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Late one recent Saturday night, stand-up comedian Manjeet Sarkar walked up to a makeshift podium inside a jampacked cafe in the posh city of Bengaluru.
最近的一个星期六的深夜，在极尽奢靡的班加罗尔市的一家拥挤的咖啡馆内，脱口秀喜剧演员曼吉特·萨卡尔走上了临时搭建的讲台。
Mr. Sarkar is a Dalit, a community regarded as “untouchable” by upper-caste Hindus.
萨卡尔是达利特人，这个群体被高种姓的印度人视为“不可接触者”, 即“贱民”。
The audience welcomes him with loud applause, and once everyone settles in, Mr. Sarkar cracks his first one-liner: “If anyone does not laugh at my jokes, I touch them.”
观众用热烈的掌声欢迎他，当所有人都入座后，萨卡尔开起了玩笑，第一句是:“如果有人听了我的笑话不笑，我就触摸他们。”
The crowd loves it.
观众喜欢这个笑话。
The quip takes aim at the Hindu caste system, a rigid, centuries-old hierarchy that places Dalits like him on the lowest possible tier, below Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Shudras.
这句嘲弄的话语针对的是印度的种姓制度，这是一种有着几百年历史的严格等级制度，把像他这样的达利特人置于尽可能低的等级，达利特的等级低于婆罗门、刹帝利、卫舍雅和首陀罗。
Old laws called for their physical and social segregation, and although the practice of “untouchability” has been outlawed in modern India, anti-Dalit violence and stigma prevail across the country.
旧法律要求对达利特人进行身体和社会隔离，尽管惯有的“贱民”说法在现代印度已被视为非法，但反达利特人的暴力和污名活动仍在全国盛行。
For another half-hour, Mr. Sarkar makes a largely upper-caste audience laugh at jokes about the discrimination Dalits face and the classism that exists in elite Indian circles.
在接下来的半小时里，萨卡尔用关于达利特人面临的歧视以及印度精英圈子里的阶级优越论的笑话，让以上层种姓为主的观众哈哈大笑。
He is one of a small but growing number of Dalit comedians breaking into India’s Brahmin-dominated comedy scene.
达利特喜剧演员虽然人数不多，但从业人数却在不断增长，他们闯入了婆罗门主导的印度喜剧舞台，而萨卡尔是其中的一员。
Onstage, they’re finding that examining caste through humor not only makes for better comedy, but is also personally empowering.
在舞台上，他们发现通过幽默来审视种姓制度不仅能带来更好的喜剧效果，还能给个人赋权。
“I can convey my thoughts without thinking twice whether I will be mob-lynched or beaten up by someone,” says Mr. Sarkar.
“我可以毫不犹豫地表达我的想法，不管我是否会被暴民处以私刑还是被他们暴打一顿，”萨卡尔说。
“Being on the stage gives me a sense of liberty and equality.”
“在舞台上给了我自由和平等的感觉。”
The culture of independent stand-up comedy emerged in India in the early 2010s, fueled by the rise of YouTube and influenced by comedians in Britain, Canada, and the United States.
独立脱口秀喜剧文化于2010年代初在印度兴起，受到了YouTube崛起的推动，还受到了英国、加拿大和美国喜剧演员的影响。
Back then, only upper-caste people could afford to work unpaid shows and open mics, and even nowadays, when there’s more money to be made, that’s who dominates the comedy circuit.
那时候，只有高种姓的人才能负担得起无偿演出和开麦的工作，即使是现在，可以赚取更多的薪水，他们也还是这个喜剧圈的主宰。
Madhavi Shivaprasad, an independent researcher based in Bengaluru who has also published a paper on caste and stand-up comedy in India, says that like other art forms, Indian stand-up has historically been very exclusivist.
班加罗尔的独立研究员马达维·希瓦夫拉萨德也发表了一篇关于印度种姓和脱口秀的文章。他表示，与其他艺术形式一样，印度脱口秀在历史上一直是非常排外的。
