Days after a video clip on Periyar from Faiyaaz Hussain’s stand up show went viral, the Tamil comedian has issued an apology saying he should have “known better”. Faiyaaz, who enjoys popularity on Instagram through his page Pundank, did an impromptu sketch earlier this week in which he incorrectly said that Periyar married his “daughter” and mocks him for the marriage.
In his apology video posted on July 16, Faiyaaz says, “At first, I didn’t understand why it mattered that there was misinformation in a joke. But after many wrong meme pages began sharing the clip, I realised I have committed a grave mistake. I’m really sorry for posting that joke online and for doing that joke. I should have known better.”
The comedian also added that his joke regarding Periyar’s marriage had been impromptu in order to “test the waters” and not a part of his pre-written material.
In the viral clip, Faiyaaz asked a couple in the audience how they met. When they responded “Shaadi.com”, the comedian took a dig at matrimony sites and the caste endogamy reinforced by such sites. When the man responded, “I did actually check to see if there was something like ‘Periyarist matrimony’,” Faiyaaz responded with “What is this, sir? For that, can you marry your own daughter?”
The disinformation that Periyar married his ‘adopted daughter’ has been used repeatedly to discredit the Dravidian leader.
Periyar’s wife and Dravidian ideologue Maniyammai was not an adopted daughter, but was his personal assistant for years before their marriage. She was 32 and Periyar was 70 at the time of their wedding—a move opposed by Dravidian leaders including Anna Durai. Maniyammai would go on to lead the Dravida Kazhagam (DK) founded by Periyar after his death.
The marriage was presented as the alleged reason for Annadurai to break away from the DK to form the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in September of 1949.
As many historians have pointed out, Periyar and Maniyammai’s marriage was due in large part to existing inheritance laws of that time, which would not allow Periyar to transfer chairpersonship of the DK nor trusteeship of the organisation’s funds to Maniyammai because she was a woman, even though he chose her as his political heir.
Read: Anna would have split from Periyar even if he hadn’t married Maniyammai – here’s why
Faiyaaz’s clip led to huge backlash, with many criticising the comedian for his lack of awareness and for spreading misinformation.
This is not the first time the comedian has been called out for his content.
Faiyaaz has repeatedly done stand-up sequences targeting queer communities. In one particularly offensive Instagram reel that is still up on the Pundank page, Faiyaaz says, “We’d made a homophobic video – I don’t wish to apologise for that – but people didn’t even realise we were being homophobic. They thought we were gay.” Faiyaaz goes on to use transphobic slurs to describe the friend requests he received from queer people who watched the video and whom he alleges assumed he is gay.
The older video Faiyaaz refers to in this reel appears to be a collaboration he had done with another popular Instagram comedian who goes by the handle @vetti_payan_venkat. In this video, while it superficially appears to mock cisgender-hetrosexual people for being queerphobic, its intention to stereotype queer communities instead is plain, as admitted by Faiyaaz himself.
Similarly, in yet another offensive clip posted to Pundank’s YouTube channel, Faiyaaz indulged in what is called a ‘roast’ in stand-up comedy. A roast is a comic sequence in which a particular person becomes the target of the jokes. It is common among stand-up comics to ‘roast’ audience members as part of ‘crowd interactions’. Often these are done without malice and are enjoyed by many audience members. However, in this video, Faiyaaz used the audience roast to make a string of homophobic comments from stereotypes about the body language of gay men to sex work.
In his July 16 apology video, the comedian acknowledged that he has been queerphobic in the past despite being called out many times. He said, “I will not make this kind of content in the future, whether it is queerphobic jokes or jokes such as this one [the Periyar joke]. I will continue to speak about politics. I have done so in the past, and there has been no criticism. If I am being criticised now, that means I have to accept my mistake. In the coming days, neither Faiyaaz Hussain the comedian nor the Pundank page will post content that has not been fact-checked or is just plain misinformation.” However, the above-mentioned reels and similar queerphobic content continues to be up on the Pundank social media pages, still receiving thousands of likes.
It’s to be noted that Faiyaaz has also used his platform in the past to speak out against the treatment of religious minorities as vote banks, the caste politics of the DMK and Islamophobic policies of the BJP. In one such post, the comedian jokes about the “confusion” caused by the name of the Congress-led multi party alliance — the INDIA bloc.
In a reel from before the 2024 general elections, Faiyaaz asked an audience member whom they would be voting for. When the person said, “For INDIA”, the comedian responded, “Can’t you just say DMK? Half the people here don’t even vote. They must be scratching their heads wondering ‘aren’t we all Indians?’ That’s true, everyone here is Indian. CAA [Citizenship Amendment Act] was only for me.”
Also read: The September which split Dravidians: Periyar weds Maniyammai, DMK is born