistic divides or else you come a cropper. And that's what happened to me.

"I think I've had a very, very hard lesson on why it is that Indian politicians are not renowned for their sense of humour.

Playwright Anuvab Pal

Indians love a joke and a laugh as much as anyone else, but this is a large and complex country with multiple layers of language and development.

"The things you can say in private to an audience who might understand the context," Shashi Tharoor concludes, "are very different to what you can say in this vast public space of multi-lingual India."

And there are still plenty of subjects which would cause a pretty sharp intake of breath - caste and religion immediately spring to mind. But parts of India are learning to laugh at themselves in a much more liberal way.

"I think there's an upper-middle class, urban, Indian sense of humour emerging," says Anuvab Pal, a successful playwright and screenplay writer.

"Thirty to forty million people, cosmopolitan, well-travelled and fairly exposed to Western comedy."

He runs through a list - Friends or Frasier, Seinfeld or The Office.

"That kind of comedy is pouring out into stand-up comedy clubs," he adds, "and I think in aspirational cities like Delhi they'll all talk about it. It becomes a thing. And if you can make it like that, they'll laugh."

In other words, English language comedy is reflecting a young Indian elite, with plenty of money to spend.

The Comedy Store - a British institution - is soon opening in Mumbai, and other comedy clubs are springing up to take advantage of the new trend.