Where have all the Hindu-American comedians gone?

So many things determine whether stand-up comedians are successful. Well, first off, are they funny? That one should be pretty obvious. Beyond that, though, they need to be connected to their truth, tapped into the zeitgeist, and marketable. There has been a veritable explosion of South Asian comedians in America.

My theory? We’re a product of the world’s two most important democracies, so we’re free-speech squared. Look at the list: Aziz

Ansari’s second season of Master of None leads the way for Emmy nominations. Canadian-born-but-US-residing Russell Peters continues to sell out arenas around the world. Not theatres. Not auditoriums. Arenas.

Kumail Nanjiani’s film, The Big Sick, is among the most critically-acclaimed films of the year. He is a Pakistani, but this, of course, falls under the umbrella of South Asian.

Hasan Minhaj not only performed stand-up at the White House Correspondents Dinner (and received the first standing ovation in 25 years), but also dropped an enormous Netflix special.

Did you notice something? It sounds like the beginning of a joke: Three Muslims and a Christian walk into America... Look, I’m not about dividing people. I got an engineering degree so I’m all about building things. I aim to use my own comedy as a platform to discuss topics that unite us.

I cannot stress enough how happy for and proud of everybody I am. (Well, as much as a comic can wish anyone else success. Hey, it’s a chronic condition for all of us.) So, this is not intended to be a complaint piece. It’s merely a bit of data.

At some point, it’d be fun to try to place some hypothesis around it, as an engineer would do.

In fact, I recently read a complaint piece that I’d like to, well, complain about. It focused on the works of Ansari, Nanjiani, and Minhaj, and how they all feature male leads falling in love with white women. The author criticised them for not featuring South Asian females. Oh my God. (Or… Oh my Gods. I’m Hindu.)

Could we just celebrate diversity instead of turning friendly fire towards other champions of liberalism? I’m not saying South Asian women aren’t important — of course they are. I’m married to one. But it’s truly amazing that brown people are finally having our moment in the US; could we simply enjoy that for a few minutes?

So, believe me — this is not a critique as much as an observation. How did we get here? Russell Peters is an outlier, as he blew up in 2005, five years before anyone else in this crew.

The next three to pop are all Muslim. And boy, do we need some of their voices right now. Their success is more than welcome. But ironically, though the vast majority of South Asians are Hindu, we are sorely lacking in representation.

Sure, there are some making their way here after achieving much success in India — and that’s fantastic. But why are we not able to grow our own here stateside?

There are two primary ways to measure a working comic’s success: Hollywood credits and social media following. Perhaps because they inform each other in a virtuous circle, the list above (Ansari, Peters, Nanjiani, Minhaj) is in order of social media following as well as Hollywood credits.

If you continue down the list, you hit another Muslim. Well, it’s not nice to hit anybody — that sounds like something Donald Trump would do. But you reach Aasif Mandvi, formerly himself of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and of myriad film, television, and stage appearances.

Finally, after him, you arrive at Aparna Nancherla and Hari Kondabolu. Yay. Some Hindus. However, Mandvi’s social media following is equal to theirs combined.

What about Mindy Kaling, Kal Penn, and Kunal Nayyar? Well, they’re different — they’re actors. And though there is much overlap between comedians and actors (and some actors are writers themselves), there is a notable difference: actors perform other people’s words; comedians perform their own words.

Actually, comedians are some of the only people in the world who achieve their prominence purely from their own thoughts. This point only serves to make this all even more ironic: the values of America and of Hinduism dovetail so well — pluralism, tolerance, equality.

So, one would imagine the thoughts of an American Hindu would oscillate at the same frequency as the rest of America.

Oscillate? Frequency? Told you I was an engineer.

The author is a Los Angeles-based comedian and host