Punga

Sardarji jokes anger me, along with any joke told at the expense of some other group, tribe, caste, status or sect, even religion, of the person telling the joke. Growing up in the southern US where I can only remember Sikhs being portrayed in Gunga Din and one Shirley Temple movie (both positive portrayals), I was surprised at 60 to hear my first "Sardarji 'joke', told by a Muslim friend, given I had never known there was such a thing. So today I was slightly miffed to see a story in Dawn News that began with one.

The so called joke 'joke' was recounted in a news article written during the "Lawyers' long march (2009) in Pakistan titled A presidential ‘punga’ The story in Dawn News.[1] concerns the word 'punga'. My wife had noticed the word Punga in the margin and asked me what punga meant. I had no idea and clicked on the link.

To my surprise it started with a stupid, so called Sardarji joke. Apparently even though most Sikhs were forced to leave their ancestral homes with what little they could carry (those that weren't murdered during the pogrom, known as the Partition) it seems that such jokes, at another's expense, still linger across the border from Amritsar more than half a century later.

Definition

For those of you who do not speak Punjabi, Hindi or Urdu you can click on the link above to read the rest of the story. ‘Punga’ is not an easy Punjabi word to translate, but it roughly means to provoke somebody without good reason.