Whenever a scene is ready to be immortalised on film, an old tradition is followed. The director calls ‘Lights, Camera, Action’. Yet for nearly a decade, this tradition has been radically altered within the halls of Bollywood. The cue has changed; today, it is ‘Lights, Camera, Propaganda’! Following this cue, a new Bollywood movie, loosely based on the Karachi Lyari Gang War, has been released. This movie is currently trending massively on social media. Its attractively snappy trailer, which I saw amid the online frenzy, contains Pakistani characters such as SSP Chaudhary Aslam, Abdul Rehman Dakait, an ISI operative, and one Indian RAW agent who was deployed to go undercover in Lyari. This setting has sparked massive outrage on social media, with critics lambasting Bollywood’s obsession with Pakistan and Islam. This is a stark contrast to the past. Although Pakistan’s entertainment industry lags behind India’s, several decades ago Pakistanis were so captivated by Indian movies. They were head over heels for Dilip Kumar, Dharmendra, Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh Bachchan, and the songs of Kishore Kumar, Mohammed Rafi, and Lata Mangeshkar filled every home and store in the country. The legacy still continues in my own family, as we are all massive fans of the old songs and movies, the kind of work Pakistani cinema should emulate.

BOI minister holds meeting with honorary CG of Lithuania

But where did such rhetoric start from? The shift in narrative started after the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992, with films such as Deewar, Gadar........

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