In the webcomic Sikh Park—inspired by the hit American animated sitcom South Park—the quotidian concerns of the Sikh diaspora are rendered in chucklesome cartoons. Using a 2D illustration of a Sikh Park beard chart scaled on a T-shirt, the creator of the comic series asks his followers on Instagram to choose from a range of celebrity beard lengths that might be theirs: Diljit, Nani, Jus Reign, Harnaam Kaur, Fateh Doe, Jagmeet Singh, Waris Ahluwalia, Humble the Poet, Grand Pa and Gurpartap Kang. Nani appears in another strip where her tiny grandson innocently inquires if her “dari” is bigger than a boy standing next to him. Nani promptly admonishes her impish grandkid, “Uloo de pathe, chittar khane? [Son of an owl! Should I kick your a**?].” In yet another sketch, a bald white man asks Apple’s digital assistant, “Siri, what’s my schedule for today?” Standing next to him is a grandpa in a pink turban asking the same question, “Sat Siri Akal, what’s my schedule for today?” On another occasion, grandpa cannot decide whether to step out in a baby pink turban or a hot pink one.
This is not dark humour. These are not even your typical “Sardarji jokes”. It does not really make fun of a valiant, compassionate, culturally rich community with a remarkable ability to laugh at themselves. It is clean, educative and in good humour, documenting the daily highs and lows of an ethnic people settled far away from their native land. It might even be in keeping with the spirit of chardi kala—which some call the Sikh version of Danish hygge—or an attitude which is “buoyant and optimistic”, if one were to even make an attempt to define something as pointless as the Sikh sense of humour.
To be sure, there has not been any academic study or pop culture critique on the evolution of humour in the Sikh community. “But the 1980s was a turning point,” says Surinder Singh Jodhka, professor of sociology and chair at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems at the School of Social Sciences at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. “There was a time when even in Sikh jokes in Hindi cinema were in some sense scripted by the Sikhs themselves and even though it made you laugh, it did not put the Sikhs down. In the 1980s there was a communal turn with Operation Blue Star. So there was a kind of phase where Sikhs were shown as buffoons who constantly made a fool of themselves. Santa Banta, which started in the 1990s, was somewhat in this vein.” The problem starts, he says, when young kids are bullied in school.
Jaspreet Singh, a popular stand-up comedian known for his “fresh and universal content”, recently ripped apart Bollywood’s cringeworthy portrayal of Sikhs, from the star-counting chota sardar in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) through Johny Lever’s goofy antics in a turban to the Akshay Kumar-starrer Kesari (2019). “In Chachi 420 (1997), when Kamal Haasan became a chachi, that guy looked more real than Akshay Kumar in Kesari,” Jaspreet was heard saying in a viral video. Talking to THE WEEK, he says, “I remember there was a host who asked me how I would like to be announced on stage, I said please say, ‘Welcome on stage, our next act, Jaspreet Singh’. He started off with ‘Are you guys ready for some balle balle?’ Like seriously? Am I doing stand-up or singing a song? This happens all the time.”
It is a tall order to keep up with master satirists like Khushwant Singh and Jaspal Bhatti, who earnestly lampooned political issues of the day and spoke to the concerns of the common man in their time. Bhatti is considered by some as India’s first stand-up comedian who resonated with an entire nation in a pre-internet era, with Ulta Pulta and Flop Show “misdirected by Jaspal Bhatti” on Doordarshan in 1989. Says Savita Bhatti, Jaspal Bhatti’s wife, on the phone from Chandigarh, “I think Mr Bhatti should be credited with being the first one in India to look at humour as a profession, something that has to be taken seriously and not as buffoonery. It is something that comes out of a very deep anguish at what is happening around you. If comedy is flourishing today, if you speak to any of the well-known stand-up comedians, I am sure they would all tell you that comedy as social commentary goes back to him.” Married to Bhatti till he died in a road accident in 2012, Savita featured as co-actor in most of his sketches. Since 2016, she has been hosting the Jaspal Bhatti Humour Festival in Chandigarh which gives a stage to talented young comedians practising in different genres of comedy in Punjabi, Hindi and English.
“For Flop Show we had a TRP of 75-plus, which is unheard of today with audiences having so many options. He spoke about relevant things with good sense and simple language. His voice cut across generations. I don’t think comedians today enjoy that kind of popularity even with all the likes and hits on social media,” says Savita. As the daughter of an Air Force marshal, she lived around the country and heard every joke begin with “Ek tha sardar…” But she has made her peace with it. “If you are making fun of us, then you also have to learn from us how we take the joke on ourselves. Bhatti constantly poked fun at himself.”