Indian TV actors Sambhavna Seth and her husband Avinash Dwivedi have landed themselves in hot water after the couple shared a YouTube video, making fun of their househelp. 

© Instagram/Sambhavna Seth

The actor duo usually keeps making satirical videos to entertain their viewers on social media, however, it appeared that they'd finally outdone themselves this time around. 

In the video, the actors can be seen unable to control their laughter at a phrase spoken by their househelp in her native language. 

What certainly made things worse and probably ended up upsetting viewers was that despite the house help's attempts to explain what the phrase actually meant, the duo carried on with extending the bad joke on the basis of how the phrase sounded. 

Both Seth and Dwivedi faced the brunt of social media and the couple has now issued a public apology through Sambhavna's Instagram handle. While acknowledging that they were laughing at their house help's language which originates from Jharkhand, the duo said they were just trying to be 'humorous' and their intention wasn't to hurt anyone. 

 "We had created a video on June 16 and we have now realised that the language used in that video belonged to the Adivasi community from Jharkhand. The community comprises more than 1 lakh people and many of their sentiments have been hurt. Our intention was just to make people laugh through our humorous video. It wasn't our intention to demean anyone or any community. We don't have a script, so, in the flow, we tend to speak inappropriate words and go wrong. We would want to apologize to all our subscribers, to the Adivasi and the non-Adivasi community because even we were hurt after reading the comments by the viewers," said the actor couple. 

The original post that was uploaded through Sambhavna's official YouTube channel had been deleted after the backlash. However, an account by the name of 'The Adivasi Post' had taken to Instagram to reshare it while calling it 'racist, abusive and humiliating to the Adivasi community.'

People on the social media app then went on to tag the duo, demanding an apology from them.

"We didn't realize that we made a mistake unless the people commented on Instagram and tagged us. We have taken down that video for your respect because we would never want to hurt any community. Our only intention is to spread love. We assure you we will never hurt any community here or anywhere in the world. With folded hands, we apologize to everyone. If at all again, we make a mistake, please let us know because it's important to know our mistakes," said Sambhavna from her Instagram account. 

View the full article