Bollywood actor Arshad Warsi has drawn backlash online for saying that he is not a fan of Pakistani humor, calling it insulting and derogatory.
“I’m not a big fan of Pakistani humor. Purely because it’s derogatory, it’s insulting. Pakistani humor is a bit insulting all the time. Calling names and all that. So a lot of people like it, I personally, I’m not a big fan of, uh, sexual comedies. People like it, that’s my choice, I don’t like it,” Warsi said during a conversation with filmmaker Rajkumar Hirani.
Hirani responded that comedy could not exist without touching on cultural and communal identities.
“If you sanitise everything this much, how will you even get humor? Culturally too, we have heard jokes. I’m a Sindhi, I’ve heard jokes on Sindhis. You’ve heard jokes on Sardarjis and there are Polish jokes too, if you cut all of it out, humor itself will end,” he said.
Warsi agreed with Hirani, stating that people need to lighten up. “As people, we all need to lighten up, I feel.”
The conversation, however, did not sit well with Pakistani social media users, many of whom pointed to Indian comedy shows as more offensive than Pakistani humor.
One user asked what was wrong with Warsi, arguing that Pakistani humor carries no offensive content while Indian jokes contain both insults and profanity. Calling Pakistani humor more decent and respectful than Indian comedy, they also pointed toward reality shows and Kapil Sharma’s show as examples of “double-meaning” content.
Another user compared Pakistani humor to British humor, calling it funny, and said that they had never found Indian humor funny, referencing Warsi’s role in “Welcome to the Jungle”.
The user asked whether Warsi had watched “India’s Got Latent” or Indian stand-up comedians like Samay Raina’s peers.
Another used added that, “Pakistanis are not a big fan of your flop solo hero movies. Hindi cinema comedy was suffocating before it adopted Pakistani comedy. The biggest success is the rise of Kapil Sharma. He adopted the same style and took it to the next level, obviously due to his own talent, but there is no debate on the name-calling.”
Indian comedy is either abuses or racism, said one.
Another comment called the “Kapil Sharma show the most vulgar and humiliating example of comedy.”
“Might I remind you India’s Got Latent was shut down for a year because of their derogatory humor, and Pranit More’s recent debacle too. Look who’s talking, Bollywood’s third-class, D-grade flop comedy movies, an actor playing a so-called patriotic parrot,” said one.
Another user named actors Govinda, Paresh Rawal and Johnny Lever as having incorporated Pakistani comedic influences, including that of Umer Sharif, into their own performances.
