On the 20.02.2025 the Principal Investigator of FISM organized the festival “Festival of Satire and Humour” at Akshara Theatre, New Delhi. The objective of the festival was to communicate the goals of the project FISM and, in parallel, to enable a discussion on issues concerning the relationship between satire, freedom of expression and marginalisation in the contemporary Indian context. In order to foster a debate on these issues, artists from ‘glocal’ disciplines related to humour, such as stand-up comedy performers, as well as scholars and performers related to theatre and local performance forms (bhand pather, dastangoi, nautanki, swang), were invited to participate. The event navigated these topics from an intersectional perspective and was organized by addressing the target group of the scholars in South Asian Studies as well as the general public. It consisted of an introductory speech, in which I explained the aims of the festival in the context of FISM project, followed by lectures by the participating artists. This event was attended by Akshara Theatre actors, Tosham Acharya, Zorian Cross, Fouzia Dastango, Himanshu Dwivedi, Mrinal Mathur, Anjana Rajan, Banee Sharad, Ram Dayal Sharma, M.K. Raina, Manjeet Sarkar, Kuljeet Singh, Maheep Singh.
On 24.12.2024, Fabio Mangraviti, Principal Investigator of the FISM project, gave a presentation on ‘Hindi Humour as a Mediatic and Literary Mode’ during the panel ‘Freedom to Laugh and Freedom to be: Humour and Democracy in Contemporary Times’ at the AISC Conference 2024 (Sociology, Development, Democracy) at BML Munjal University, Gurugram.
The panel was organised by Rashi Barghava, Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology, North Eastern Hill University (NEHU). The paper presented by Fabio Mangraviti contributed to the discussion by addressing the role of Hindi literature, before and after COVID-19, in embodying informational and socio-cultural messages and values. The PI has also looked at the role of literary columns and, more recently, satirical fake news in raising counter-narratives in the Indian socio-cultural context.