Sardar Jokes And Hindus' Rights To Free Speech

Neutral Singh · #1 (**permalink**) 02-03-2005, 07:39 AM

This "journalist" from the Hindustan Times claims that Sikhs opposed to SardarJi jokes are infringing upon their (hindus) rights to free speech (Their right to depricate minorities is now an issue of freedom), what this archaic fossil of a journalist doesn't realize is that this "humor" that he puts into comparison of free-will countries would not fly in the western world which are the beacons of "Freedom of Speech" itself. Gone are the days white actors would "dress up as Blacks" and make a mockery of them the way hindu actors put on a pugh and make themselves fools, I wonder how long a hollywood actor would last if he told a N*gger joke as a means for comedy and not in dramatic terms for films such as Mississipi Burning etc, he and/or the production company would face criminal charges for hate crimes. Also he claims that the 84 riots only healed when Sikhs themselves started telling "Sardarji jokes" again, yes and we all know the Jewish have finally "gotten over" the holocaust, not when the Nazis were put to trial and arrested, not when they were given their freedom, not when they were protected under an umbrella of nations who would look over them, but of course the healing began when they reverted back to self-depricating humor.......I can't believe how low journalism, and how disillusioned such idiots as this journalist have become, it's utterly pathetic.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/5922_1260510,001500230026.htm

Free speech and the Sardarji joke
Vir Sanghvi
February 27
Have you heard a good Sardarji joke recently? Has something about Santa and Banta brought a smile to your lips? Perhaps you have chuckled at a Sardarji joke in Khushwant Singh’s column.

If so, beware. You might have caused offence to the Sikh quom. Millions of Sardarjis might have been mortally offended by your laughter. You could well have struck a blow against the minorities.

Oh yes, I am being entirely

serious. Take the case of the film Shabd. I haven’t seen the movie — and judging by the box-office receipts, neither have most of you — but I gather that there is a scene that goes something like this: Zayed Khan is trying to cheer Aishwarya Rai up. He decides to tell her a Sardarji joke. He gets as far as saying “There was a Sardarji” when Aishwarya dissolves into helpless giggles. He never gets to complete the joke. Fair enough, you say. We’ve all told Sardarji jokes at some time or the other. And as for Ash’s giggles, these are of no great consequence. Aishwarya giggles incessantly no matter whether you ask her what the time is or tell her a joke.

But no, this seemingly innocuous scene has now become the subject of a controversy. Angry Sikhs stormed the offices of Pritish Nandy Communications who made the film. There were demands that the scene be deleted forthwith. The film was anti-Sikh, it was claimed. The pride of the Sikh quom had been hurt. The whole thing was an attack on the minorities.

The moral of the story is: don’t tell Sardarji jokes because some Sardarjis can’t take a joke. But why single out the Sikhs? Let’s take the example of India’s Christians. Way back in the 1970s, Jesus Christ Superstar, the Tim Rice-Andrew Lloyd Weber musical, was turned into a Hollywood film. By the time the movie was imported into India, Jesus Christ Superstar was already well-known as the hit play that had rocked Broadway. It had even been staged in Bombay by Alyque Padamsee.

So you would expect Christians to welcome the filmed version of a musical that had been such a success in the Christian world and which venerated the life of the Messiah. Wrong! When it was time to censor the film, Christian groups objected. The film was anti-Christian, they declared. It did not show enough respect to Jesus Christ. It should be banned. To its eternal shame, the Censor Board refused to certify Jesus Christ Superstar and the film was never shown in India.

It did not matter that no Christian country banned it. It did not matter that nobody of consequence anywhere in the Christian world regarded the movie as being anti-Christian. And it did not matter that the play on which the film was based had already been staged in India.

A minority said that its religion was being attacked. And this was enough to have the film banned.

Let’s take a more recent example. The Censor Board has certified a Hindi film called Sins. According to newspaper accounts of its plot, the movie features a priest who does some unpriestly things including indulging in pleasures of the flesh.

Christian groups are on the warpath once again. Never mind the censors, they say. The film is anti-Christian. How dare the filmmaker depict a priest as being all too human? This is an insult to India’s minorities. Ban the movie, they scream, otherwise Christians will be

offended.

The Censor Board held firm, at least one court has rejected a Christian petition seeking to have the film banned, and Sins was released last week.

But still, the campaign continues. And now, the protesters have found a new kind of legitimacy. The Minorities Commission has got in on the act. There is a danger, it suggests, that a religious minority might be offended. Perhaps the authorities should re-examine the issue and consider censoring or banning the film to avoid causing hurt to India’s Christians.

There are several issues at stake here. One of these is the role of the Minorities Commission. Readers with relatively long memories will recall that this current, ludicrous avatar of the Commission consists of a Chairman and members who did not utter one word of condemnation against Narendra Modi when Muslims were being massacred on the streets of Gujarat. (It was left to the National Human Rights Commission to take on the mass murderer and to try and stop the genocide.)

Having failed to stand up for the minorities when it really mattered, this pathetic body is now poking its nose into Hindi cinema on behalf of the forces of intolerance while claiming to fight for minority rights.

More important is the question of whether Indians have a sense of humour. Whatever else you may say about the mood of the country today, it is clearly not anti-Sikh. We have our first Sikh Prime Minister and he is probably among the two or three most respected politicians in the country today, admired even by those who did not vote for his party.

The Sardarji joke, like all ethnic humour, is part of a good-natured Indian tradition and hardly an example of any kind of anti-minority feeling. Sikhs themselves often tell the best Sardarji jokes — Khushwant Singh’s column is a good example — and one indication that India’s Sikh minority had regained its confidence after the traumas of the 1980s (Bluestar, the Delhi massacres etc) was when Sikhs began telling Sardarji jokes again.

For anybody to claim that a

Sardarji joke in a Hindi movie

is an insult to Sikhs is plain silly. The protestors against Shabd should learn to develop a sense of humour.

As for Sins, are there no dodgy Christian priests? Are Christian holy men deserving of a special reverence in Hindi cinema? Let’s look at the Christian world where dodgy priests crop up frequently in cinema and popular fiction. The biggest best-seller of this decade, for instance, The Da Vinci Code, is dedicated to the proposition that the entire Christian church is based on a distortion of the historical Jesus. But no developed Christian country has banned the book and it will soon be turned into a movie with Tom Hanks.

So why should Christians claim rights in India that they do not have even in countries such as England where Christianity is the state religion? Do they think that they are entitled to some special consideration only because they are a minority? And finally, the key question: When is it proper to abridge the right to free speech in a liberal democracy?In India we seem to have tacitly accepted the foolish and dangerous principle that free speech can be sacrificed anytime somebody claims that he is offended.

But the whole point of the right to free speech is that it gives us the right to offend. Each time I criticise the government (or this week, the Minorities Commission) in this column, I know that I will offend somebody. All criticism is, by definition, offensive to its targets. So, take away the right to offend and you castrate the right to free speech and rob it of all meaning. If I were to only write goody-goody things that offended nobody, then I wouldn’t need the right to free speech.

And yet, all too often, we miss the point and reach for the censor’s pencil arguing that such and such individual will be offended or that such and such community will be hurt. In the process, we seriously diminish the principle of free speech.

Let’s take the case of Shabd. The obvious thing to do is to tell any Sikh who finds Sardarji jokes offensive not to go and see the film. Just because some Sikh is offended by a Sardarji joke, it does not follow that the rest of us lose the right to enjoy the joke.

So it is with Sins and the worldly priest. If some Christians are traumatised by the thought that there might be some dodgy priests, then they should stay at home, avoid seeing the film and cling to their naivete. They have no right to deny me the opportunity to see the film.

Ultimately our right to freedom of expression and our right to free access to books, movies and newspapers is far, far greater than the right of sensitive Sikhs not to be hurt by Sardarji jokes or of naïve Christians to deny that there may be dodgy priests. Start suspending the principle of freedom of speech to protect people’s illusions and you end up destroying the very basis of liberal society.

The examples I have chosen are simple and self-evident. But the issue can get more complex. Should Deepa Mehta’s Water have been made even if it showed the shameful way in which Hindus treat widows? Should The Satanic Verses have been published even if Muslims were so offended that they threatened to riot?

In every case, I would argue: yes. If Hindus treat widows badly, then let’s not be scared of letting this be shown on screen. If Muslims are offended by The Satanic Verses then they should refrain from reading the book. Censorship is not the answer.

All truth has the power to off-end. Take away the offence and you end up suppressing the truth.

Gyani Jarnail Singh · #2 (**permalink**) 02-03-2005, 11:15 AM

whenever i get such a "sardarji joke"..i edit it to substitute the "santa banta" with "Gopi" "Krishan" "Gyani ji" with "Pandit Sharma Ji"..or "Lee" "johnny" " Pastor Fred"...( depending on who sent me the joke and send it right back.....so far i havent yet got back such jokes ever again from the senders.. Free Speech..Yea Right. Hit them where it hurts..and yet LOVE everybody.

Jarnail Singh

Neutral Singh · #3 (**permalink**) 02-03-2005, 01:20 PM

LOL! Yeah !! Same Here !! It works everytime and indeed hit them hard.

Regards

FireStorm · #4 (**permalink**) 02-03-2005, 02:30 PM

Dear Aman:

I cam acros this article 2 days ago and wrote the following email to Mr. Sanghvi. However his email vir@mid-day.com keeps bouncing..

I would also appreciate, if the learned members would like to add any points .. to the email..

Do you have by any chance his hindustan times email?

Dear Vir:

Read your article in Mid day online. Always used
to admire you as a journalist of repute, so was a
bit hard digesting the fact that you were the
author of the article published in the mId Day. A
closer look however cleared the apprehension.

I am quite disappointed..

You sum up your article by writing: "All truth
has the power to offend. Take away the offence
and you end up suppressing the truth."

What truth may I say is represented by a Joke
announcing a dim witted sardar?? You seem to be
making a truth out of all Sardarji jokes and just
seem to justify the image characterisation by a
single stroke of your pen.

Your article at the best is a surface skimming
article which has not delved deeped into the
causes of why Sikhs all of a sudden are aware of
the way media has been handling their image.

Wasn't Journalism all about exploring all facets
of a situation?

Everybody enjoys a good joke and I couldnt agree
with you more, but it is hard to enjoy such
situations, when all the other person can think
of is to make fun of your appearance which is
deeply rooted to your religion.

You have not pondered upon the effect such jokes,
or stereotyped image characterisation that
Bollyowood or a section of the Indian media has
embarked upon.

Young Sikh kids have started loosing confidence
in the way they lok, just because they stand to
be singled out. They find the easier way out of
doing away with this very image. It makes them
seem normal, as people now dont make fun of their
appearance. Kids of other religion will also be
affetcted by these jokes as more or less
impressions created by such jokes will have an
effect on the way they look at other communities.

It is interesting to note that while the Male
sikhs are made the brunt of the jokes, the female
Sikh has been stereotyped as a sexy, beautiful
female who can fall for anyone but an ugly (media
perception) sardar.

You talked about Khushwant Singh and his Santa
Banta jokes. There is a difference when one tells
a Santa Banta joke and when one tells a Sardarji
jokes. Santa and Banta are two characters and
such characters can exist in every community,
religion or region. However when we talk about a
Sardarji joke, we are creating a stereotype image
of Sardarji.

Yes, Vir, we all have a right to freedom of
expression, but there was an old story taught to
us as a part of our Moral Science subject that
our freedom ends where the other person's nose
starts. I am not the one to object to valid
criticism, be it because of female infanticide
practice (even though it is restricted in
Sikhism), or dowry prevalent among
sikhs/punjabis, but to have the cheapest humour
flung on the whole community cannot amount to
freedom of expression in any court of law.

It is interesting to note, that almost all of
internet hunour and blonde jokes are ripped to
fit in sardarjis. I wonder why we cant enjoy such
jokes in their originality and always feel the
need to remove the character and place a sardarji
in place.

Such jokes, started with the famous 12 O clock
joke. Could you please expound on the truth
behind this joke in Mid day, and mention how
women of a certain community were saved by the
dim witted sardarjis of yore. How many
journalists of today have the courage to tell the
truth and how many people can digest it?

Perhaps you can explain how the image of the
dirty *** was created prior to the Holocaust. Do
we want to create such an image of a Sardar who
has been at the forefront in patriotic activities
throughout.

I am sure no one hates sardars, but I fail to
understand, why they have the intense desire to
make stupid jokes. A student of psychology may
perhaps say that it is because of an inferiority
complex of certain people. I dont know... it is
an open question.

Perhaps you could open such a discussion on TV
and we can all contribute.

How many movies have you seen, with the central
character - a hero being a sardarji and how many
can you count with the side kick being a
dimwitted , saradrji, who cannot even win the
Love of a decent looking gal.

Can you wonder why, it is always people of other
communities or Clean Shaven sardars that are
taken as heros along with implied Sikh girls.

Can you also answer why there are no jokes
concerning the Hindus/Muslims/Christians and
potraying them as
cowards, jokers, idiots or ugly?

Can we expect you to take a stand and use your
pen to further the cause of Sikh image in the
media?

I am sure if you can help the sikhs frame a
better image and present it to our kids, the
community will have no objection to telling jokes
about ourselves and laughing at their antics. We
can all have a jolly good time.

Can I request you to please research a topic more
and explore the human and community facets before
brandishing a pen and making statements like the
one quoted in the begining of this email which
seem to be out of order with the chosen topic.

Expecting a more detailed article and a reply to
this mail.

Sincerely.

Neutral Singh · #5 (**permalink**) 02-03-2005, 02:55 PM

Alright! Hit Them Hard !! Very! Very!! Very!! well said dear FireStorm

... and most importantly, we certainly need more people, like yourself and many others, around weak minded people like myself, who easily fall prey to such cheap media gimmicks.

We need those strong charactered people, who can inspire us and make us think and encourage us to make a sincere effort to tackle such social problems and get over with such trivial issues... But, unfortunately, instead they shy away from their responsiblities and rather choose to abstain from such public gatherings and thus depriving the readers of their mesmerising thought provoking dialogues...

I certainly hope to see you around more often. Can we expect the same from you dear, FireStorm

Chardi Kala
Aman Singh

Amarpal · #6 (**permalink**) 02-03-2005, 04:58 PM

Dear Khalsa Sahiban,

I am posting here the e-mail I have sent to Hindustan Times and Mid-Day. The posts sent directly to this journalist on his Mid-Day address could not be delivered, it came back. My be his mail box is over flowing.

The text of the e-mail is given below.

Mr Vir Sanghvi,
I am a Sikh. I have read your article, and I have no hesitation to tell that I felt hurt.

I am of the view that what you are justifying in your article is not the attribute which the intellectuals of my country should promote or encourage.

I view what is shown in the film Shabd in the context of past and present Socilology of India.

I your article you have described a scene from the film which in the article says

"He decides to tell her a sardarji joke. He gets as far as saying, “There was a sardarji,” when Aishwarya dissolves into helpless giggles. He never gets to complete the joke."

As I see it, it is not the first time that elites of India have used ridicule to lower the self esteem of people whom they want to subjugate. They have perfected themselves in this art over centuries. This to me appears as part of 'Manuvad'. This very weapon is now being trained on we Sikhs; we do not like it. There is no basis for any one to make we Sikhs as a community a butt of any Jokes. Naturally we protest to those who perpetuate it - all our protest should be within the boundaries permitted by law of the land.

If Sikhs are evolving, it is through their efforts and hard work and not through reservations. We do not live on charity. No body need to feel jealous about it. We are equal partner in India's progress.

The book you have referred in your article 'The Da Vinci Code' is not a ridicule. This book of Dan Brown is written and published in a country where law is implemented with speed. No one has questioned what is said in this book. What this individual has written has enough evidence to support it. There are books written on this aspect, which supports many of the things said in Dan Brawn's book. One of such book is 'Jesus The Man' by Barbara Thiering. This lady has written this book after 20 years of research on the scrolls found near dead sea and a large volume of other literature. This work of enormous effort is not a ridicule; it cannot be used to justify or condone this public ridicule of we Sikhs. The two - the scholarly work for writing the referred book and the so called jokes - cannot be compared; they are not on the same footing Vir Sandhvi sahib.

I am not dwelling on other films you have referred to in your article because I personally do not know the details. These books I have the good fortune to read, so I had picked up for discussion in this mail.

Mr Kushwant Singh does not represent our community. He is not the path finder for we Sikhs. If he does some thing, it does not mean the entire Sikh community also should accept that.

As I understand, we are living in a civilised world. My freedom is not without boundaries. My freedom ends where it infringes into some one else's freedom. We Sikhs have to right to live our life in happiness. The constitution of India protects every Indian citizen against discrimination based on religion - ridicule is one for of discrimination; it violates the basic human right of the individual being ridiculed. In the film the whole community has been ridiculed. I hold the opinion that ridiculing some one or a community is not a civilised way of living. Other may have their own views.

We have been taught that 'Manners are a sensitive awareness of feelings of others; if one has this awareness she or he has good manners'. This film referred in your article has not shown this sensitiveness. I feel the film makers have tried to add 'cheap masala' to the film in order to earn money at the expense of we Sikh. Our peaceful protests - like this e-mail - are fully justified.

The best way to know about the character of the person is to learn on what she or he laughs. The same applies to the any culture also of which the films and the media are a part. What is said in the film and the support which it gets from media will not make any sensitive Indian proud.

Govt of India has shown equal sensitivity towards all the communities. You have listed only those which supported the intent of your article. The Book Satanic Verses, the films you mentioned in your article and 'Cow Slaughter' all are baned keeping in view the feeling of one or the other part of our population in mind. I agree with it fully and support such ban.

You have mentioned that Sikhs entered into the the office of some one connected with the film Shabd. What was wrong in it?

I hold the opinion that in 'True Journalism', as is the case with any other profession, the journalist keeps ones own emotions and feeling out of consideration when analysing the issue. We have many such journalists in our media, Shri Shekar Gupta, is one of them.

I will be grateful if you can send me a copy of your article upholding the freedom of expression, as you have done in the case under discussion in this mail, when a small group of people had prevented shooting of the film with Shabana and Nandita Das in UP some time back. If my memory is not failing me, it was Mira Nair's film 'Water'.

If you have not written similar article up holding this freedom of expressionat that time, why now?

I am disappointed. Your article hurt me, I am pained.

Please treat this as an honest feedback, I have nothing against any individual.

I love and respect all.

Amarpal Singh

Neutral Singh · #7 (**permalink**) 02-03-2005, 07:05 PM

Very well said Amarpal Ji,

My urge for an independent Sikh Media Group is mounting by each passing day... Sikhs have achived wonderfully worldwide, can't we pool our resources to launch a worldwide Sikh media center ?

FireStorm · #8 (**permalink**) 02-03-2005, 07:15 PM

Dear Aman:

Thanks for the kind words.

I will try and live up to your expectations.

Can I request Amarpal to share the email address of Hindustan Times with me as I would like to send my feedback to Vir Sanghvi.

Your idea of a Media Group is indeed great. We need to exploit this idea and propose it to as many sikhs, groups etc. as possible, both in India and abroad.

Can you make a Universal Appeal regading this on the Forum.

Arvind · #9 (**permalink**) 02-03-2005, 08:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aman Singh

Very well said Amarpal Ji,

My urge for an independent Sikh Media Group is mounting by each passing day... Sikhs have achived wonderfully worldwide, can't we pool our resources to launch a worldwide Sikh media center ?

Great replies FireStorm and Amarpal ji.

I understand one thing - Because Sikhs are the most affluent community, and survive in any tough conditions with their hard work and intelligence, and stood up whereever they went, this has caused a basic jealousy/hatred among other non-performers. Anyway, this wont stop the speed of excelling sikhs in any way

Arvind · #10 (**permalink**) 02-03-2005, 09:30 PM

Indira Gandhi's assasination caused big time trouble for Sikhs, as an open excuse. What happened when Rajiv Gandhi was killed ?