Jokes apart: Grin & bear it but no laughing matter

Sardar jokes are a part of the good-natured Indian tradition; taken sportingly by most good-humoured Sikhs, cracked by many jovial Sikhs tand objected to by some hyper-sensitive Sikhs. Simply put, the dimwitted, inept and uncouth community uses self-disparaging humour as a defence mechanism. Not only do such innocuous jokes make the community's inherent flaws acceptable to the rest but also bring a smile on everybody's lips; because the same jokes without the Sardar character would be reduced to damp-squib PJs. Those that claim such jokes to be derisive should develop a sense of humour (Please!). The right to freedom of expression is far more important than the right of sensitive Sikhs to be not hurt and humiliated by Sardar jokes. All truth has the power to offend. 

Take away the offence and you end up suppressing the truth. Take for example the following joke: A Sardar was flying a helicopter (!!) After sometime it crashed…(Obviously!!) Somehow the Sardar managed to land safely on the ground…When asked about the reason for the crash, he answered matter of factly, “It was getting very cold up there, so I switched off the fan!!!”)

So low is their intellect; obviously that's why none manage to get a commercial pilot license or make it to the Indian Air Force. The only five-star rank officer in the IAF, Air Chief Marshall Arjan Singh should be counted as an exception (maybe that's why his portrait adorns the walls of Royal Air Force College, Cranwell); so should Flying Officer Nirmaljit Singh Sekhon (the only IAF officer to be awarded the Param Vir Chakra in recognition of his lone defence of the Srinagar air base in the 1971 war). The fact that the Sikh regiment is the most-decorated is also purely accidental. Just like Sardarjis put a postage stamp on a fax, the British and the Indian government placed the medals on the wrong soldiers. They are so infantile, they mistake socialism for partying (!) and that's why you can find them partying in disaster-hit areas even when the media and NGOs have packed up and gone. During the freedom struggle and the Emergency, they thronged the jails because they thought that parties were being thrown there. Though they love partying, they are completely unacquainted with fashion, style, nature, art and other finer things in life. Now, no sensitive Sikh dare drop names of the man who gave Chandigarh its soul, or the one who pioneered Louis Vuitton into India or the representative of Christie's in India or the numerous designer labels and boutiques that line the length and breadth of the Sikh majority state etc. These are just aberrations! And yes, either the contestants in the National Geographic Channel reality show, Mission Cover shot must have been super clumsy or the judges inept as a Sikh photographer emerged the winner. Wonder whether he asked his friends to donate all the burnt-out bulbs for the darkroom(!!). That's what Sikh photographers normally do. Anyway, the truth is that, their creativity bulbs are always switched off. It is indeed perplexing as to how idiocy and ineptitude became fodder for Sardarji jokes. The representation of the Sikh community,be it in the fields of medicine, engineering, administration,or sports, is proportionate (if not more) to its population, and that too, without the crutches of reservation. All other ethnicity jokes across the country are caricatures of predominant traits (for example, miserliness) prevalent in the target ethnicities. Why are Sikhs singled out for such vituperative humour? Is it,that the majority community actually thinks that Sikhs are that foolhardy?In the opinion of researcher Jawaharlal Handoo, the “success-story” of the Sikh community as a whole has taken the form of a deep-rooted anxiety in the collective minds of the non-Sikh majorities. This, in turn, seems to have taken the form of various stereotypes and the resultant joke cycle. Whatever the reason, the reality is that the Sardar stereotype has become a metaphor for foolishness. How entrenched that is, in the subconscious of other communities, is reflected in the media. In an advertisement few years ago, the chairman is delivering a speech and suddenly a shareholder interjects with an intelligent question, to which the reaction in the hall is,”shock” and there is a “I-have-done -it” feeling on the face of the Sardarji. The message of the ad was “when we created a smarter kind of investment firm we created a smarter kind of investor”. Per se this subtle ad is harmless, but look closely it reflects the thought process of the ad maker (It would have been difficult to develop a few seconds story wherein a foolish person turns into a smart investor, so in comes the given dumbo, Sardarji!).The Hindi film Shabd had a scene symptomatic of the same allegory but cruder wherein Zayed tries to cheer Aishwarya by telling a Sardarji joke. As soon as he says, “There was a Sardarji”, Aishwarya starts giggling.The scene is so in-your-face in reinforcing the Sardarji stereotype that it hardly leaves scope for further analysis.

The impact of normalisation of this kind of representation is far more problematic than it seems. Being the butt of jokes right from school to the workplace is not funny. Constant dropping wears away even a stone; it can easily bog down a child. Classmates at school setting alarms to 12'o clock,colleagues calling anyone who makes a silly mistake, “a sardar” drips of anything, but humour. Those who excuse themselves by making out that Sikhs enjoy such jokes do not know “how to distinguish between a compliant chuckle and a sincere chortle”. More than often, in order to maintain peace,the hurt is hid behind a public smile. A ban is not practical. Reactionary measures, though effective,  are temporary.  Why not celebrate the triumphs and commemorate the trials of the community? With the media not on its side, this seems more impractical than a ban.

The writer works as a volunteer in the social sector.