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Indian director Ram Gopal Varma is no small name in Hindi and Telugu cinema. His films often strike at social issues and ills — some of them have even been acclaimed abroad. The director, however, is himself a symptom of societal decay, as he proved with a post on X Monday.

With Diwali having been celebrated over the weekend, Varma thought — for reasons that elude us entirely — it was appropriate to compare the fireworks often enjoyed during the ‘festival of light’ to Israel’s catastrophic bombing of Gaza.

The filmmaker posted saying, “In INDIA, only one day is DIWALI and in GAZA, every day is DIWALI,” adding three fire emojis at the end like some edgy 13-year old.

People were horrified to see a public figure fail so badly at showing basic human values like empathy and compassion. Varma was told, in no uncertain terms, that celebrating the deaths of children and civilians was not okay.

A netizen pointed out how the director’s comments are indicative of a wider problem in society. Any society where someone thinks they can say such things in public, without fear of backlash and maybe even expecting to be cheered on, is broken.

Others simply couldn’t understand what the people of Gaza had ever done to Varma to make him celebrate their ethnic cleansing.

Rakhi Tripathi — daughter of Professor VK Tripathi, who has become somewhat of a celebrity for his persistent efforts to draw attention to the suffering of Gazans — led the chorus of voices saying the spirit of Diwali lies in stark contrast to the death and destruction being inflicted on Gaza.

In a fitting response, demonstrating to Varma what wit and humour on the internet should sound like, a user from Pakistan gave the director a sincere piece of advice.

While the furor Varma’s words have elicited shows there are still good people on the internet, there were more troubling indicators in the post and its comment section.

The fact that something so vile managed to gather several thousand likes with many comments defending it, shows just how many people are okay with spreading hate on the internet. Diwali, like most other religious festivities, carries a message of peace and hope, using it to celebrate the slaughter of thousands is immoral and indefensible.