India outraged at jokes made at its expense

NEW DELHI — The expressions of hurt and outrage in India that followed recent jokes by late-night comedian Jay Leno and the hosts of the BBC program "Top Gear," along with treason charges against a cartoonist, have sparked a debate here: Is the nation too thin-skinned to take a joke?

Leno ruffled feathers while poking fun at Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's wealth. The host of NBC's "Tonight Show" mentioned the former Massachusetts governor's summer home as he showed a picture of the Golden Temple in Amritsar, considered the Sikhs' most sacred site.

This followed an episode of the auto show "Top Gear" in which host Jeremy Clarkson and his colleagues drove around India making jokes about Indian food, clothes, sanitation and trains. In one scene, they ride through a slum in an aging Jaguar with a toilet fitted into its trunk, a play on India's reputation for "Delhi belly."

When the jokes made headlines in India, however, many weren't amused.

Responding to the Leno joke, India's foreign minister threatened to lodge a formal protest with U.S. authorities. Indian-American plaintiff Randeep Dhillon filed a lawsuit against Leno in Los Angeles County Superior Court, contending that the skit "falsely portrays the holiest place in the Sikh religion as a vacation resort owned by a non-Sikh." Online petitions sprung up. And an Indian-American group in New York filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission.

"Making fun of the gods is no joke," said Gurnam Singh, president of a Sikh-dominated political party in the northwestern state of Punjab. "If he doesn't apologize, we will file a case against him just like Randeep Dhillon did."

After the "Top Gear" episode aired, India's London embassy called for an apology and condemned the program as "replete with cheap jibes, tasteless humor" and insensitive.

In another development this year, political cartoonist Aseem Trivedi, 25, was charged with treason and insulting Indian national sentiments by the western state of Maharashtra after cartoons critical of the government appeared on a website. The charges carry a three-year jail sentence and heavy fines.

"Are all Western countries clean? Which Western country does not have problems?" said Chandra Shekhar Rai, a top official in the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. "And if a cartoonist can't decide where to draw the line, the authorities will have to take charge, not only banning them but jailing them."

Although some of the jokes may be uninformed or in poor taste, critics say India's tendency to react strongly to relatively minor perceived slights can ultimately focus more attention on the issue and dent its international reputation.

"It really embarrasses me that Indians should be so chippy," said Tavleen Singh, an author and columnist. "I'm a Sikh, but when I was growing up, we were among the most confident of Indians. We're used to Sikh jokes, many by Sikhs, about turbans, the whole works. This is nonsense."