Jokes and the way to tolerance

Gutthan Ma Pani

by

Bachchoo

A BBC bulletin tells me that a lawyer called Harvinder Chowdhury has launched a campaign to ban Sikh jokes. She presented a petition to the Delhi courts asking for a legal ban on the invention, pronunciation, publication etc. of the traditional, if insulting, jokes against Sikhs.

She went so far as to plead that her children were embarrassed by their Sikh surnames and demanded that they be changed because other youngsters victimised and embarrassed them. If this is true, one understands Ms Chowdhury’s concern.

The judges didn’t take her plea seriously. One of them said that very many Sikhs enjoyed these jokes even though they characteristically portrayed Sikhs as not-quite-top-notch intellects. They also ruled that banning Sikh jokes would be opposed by very many in the 20-million-strong Sikh community.

Ms Chowdhury, having fallen at the first hurdle in her campaign for a ban, promises to soldier on.

Now it’s true that very many Sikhs tell Sikh jokes themselves. The doyen of Sikh literature, the late Khushwant Singh went so far as to compile and publish a book of Sardarji and Sardarni jokes. I can, as I am sure most Indian readers of this column can, repeat several from the book and from popular folklore, but shall refrain from offending

Ms Chowdhury’s sensibilities.

The challenge as I see it is to formulate Sikh jokes which do not conform to the stereotype.

I can immediately confront such a challenge by translating what I heard as an “Irish joke” into Sikhdom. The Irish are, I should add, the Sardarjis of British humour.

So: A Sardarji goes to a building site and collars the foreman. “I want a job,” he says The foreman eyes him up and down sceptically. “You want a job What can you do ” he asks “I am an engineer,” says the Sardarji. “You are an engineer ” asks the disbelieving foreman. “Okay, so what’s the difference between a joist and a girder ” The Sardarji thinks. “Well, Joyce wrote Ulysses and Goethe wrote Faust!” Now that shouldn’t offend Ms Chowdhury. Would she seek to ban such banter Her ban on jokes would add an unsustainable impediment to free speech. Who would police these jokes Would the ban on Sikh jokes then be extended to other categories such as mother-in-law jokes or jokes which treat fat, thin, small, or tall people in a manner which they would consider demeaning And if Ms Chowdhury’s strictures were accepted what would be the punishment for telling such a joke The legality of humour is, by definition, problematic. Jokes are a matter of good taste. One wouldn’t tell or willingly listen to jokes against disabled people.

Arriving in India this week I read that my old acquaintance finance minister Arun Jaitley has asked the Supreme Court to consider banning speech that incites people to hatred. This must be a significant step away from the tolerance that the present government has demonstrated towards such incitement from members of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh and from Bharatiya Janata Party MPs who ought to know better.

Mr Jaitley’s call for a ban on the preaching of hatred against any religion, region, caste etc. begs the question why such a statute is not already on the books. He was right to dismiss the objection that such a ban would interfere with free speech, as the freedom to speak should certainly extend to the freedom to criticise and even insult, but shouldn’t extend to incitement to violence against any fellow citizen (I don’t exclude foreigners!).

Such a law was passed in Britain and has been tested in several cases involving racial slurs, insults and incitement. It hasn’t yet been used to curtail Irish jokes.

In our troubled times, the fairly thick and obvious line between the freedom to speak and write and the necessary restraint on incitement, has been twisted, fudged and obscured. It didn’t begin with the fatwa on Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, but that was certainly an episode that presented this universal dilemma.

My sensible Muslim friends said Rushdie had crossed the line from debate, which is welcome, into insult which is hurtful to the devoted. Nevertheless, The Satanic Verses, a novel, an avowed piece of fiction, didn’t transgress any law of incitement. The only incitement came from Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa and those who perpetrated it.

The distinction lies between, on the one hand, criticism, which can in extreme cases turn to ridicule and, on the other, incitement to violence.

The Charlie Hebdo cartoons were certainly critical and indulged in visual and aphoristic ridicule. They were drafted as an assertion of the right to freedom of expression. No Frenchman on seeing them or reading the magazine was incited to any hatred against Muslims, though they may have had a laugh at the expense of the religion. The cartoonists and publishers were not prosecuted under any law; they were murdered by fanatics.

Perhaps Mr Jaitley is alarmed by the same category of intolerance in word and murderous deed invading India.

The perpetrators are, in some instances, members and even officials of his own party. Using the test of a balance between ridicule and incitement to violence, it is clear that these pronouncements and anti-Muslim statements have tilted the scales. Mr Jaitley should now, as the saying goes, put his money where his mouth is and from his senior position in the BJP ban and discipline any such incitement from its members, pending the enactment of such a ban in law.

The law should not stop me from saying that I don’t believe in virgin birth, in resurrection or that God dictates books or carves commandments on stones. It should not stop me from inventing Sikh or indeed Parsi jokes.

Here’s one: One Parsi says to another “My wife’s pregnant!” “I am so sorry,” says the other, “Whom do you suspect ”