Um.. no Filtercoffee, I don’t agree with this bandying about of the word “racist” with gay (oops) abandon.

Humour, taste and sacrilege are culture-specific. We Indians make ethnic jokes at each other. We stereotype Surds as dumb, South Indians as dark-skinned, Bengalis as loudmouths, lazy bums and over-intellectualisers.

I think such jokes are okay.

Every culture holds some things sacred. I disagree with Gandhiji on most counts, but I still wouldn’t pass over the sort of jokes about him that were made by Maxim magazine recently. They were being insensitve not evil. For them, Gandhiji was just another pacifist to make fun of. They weren’t sensitive to the fact that Gandhiji was an icon to Indians.

Similarly, racist jokes are not intrinsically offensive . They cause offence in the US only because it has a painful history of slavery and later racial discrimination. But I don’t see why we should misuse American sensitivity to charges of racism and load them with guilt for making ethnic jokes that would be completely acceptable in India.