Joy As An Act Of Resistance: Manjeet Sarkar On Power, Privilege, & 'Internet Gangsters'

“The stage is probably one of my only happy places,” says stand-up comedian Manjeet Sarkar — a performer who has, over the last few years, become one of the sharpest voices of his generation and a chronicler of the India he grew up observing from its margins. Manjeet Sarkar, who grew up in Bastar, Chhattisgarh, first came up through small local open-mics before his clips began circulating widely online. Over the last few years, he’s gone from performing in tiny rooms to touring nationally to packed houses.

As a comedian, his presence on stage is very relaxed and that comes from a place of self-assuredness. For him, the basic and most important rule of comedy is honesty, which what he practices in his craft as well. "Confidence..." he insists "definitely helps on stage for every comedian, especially in India where people are not fans of the art form but fans of the artists." However, this is something that he has had to work on. He talks about how growing up with little self-confidence but plenty of social confidence meant it took longer to develop, particularly after a bruising stretch of humiliation and inferiority that he had to learn to shed. Understanding the wealthy and the upper class up close — the very class he once felt intimidated by, has shifted something in him too.

Initially, the comedian's sharp lens on the insidiousness of Dalit oppression and the blindness that India has towards its caste problem struck a chord across his audience that only grew with time. But this also led to him being referred to as a 'Dalit comedian' which Manjeet always found absurd. “It’s like saying female doctor, female journalist, or Muslim pilot,” he says. “No one’s personal identity should be attached to their profession.”

Across his work, from the personal reflections of 'Let’s Talk About It' to the sharper ideological critiques of 'Democrazy' — he has also been steadily widening his gaze. From more personal terrains he has ventured into dissecting public life, politics and culture. And in making that journey there has been some healing as well. “You talk about it on stage so much that you actually get over it,” he shares. “Because you’re literally talking to a bunch of people every evening.”

Growing up in Bastar, Manjeet's introduction to storytelling came from his father who he calls him one of the best storytellers he’s ever seen; someone who could gossip for hours without losing steam. "There were times he would take me with him to places where my job was to say I want to go home if he got too deep into talking," he recalls "and even that never worked." For his father, stories were a way to parent Manjeet, his brother and often his mom since she married young. It was this modality of making sense of the world that pulled the comedian towards stories, listening, and curiosity.

And so, there's an earnestness that comes from this. A lot of people who come to see him are often the very subjects of his critique on being ignorant about hierarchies of caste, class, or privilege. Yet, they love him. It's a bond similar to the one you share with your close friends and family who value you enough to call you out on your bullshit. For Manjeet and his audience it's the societal hypocrisy, especially of the rich and upper-class, that the comic lays bare.

But apart from intention, there's skill that goes into delivering a strong message with a soft blow too. Manjeet is a rare outlier that doesn't cozy up to any side of the political spectrum — he attacks both the orthodoxy and bigotry of the right as well as the hypocrisy, elitism and the ignorance of the left. "I bring fresh comedy that is not usually available in the contemporary scene," he muses "and the audience who likes me probably likes my jokes and also wants a break from lazy writing, so that helps too."

As captivating as his comedy is, it's also rooted in a work ethic that doesn’t buckle under pressure, even when the backlash gets real. Manjeet has dealt with threats, legal notices, and all the usual attempts to intimidate comics who critique power. But he talks about it with the same matter-of-fact tone he uses onstage. Death threats don't scare him anymore. “People are just internet gangsters,” he says, shrugging, and adds that living in South India has probably helped. The lawsuits don’t bother him either, mostly because he’s careful about what he says and where he stands. “I don’t lie or say anything illegal,” he says. And in his view, the people filing cases have more to worry about than he does. “A huge company filed a case against me and nothing happened,” he says. “The only reason I am not scared is because I speak the truth.

When he's building his material, Manjeet doesn’t write jokes line by line. It usually starts with something that’s been sitting in his head for a while; a thought that’s been bothering him or circling back in different forms. He notes it down and lets it settle until it grows into the core of a ten or fifteen-minute set. The rest is the steady, unglamorous part of the craft: basic joke-writing, testing it onstage, editing, and performing it again until it feels right. Rhythm, he says, isn’t something he thinks about consciously anymore; it’s something years of stage time have carved into him. His pacing, though, is deliberate, particularly in his choosing how many words sharpen a punchline or how waiting a single beat might unlock another laugh.

"The ethics part is easy," he says. "As long as I am not hurting someone’s feelings I am good, but people feeling called out is not my problem."

Where things get more complicated is online. Manjeet recently spoke about about the gap between the jokes he crafts most carefully and the ones that actually travel on Instagram. “The mass audience enjoys dumbed-down content where they are spoon-fed,” he says, though he isn’t judging them for it. A good bit needs context, tension, and patience — three things a ninety-second reel doesn’t allow. But none of it changes how he writes. Manjeet is clear that if he wanted to chase viral formats or user-friendly comedy, he wouldn’t be doing political material in the first place. “People who pay to watch me live come for well-crafted jokes,” he says. “If they like me, good. If they do not, then I feel sorry for their taste.”

This is also why you won't catch him riding the crowd-work wave that has flooded our feeds: "I feel like I have more interesting things to say than anyone in the audience, and I hope they think the same because they paid me to be the interesting one."

Watching Manjeet bloom over the years as a creative has been a real treat, especially amidst the anxieties around creative work today, where everything has to justify itself in numbers — views, reach, ticket sales, and marketability. Add to that an agressive push towards AI slop and algorithm-friendly sameness and it’s not a stretch to say that originality hasn’t been under this much threat in a long time. In the middle of all this, Manjeet feels almost out of place in the best way. He takes the craft seriously without getting swallowed by the machinery around it

Lately he has been travelling across US and Canada. On the days he misses the stage he performs at open mic and spots across North America, meeting comics from everywhere — Nigeria, Russia, the Middle East, and Canada — and letting the sheer range of perspectives remind him why he wanted to do this in the first place. "Currently I am chilling. The focus is on being happy and living life," he shares. "The only work-related focus is on new specials and writing my new show which I should be touring in India from February 2026 onwards."

Follow Manjeet here and watch his most recent special below:

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