In “How The British Took Over India”, the comedian Trevor Noah uses comedy in order to convey the absurdity of the overall concept of colonization. His performance depicts a heavily satirized encounter between an Indian local and a British colonizer. The interaction very clearly pokes fun at the hyperbolized thought process of the British man, as the comical rebuttals of the Indian character point out the ridiculousness of the demands made by the former. At one point, the British colonizer demanded that the Indian man would have to worship their God, however, the local gets confused, asking him “which god?”, as in Indian beliefs, there are multiple Gods, as opposed to the single God that the British worshiped. This then leads to a back and forth of misunderstandings, as their religious beliefs do not coincide with one another. Although this interaction is portrayed in a relatively lighthearted and humorous way, the demand for other cultures to accept and worship the religion of their colonizers was a very real thing, and the differences between the Indian polytheist perception to the British monotheistic beliefs compliment the jokes message of how absurd it is to impose a belief onto a culture with complete disregard of what their world views are. This directly coincides with Noah’s remarks at the beginning of the performance where he mentions that unlike invading a country for the purposes of material gain, colonization with the objective of cultural impositions and indoctrination was completely illogical. Though the interaction between the two men was definitely one of humor and fiction, the events of colonization which surrounded their conversation certainly wasn’t. Their remarks are meant to apply logical and modern thought processes to the concept of conquering and indoctrinating a distinct group of people, as their ridiculous responses appear fitting for their equally ridiculous predicaments. This sketch demonstrates that comedy can be used in order to point out the fallacies of real life events, as their exaggeration points out the flaws and idiocrasies of real concepts.

The Comedy sketch also uses comedy in order to portray the racism involved in process of colonization by depicting the British character with a very “high and mighty” attitude towards the Indian, as if he believed that he was far superior to the local. Though the jokes make his character seem preposterous, this attitude was one that truly existed back in those days, and the jokes made by the performer around it weren’t meant to exaggerate the extent of racism and wishes of indoctrination held by the colonizers of the era, but instead they are used to highlight those actions. This is made more evident when the Indian character gracefully responds in ways that point out how ridiculous the British man’s grandiose perceptions of him and his country are. Towards the end, they go back and forth, with the Brit telling that they will colonize India, with the local opposing those statements. This goes on until the British character pulls out a firearms and shoots as a threat, demonstrating that those that were colonized never truly intended to give up their lands, but instead were forced to do so.