To Bollywood with love

In 2013, the Hindi film industry, popularly known as Bollywood, celebrated its centenary. In its hundred plus years, Pakistan has played a role of a supportive pillion to Bollywood. Actors who migrated due to partition-related violence, or came in search of work from the other side of the border to Bombay became some of its most celebrated stars. Pakistan, since the partition of India in 1947 has provided a market to Hindi films and television-serials; this country acts as an ‘alien other’ against which idea of political nationalism are constructed and debated on the Indian celluloid screen. Bollywood is also a window for millions of Pakistanis to what would otherwise have been a completely alien country, something that happened to India without the aid of a rival Lollywood that could have had a similar impact on India’s insight into everyday Pakistan, as a result of which most Indians seem to think Pakistanis are all paan-chewing, safaid pyjama wearing, burqa donning, repressed stereotypes of old Lacknawi Muslims

When Master Vithal, the leading actor of India’s first talkie film Alam Ara, was sued by another film company for violating the terms of contract, an eminent Bombay lawyer defended him and won the case. The lawyer was Mohammad Ali Jinnah. In pre-partition years, Lahore was emerging as another centre of cinema, but failed to flourish in the same manner because most of those engaged in it were Hindus, who, due to the violence of the 1940s, migrated to Bombay. Among those who fled, Roshan Lal Shorey and Roop Kishore Shorey, Dalsukh Pancholi and Pran were the most prominent names. As migration took place on both sides, Sadat Hasan Manto and Nazir migrated to Pakistan from Bombay. Others like Prithvi Raj Kapoor, Yash Raj Chopra, Dev Anand, and Sunil Dutt et al moved away from the areas that became Pakistan.  Many among them achieved stardom, but they could not overcome their nostalgia for their native place.

[quote]Na bhooli hain na bhoolayn gee Lahore ki galiyaan[/quote]

Bhaskar Sarkar, in his book Mourning The Nation: Indian Cinema in the Wake of Partition, writes that in April 1997, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the partition, a reunion of transplants from Lahore was organised in Bombay. The participants’ mood was reflected in the repeated recitation of a line from the late 1940s that express those feelings of loss and longing: “Bahut ghoomi hain Dilli aur Indore ki galiyan/Na bhooli hain na bhoolayn gee Lahore ki galiyaan” (I have often roamed the streets of Delhi and Indore/But I haven’t forgotten, and can never forget, the streets of Lahore.)

Due to shared socio-cultural values, even during the days of the official ban (1965-2008), Bollywood had an effective presence in Pakistan. Doordarshan (India’s national television channel) was viewed with much fascination, and when the film Pakeezah was shown on TV, nobody was found on the streets of Lahore. VCRs were found in almost all affluent middle class wardrobes.

Describing the craze for Hindi films, M.K. Kao in his book, An Outsider, Everywhere narrates an interesting anecdote about the Simla talks between Indira Gandhi and Z.A. Bhutto in 1972. To meet Benazir Bhutto’s request (who had accompanied her father), Gandhi’s special secretary arranged a special screening of Pakeezah in Simla’s Ritz Theatre.

[quote]To meet Benazir Bhutto's request, a special screening of Pakeezah was arranged by Gandhi's special secretary in Simla[/quote]

General Zia, who institutionalized the process of Islamisation in Pakistan, was such an admirer of Hindi films that during his daughter’s marriage the only invitee from India was actor Shatrughan Sinha, who is at present a member of the Indian Parliament. Oddly, but keeping very much in line with Pakistan’s dichotomous relationship with Bollywood, in 1998 (during the days of the official ban on Hindi cinema in the country) the Government of Pakistan conferred its highest civilian award Nishan-e-Imtiaz to Hindi cinema’s megastar Dilip Kumar, who was born in Peshawar.

The craze for Indian movies and television serials has never been limited to just the affluent class; it has spoken even more to the poor and marginalised classes, especially the movies of the late 70s and 80s in which Amitabh Bachan played the angry young man who took on the status quo in various Robin Hoodesque roles. But even when these films do not directly address the poor, they help to give them a world of fantasy to escape to. In one of her articles, writer Shanaz Khan quotes eighteen year old Samina, married to a sweeper “Films show a world of beautiful people who love each other and it takes me away from the hardships of my life. I like the happy stories best.”

The four decades-old blanket ban on the public screening of Hindi cinema in Pakistan was lifted in 2008. Interestingly, soon after the lifting of the ban, film Jodha Akbar was stopped from releasing in Pakistan by authorities on this side of the border for showing Mughal emperor Akbar’s tilt towards Hinduism.

Despite this symbiosis, Pakistan remains an alien ‘other’ for Bollywood. According to Professor Nirmal Kumar, Pakistan became a subject in Bollywood in 1973 when Chetan Anand’s Hindustan ki Kasam was released. After the militancy in Kashmir gained momentum in the 1990s, Pakistan-bashing films mushroomed, further exacerbated by the 11 September 2001 attack in New York. In response, Ghazi Ilam-ud-Din Shaheed (2002) and Waar (2013) (allegedly, funded by the army) were made in Pakistan.

As hyper nationalistic movies started boring audiences, attempts were made to portray love stories between individuals from either side of the border, starting from Raj Kapoor’s Henna starring Zeba Bakhtiar down to Preity Zinta and Shahrukh Khan’s Veer-Zara. Aside from these, many progressive movies portraying the depth of India-Pakistan relations have been made by Deepa Mehta, Ajay Bhardwaj, and Mehreen Jabbar etc., but they have failed to occupy a wider socio-political space.

[quote]At General Zia's daughter's wedding the only invitee from India was Shatrugan Sinha[/quote]

Despite no significant official advances between India and Pakistan on the diplomatic front, culturally there has been development between the two countries. At one time the crossing over of a Pakistani star to Bollywood was not just newsworthy, it was frowned upon. Now it has become so common, Pakistanis are beginning to be judged based on their merit and not their Pakistaniness alone, opening up a new chapter in the strange love affair between India and Pakistan, fuelled by distance, hardship and mutual suspicion and fascination. Though neither Ali Zafar nor any other Pakistani has yet become a big Bollywood star in India, it is only a matter of time before we see a Pakistani hero or heroine ruling the roost in the neighbouring country, an eventuality that is bound to shape the dynamics of Bollywood and Pakistan’s relationship ever more.

But thankfully, the cultural impact traffic is no longer completely one-sided and Pakistan is also beginning to contribute its particular brand of entertainment to India with the launching of channels like Zee Zindagi that show exclusively Pakistani content.

Perhaps another 100 years of Indian cinema will help eliminate the stereotypes that have stunted better relationships between the two countries for decades.