All India Bakchod met with Bishop Agnelo Gracias, Auxiliary Bishop of Bombay, to give an unconditional apology for any offence caused to the Christian community.
Gracias, on behalf of the Archdiocese of Bombay accepted the unconditional apology and in the spirit of understanding, explaining that the Archdiocese accepts the AIB apology and considers the matter closed.
Here's the letter:
To, Cardinal Oswald Gracias Archbishop of Bombay
We, Tanmay Bhat, Gursimran Khamba, Ashish Shakya, Rohan Joshi at AIB hereby offer an unconditional apology to the entire Christian community for any offense that may have been caused to its members as a result of the AIB Knockout. While performing our acts, no matter the subject, we never intend to hurt anyone, though we as an unfortunate consequence of the nature of our profession, we sometimes do. We are sorry.
We would also like to urge that we have the utmost respect for all religions and community and have never been against any community, nor do we bear any ill will of any kind towards any community. We also believe and support with complete certainty the notion that every community has the right to live with dignity, honour, and freedom from any form of persecution. We would also like to reiterate that the jokes at the AIB Knockout were not intended as a form of persecution or malice towards the Christian community or any other community, for that is not who we are, or what we stand for.
We'd also like to thank the Archdiocese of Mumbai for taking the time out to get its points across to us through patient, reasoned conversations with us about this issue. We are deeply grateful for the sincerity and dignity with which we've been received and hope that more debates and cultural arguments across the spectrum can be made with this same spirit of understanding and civility.
With sincere apologies,
AIB
AIB also released a statement about their meeting on their Facebook page, and here's the part everyone should all pay close, close attention to:
[...] The kind archdiocese graciously viewed that we have every right to make jokes and speak our mind in a democracy however, that exact same democracy also gives members of the Christian community the right to be offended or hurt by our comments, and more importantly to raise their voices to point that out.
And we could think of a few people who would do well to read this excerpt as well:
[...] During our interaction with the archdiocese, both parties agreed on another important thing; these matters are best solved by frank, patient conversation, not by pointless rabble-rousing or politicization or by taking up adversarial positions for the sake of eyeballs.
