New Delhi: Standup comedian Kunal Kamra is now hogging the headlines after he indulged in a verbal spat on board a Mumbai-Lucknow flight with TV journalist Arnab Goswami. As a consequence, three airlines banned him from flying with them. After Indigo airline, Air India and then SpiceJet joined in. However, this is not the first time Kamra has courted controversy; rather Kamra is synonymous to controversies.
Kamra first shot into limelight with her show Shut Up Ya Kunal. Kamra, who had previously done standup, started interviewing in YouTube in 2017. Kamra invited many journalists and leaders to the show including Ravish Kumar, Asaduddin Owaisi, Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid, Shehla Rashid, Jignesh Mevani, Arvind Kejriwal, Javed Akhtar and Priyanka Chaturvedi.
Cut to 2019, Kamra launched leader Shashi Tharoor as a comedian. Kamra mentors Tharoor in Amazon Prime Video’s show One Mic Stand. Apart from Tharoor, actresses like Taapsee Pannu and Richa Chadha were also seen doing comedy in this show.
Kamra has been making headlines for political satire. Apart from this, you will also find posts on his social media account, which fall under the category of disputed. In 2018, he once deleted his Twitter account after his old Tweets related to Muslims, Sikhs and Mother Teresa went viral. During this time he was also asked to vacate the apartment in Mumbai. In 2019, two of Kamra’s shows were also cancelled after some people showed up at the venue and threatened to disrupt it.
In an interview given to a national daily, Kamra made her stand on the controversy clear. He had said “I am just a content creator… and this is all good content. It’s more fun than addressing other subjects because I get to air my views, which are obviously biased.”