An Open Letter To Comedian Sunil Pal: For His Scathing Comments On The Tanmay Bhat Incident

Dear Sunil,

I confess. I confess to have chuckled here and there when you gave your winning performance on the first edition of the Great Indian laughter challenge (Though I still feel Raju Srivastav deserved it).

But I was in no mood to laugh when I saw you needlessly present your appalling views on the Snapchat incident involving Tanmay Bhat. There was A LOT wrong with every bit of the words you uttered.

The sheer arrogance in your tone, as if you were the pioneer of comedy, was repulsive to say the least. You said Tanmay Bhat lacked a sense of humour and was talent-less. Ironic, coming from a comedian who literally disappeared after the laughter challenge. No, Sunil, Journey Bombay to Goa did not win an Oscar.

You attempted to degrade the whole Indian standup comedy scene by insulting the comedians as well as the audience. Yet you later claimed to be a part of the audience on a few occasions. Speaks volumes about you, doesn’t it?

I witnessed you claim that the incident was nothing but a publicity stunt by Tanmay. Sadly, I’ll have to inform you that not everyone is as cunning as you to even think of gaining negative popularity through a video.

But perhaps your greatest blunder was the homophobic declaration regarding  the audience. ‘Aadhe se zaada toh inke andar gay aur lesbian hi baithe rehte hai, unko bada acha lagta hai, kyunki duniya aur samaajh toh ganda karna hi hai unko’. The 18th century called, they want their thinking back. What a hypocrite that makes you for saying that ‘Tanmay aur uske dost gandi gandi baatein karte hai’.

Really Sunil? Samaajh ganda karte hai? The only ones who do that are people like you with your orthodox and obnoxious ideas. Homophobic people like you are extremely dangerous to the society. You are the reason that many are afraid to come out of the closet because they are very well aware of the scale at which they will be shamed.

What’s funny is that you don’t have the slightest idea of how backward you are. When the world is moving towards their acceptance and even allowing them to marry in some countries, you sit comfortably in newsrooms and humiliate them. In my books, this is a much bigger offence than the Snapchat story will ever be.

The worst part is that it was not even meant as a joke (not that it would make it alright, the Tanmay incident is proof of that). While Tanmay Bhat faces possible arrest for a joke on two people leading lofty and comfortable lives, you are getting away with insulting the entire LGBT community which, to this day, is struggling to establish its identity and only adding to their plight. How in the world is this not being treated as a big issue?

Instead, the news channels repeatedly invite people like you, who are in no way connected to the incident, to speak on matters which you don’t completely understand. They glorify you to think that your opinion is worth more than the opinion of the masses, while the reality is that it’s worth only as much as that of every other citizen. (And opinions like these should not even be worth that)

The journalists seemed to be pretty obedient. They just replied with a ‘Ji’ to everything you said. Not opposing makes you equally guilty. It’s shameful that a majority of the journalists don’t know when to raise their voice and worse yet, don’t want to.

Where are all the scheming and corrupt politicians who threatened to launch an FIR against Tanmay? I guess launching FIRs against you won’t help their political cause so they do not care.

I have no clue why you decided to intervene in the matter, but now that you have, I’d like the people to know just how embarrassing the so called ‘celebrities’ can be. In the future, it would be better for everybody if you kindly kept that big mouth of yours shut.

Yours disappointedly,

An ex fan

And just so you can witness him in the act, here’s the video:

https://twitter.com/Godboledygook/status/737549754695974913

If this interested you, take a look at

The open letter to Kangana Ranaut