A Bollywood touch to peace ‘spectacle’
Insiders on either side of the Line of Control as well as in the United States have since long known that a derailed peace dialogue between India and Pakistan would only resume once a new government takes office in India.
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[size=2]This view is held both by those who are using the back channel to advance the cause of peace as well as those who are supposed to take up the cudgels at an official level in the near future
Former Pakistani foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri, who played a pivotal role in bringing the two nations together before a certain disengagement set in, recently said in a TV interview he expected the process to resume within the next six months.
Kasuri based his prediction secure in the knowledge of how much has been achieved away from the prying eyes of the media and which, he confidently emphasised was irreversible despite the roadblocks it faced.
It was thrown off track first, in 2007 with the weakening of the Musharraf regime following a disastrous move to oust a fiercely independent chief justice in Pakistan, which eventually led to Musharraf’s forced resignation and then the terrorist mayhem in Mumbai last November.
Privately, movers-and-shakers on either side believe the peace process is here to stay regardless of the grandstanding seen in the last few months.
To the lay citizen of the subcontinent, the “now-it’s-here, now-it’s-not” spectacle is all very filmy.
In November last year, President Asif Zardari said he would like E-cards issued to peoples of both the countries so they could swipe it at the border and walk through. Poignantly, he also said: “There is an Indian in every Pakistani”.
Surely, it is Bollywood which has kept the “Indian alive in every Pakistani” in spite of the periodic political and military turbulence over the last sixty-odd years.
May be they will need more of Bollywood in the days to come.
Since partition in 1947, India and Pakistan have, at the best and worst of times, shared a filmy relationship. Is it any wonder life on the big screen continues to b(l)ind them in an inseparable union.
The lure and lucre of Bollywood is not in doubt. Not for nothing is it the world’s biggest film churning machine. But it has many unsung heroes beyond Mumbai — adventurers who cross the boundaries at the risk of arrest and a jail term to boot.
In August 2008, unlimited dreams - not to be mistaken for Bollywood king Shah Rukh Khan’s first production house Dreamz Unlimited - landed a 15-year-old Pakistani boy, Nasir Sultan, in Indian jail. The boy’s crime?
Wanting to meet - and become another - Mr Khan. But in following that dream, he unsuspectingly breached the Line of Control, literally.
In a filmy conclusion however, he was released without charge last November.
In Pakistan, Indian idols have following among the powerful as well as hoi polloi. Last November - days before the Mumbai mayhem - President Zardari regretted no longer finding time to indulge movies but on prodding from an Indian journalist in a live interaction admitted to a fondness for Madhuri Diksheee (he probably, meant Dixit) during his own time in jail.
The former first lady, Sehba Musharraf, was fond of cine queen Rani Mukherjee. General Musharraf and the first lady had dinner with Rani during their Indian sojourn in 2004, who was invited by the Indian government to more than one function attended by the Pakistani leader in an obvious charm offensive.
Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s favourite Indian stars were Sanjay Dutt and Karisma Kapoor (the ancestors of both these actors were born in the part of India, which is now Pakistan).
Bollywood star Shatrughan Sinha famously stayed in the Presidency during General Ziaul Haq’s regime. Both Zia and Shatru openly declared being a part of each other’s “extended” family.
Despite fighting three wars - the most obvious consequence of which, each time has been a ban on showing of each other’s films - the people of India and Pakistan have been unable to break cultural links. Thanks mostly to the razzmatazz of Bollywood.
It is almost three years since Indian films were allowed to be screened in Pakistani cinemas - after a ban of 43 years.
While most ordinary Pakistanis love Indian films, Bollywood’s ever-growing fondness for Pakistan-related stories, poetry and music is also proof of their historical and cultural bond.
The Bollywood appeal can be measured by the confluence of many a filmy liaison, sometimes blurring the lines between the player and sport.
Indian sex symbols Zeenat Aman and Rekha were romantically linked with charismatic Pakistani cricket legend Imran Khan in the Seventies and Eighties
Dashing opener Mohsin Khan translated the apparently filmy script by actually marrying Bollywood star Reena Roy and then exchanging his bat for a role on reel across the border. Ironically, the film was called Batwara (partition
One of the reasons for Bollywood’s popularity is openness. With so many Indian films, mainly comedy and action thrillers, being screened in cinemas, the Pakistani audience is developing an addiction for “item numbers” - unrelated song and dance insertions that set the stage alight so-to-speak.
Significantly, the male of the cinegoing species are better-behaved. About three years ago, this was almost inconceivable. Bollywood movies have proved to be the great equalisers.
With the exception of a few movies produced by both sides on political and military themes, Bollywood films bear the strains and pains and hopes and aspirations of both Indians and Pakistanis alike.
Last November, for example when the Indians must have been laughing their heads off over the antics of two on-screen “self-confessed” homosexuals in a film Dostana, in Lahore, the High Court imposed a ban terming the gay content highly objectionable.
Dostana means friendship. Typical of a Bollywood happy ending, Dostana won in court. The ban was lifted and fans in Pakistan turned gay - the happy kind, that is![/size]
Whether or not former foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri is proved right on the much-awaited resumption of the peace dialogue and which many hope will lead to the Pakistan-born Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh crossing the border in a filmy fashion, the Bollywood Dostana, is clearly, here to stay.
The writer is a freelance journalist based in Islamabad. He may be reached at [EMAIL=“[email protected]”][email protected]
to lengthy… how i read???