/ARTS WEEKLY/FILM: India-Pakistan Peace Showing on Silver Screen

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Muddassir Rizvi

ISLAMABAD, Feb 17 2004 (IPS) - India’s and Pakistan’s governments are still flirting with each other at the diplomatic level, but their film industries are already falling in love – signing up artists from the country otherwise demonised across the border, planning joint productions and promising peace through silver screen.

In short, the snail-paced progress at the political level is yielding a rather rapid snowball effect in the area of people-to-people ties, business, trade and cricket.

Major headway is being made in film. Interaction between Bollywood and Lollywood – which refers to the Pakistani movie industry based in the northern city of Lahore – has been growing in recent months.

Home to one fifth of the world’s poor, South Asia has a massive audience for movies, often the most accessible and cheapest means of entertainment. Despite an official ban on Indian movies in Pakistan – yet another casualty of the rivalry between the two countries – they are freely available here on video and CDs.

The government has restricted its ban to only commercial screening of Indian movies.

”Joint movies by India and Pakistan will certainly give a real value to peace efforts at the official level for millions of people. That we can actually work together and co-existence will be the message that people will get sitting in their living rooms,” says Ayesha Khan, a schoolteacher and movie buff.

This may just be true. Meera, Pakistan’s highest paid actress and heartthrob of its movie industry, has been signed for a Bollywood movie to be co-produced by Indian filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt and Pakistan-born British producer Sevy Ali.

Meera will play the lead role in the Hindi thriller that is about a blind woman who becomes psychic after an eye transplant and can see murders in a red light area before they are committed.

”Although Meera’s seems to be just another traditionally plotted movie, it underlines the beginning of an era of new politics between Pakistan and India that seek to establish perpetual peace,” comments Amir Wasim, a journalist. ”This would be like breaking the cultural barriers that the two states had artificially erected to create artificial distances between the two peoples.”

Before the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, the subcontinent had one film industry based in the western Indian port city of Mumbai. After independence, the Pakistani movie industry was born with artists, directors and technicians groomed and trained at the Mumbai industry.

Despite separate entities, the movies churned out by the two industries carried similar cultural and traditional undertones and were hardly distinguishable. Both countries allowed the commercial screening of each other’s movies till they went to war in 1965. Political and diplomatic differences subsequently erected cultural blockades.

”The cultural separation of Indians and Pakistanis that began in the sixties continue to date. This must end to create an amicable environment that could lead to lasting peace,” says Zafarullah Khan, a regional security expert who has written several papers on the India-Pakistan conflict.

He says that the filmmakers have a role to play in creating constituencies of peace as they have strong followings in both countries. ”This is certainly a positive step and would lead to cultural clarity, if not cultural integration.”

This is exactly why she agreed to work in an Indian movie, Meera says. According to the Urdu-language daily ‘Jang’, she says that her decision indicates her desire to take further the peace process between the two governments.

”I understand that there would be many at home who would be opposing my decision, but whatever I am doing is for peace.can anybody come out and oppose peace?” the paper quoted Meera as saying. She had turned down two roles offered to her by Bollywood producers last year due to state-level tensions.

But Meera is not alone in her endeavours. A beeline of Pakistani artists is reported to be forming in Mumbai, seeking work in the lucrative Indian movies, which are as popular here. Another Pakistani top actress, Resham, and well-known Pakistani pop-mystic poetry singer Rafaqat Ali Khan are close to signing contracts, while many others are in waiting.

Similarly, Meera has contracted famous Indian choreographer Saroj Khan to direct dance sequences in one of the movies she is producing in Pakistan.

Indian actress-turned-director Pooja Bhat, who visited Pakistan in December 2003, is ready to direct a Pakistani movie. Pakistan’s most popular band Junoon has already composed a song for Pooja’s debut movie, screened in the Pakistani city of Karachi during the Kara Film festival in December.

A delegation of Indian movie directors and actors, including Rakesh Roshan, Jeetendra, Ranjeet, Prem Chopra and Parikshit Sahani, is scheduled to visit Lahore during the Basant or kite flying festival later this month. They are set to call on Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali and seek a lifting of the ban on screening of Indian films in Pakistan.

The Pakistani government, on the other hand, is also taking the movie diplomacy seriously. Pakistani Foreign Minister Khursheed Kasuri has asked Indian filmmakers to stop making movies that spew hate and are divisive. ”I would appeal to Indian society to discourage the Bombay film industry from making ‘hate-Pakistan’ movies,” he said in a published statement.

Such hate movies grew in number after the Kargil conflict between India and Pakistan, as producers from both countries cashed in on the political climate of animosity.

But the prospect of collaboration also stokes other fears among many Pakistani producers, who fear that their industry would be devoured by the much bigger Indian movie industry. ”We should cooperate but should not allow us to be co-opted,” says Usman Pirzada, a Pakistani actor and movie director.

”Although the Hindi film industry and Pakistan’s Urdu film industry have many things in common, I think Pakistani filmmakers should first try to equip themselves with modern production techniques and technology, rather than going straight into collaboration,” he said.