Daily Times

Pakistan and India are once again passing through a tense situation, and warmongers on both sides of border are beating the drums of war without realising the fact that war instead of solving our problems would simply compound the misery of people.

After the unfortunate attack in Uri, India following its tradition, started blaming Pakistan for the attacks without any proof. This senseless blame game leads to a situation where once again cultural activities and artist exchanges have come under severe criticism. In India, extremist forces ran a campaign to send all artists of Pakistan back home, while in Pakistan cinema houses have banned showing of Indian movies.

Cultural contacts should continue even in crisis as they may help in quickly bringing normalcy to a situation. Prohibiting cinema houses from showing Indian movies is cosmetic patriotism and not real patriotism. A ban on India movies would not hurt Indian film industry as it is a big industry that is least bothered about its content being shown in Pakistan or not. In my view, this ban would hurt business of cinema houses in Pakistan, and also affect the quality of movies being produced in Pakistan. The Indian actor Om Puri acted in a recently released Pakistani movie, while a movie featuring Naseeruddin Shah is under production at the moment. On the other hand, the war hysteria prompted a director to shelve a Pakistani movie for which famous actor Rishi Kapoor was said to have been signed.

The prominent film critic, Omair Alavi, while expressing his views about the recent ban, said: “Jingoism cost the downfall of Pakistan’s cinema Industry between 1965 to 2005.” In the last few years Pakistan has produced many high quality movies, which also tasted box office success. Good productions are possible because Pakistan’s film industry instead of competing with each other competed with Indian movies being shown in cinema houses around the country.

Those people who came up with the idea of banning Indian movies from cinemas, it seems, are either unaware of the past or are in a state of denial. A ban on showing Indian movies in cinemas would not stop people from watching Indian movies. India’s movie stars have been style idols of people of Pakistan for decades. Marriage is considered a religious obligation in our society, but even in marriages Indian songs are played, and boys and girls happily dance to Indian songs.

It was in 1965 that a ban on Indian movies was imposed for the first time. People only accepted that ban because they had no other way of watching Indian movies. After the arrival of VCRs in Pakistan in late 1970s, the public once again started watching Indian movies. Watching Indian movies on VCR was mostly an occasion of gathering of family, and was considered a ‘classy’ entertainment in that era. In early 1980s, some music shops also started keeping cassettes of Indian movies, which VCR owners used to rent for Rs 100 per night. Whenever a new movie was released people would sit outside shops for hours to rent the cassette of that movie, and shopkeepers would often raise the per-night rent of movies that were in high demand.

In those days, many people of the first generation of Pakistan were alive, people who were a witness or a victim of the atrocities that happened at the time of the partition, but I saw those people also enjoying Indian movies with their families. Renting Indian movies was banned by the government of General Zia-ul-Haq, but there were still a large number of shops around the country from where people could rent movies. People used to flock to those shops to get the Indian movie of their choice. Those who could not afford a VCR used a special kind of antenna made of a steel cover of cooking pans, and attached to a device called booster to catch Dordarshan so that they could watch Indian movies.

Love of people of Pakistan for Indian artists and movies can also be gauged from the fact that many people make it a point to watch Indian movies in cinema whenever they visit the UK or the USA. In my childhood, I watched two movies — Muqadar ka Sikander and The Great Gambler at a cinema house during my family’s visit to the USA in 1978. Love of Indian actors in hearts of people of Pakistan can also be judged from the fact that Pakistani nationals residing overseas go in large numbers to attend an event whenever a Bollywood star comes to perform in a country where he/she is living.

We, people of Pakistan, are so much in love with Indian movies and their music that sometimes we try to overcome our frustration of defeat in a cricket match by listening to Indian music! Many of us consider India as a ‘rival’, but when it comes to Indian movies, even a frantic opponent of India somehow finds a way to accept them.

I hope someone can rethink this whole strategy of imposing a ban on viewing of Indian content. When a government under a strict ruler like Zia failed to implement a complete ban on Indian movies, it is very difficult for the current regime to implement it. All efforts to ban Indian content from cinemas and television screens would only push people more towards them and promote illegal activities in society.

On both sides of the border, there are extremist people. One can only hope that people ignore the fanatics and give heed to the positive advice given by the likes of Humayun Saeed and Om Puri. I hope sanity prevails, and both countries restart exchanges of art and artists very soon.

The writer is a columnist and a public relations consultant. He blogs at karachichronicle.com, and can be reached at kzk1972@gmail.com and on Twitter @KhurramZiaKhan