The Most Ineffective Ban Ever

Fosa..........is that english you have written in?*confused*

Siyam, I am afraid you have wrong info. There is NO ban on pakistani channels in India. There was a ban only for a few months during the Kargil war, something you can easily appreciate I hope. You do not broadcast enemy propaganda during a war. Even today, my television has PTV World, and often I switch to it to admire how pretty the fresh scrubbed women on it look. :)

What I mentioned are not merely Indian government`s claims. The facts about Dawood have been published by magazines in pakistan and last month, a minister of the Sindh government mentioned him as being involved in the bomb blast in a commercial complex. Musharraf`s barefaced denial, and his propensity to lie on every issue reduces his credibility. I mean come on. If you dont want to hand him over, give the proper reason, i e ``we have no extradition treaty with india. yes, we have handed over people to america through unofficial channels, but india doesnt do enough for us to warrant those kinda concessions``. Why lie saying he is not there in the country? That is just diplomatic stupidity.

So if tomorrow the Indian government asks pakistan to stop piracy of indian movies, instead of giving the proper reason i e ``why should we? we have no treaty with you, nor have we granted you mfn status to do so.``, they are sure to say ``there aint no piracy of indian movies in pakistan``

that is why i mentioned it and i dont see how it takes away anything from my argument.

kabuliwala, i do not represent bollywood here. so i am not going to defend its plagiaristic tendencies, since i abhor them too. however one wonders why pakistanis watch the rehashed bullshit when they have legal access to the original hollywood or european cinema. english or iranian movies should just be dubbed in urdu and shown in pakistan if you think that originality will sell more.

shandana and durman

firstly, i am not saying only mullahs believe TNT. i accept the fact that there was a wide acceptance for TNT at partition time, as shown by the result of the Muslim League in the elections. ironically, mullahs then were opposed to the two nation theory. :)

and u know why u r followed, durman? u think pakistanis were always followed? it happens because a few pakistanis (not most, few) have come to india like you have, and then committed acts of terrorism. sheikh omar saeed, who is in pakistani jails for murdering daniel pearl, is an excellent example. now if he said ``oh i am a rich sophisticated paki educated in london school of econ, why should anyone follow me?`` you would believe him. but this man was responsible for the kidnapping of foreigners in india and it was only serendipitously that he was arrested.

i know that the troublemakers are only say 1% of the pakistanis who come to india. but there is no test to find out who these 1% are, hence the surveilance.

now about banning entertainment

who are you or the government to decide what is right or what is wrong? leave it to the people. if people dislike pelvic gyrations, bhajans and extramarital affairs, they will just not watch it. if they want to watch it, what right do you have to stop them? you have a right to regulate the entertainment only of your own children. so you can just block indian channels in ur home.

a state supported ban smacks of dictatorial spirit. and let me tell you, the indian government, though less gulilty, has shown similar tendencies of bannign stuff, like FTV.

forcible bans will not stop the influence of ``pseudo culture`` because such bans are ineffective.

I think that the article’s analysis is incomplete. There is much more at stake than financial losses to the Bombay film industry. Pirated videos of Indian movies do not merely vie for Pakistani market share with the competition, such as it is, from Lollywood; they also eat into the mind-share for PTV and state-run media. The latter is notoriously a channel for state propaganda especially as it relates to India and the ‘core issue’ of Kashmir. Anything that challenges the Pakistan government’s control over the dissemination of images of India is a matter of grave concern to the ruling establishment of an ideological state.

The following article: A strange kind of nationalism does a good job of explaining the wider context of PEMRA’s continuing ban on Indian cable channels.

I also doubt that the major or most serious opposition to open dissemination of Indian pop culture comes from mullahs. In this day and age, poorly schooled mullahs cannot really stand up to people with more substantial modern educations. My guess is that the real opposition comes from state ideologues and the military, who have found in Islam a convenient vehicle for their own authoritarian and anti-democratic goals. These worthies would have no qualms about banning Indian media for the general public while watching it in military cantonments and their own homes (a cause for bitter complaint in letters to Pakistani newspapers, BTW).

As regards paying for Indian movies....forget it!!! why should the Pakistanis enrich their enemies- they would prefer to pay for the low quality VCD and enrich the local pirates - it is a small sacrifice that they can make for their fellow pirates.
Atleast the local mafiiaso and pirates would be then able to p,lough back the a part of the booty into the jehadi mafiaso- who would further provide protection for their piracy, charas, ganja, counterfeiting, tax evasion, boot legging--
Man !!! the cycle is vicious and PAkistan is deeply in this sh*t logic.

The ONLY smart thing the Pakistani government has done is to ban Indian movies.

If the Indian government has any brains, they would do the same thing - ban INDIAN movies.

We have reached Six Sigma in one segment: 99.9999% of Indian movies are CRAP.

RE # 11 ``Crores of Hindus and Muslims lived cheek by jowl, and separating them into 2 big cuntries was a fantasy``
fantasy of ``cuntries``? Freudian slip?
Sigh! Another lecture from a superior Indian.
-
Scott

Good article gaurav.

We Indians never invade with swords. We invade with culture and concur.

#Indian culture, or rather the South Asian culture that India has embraced is a dynamic one, which combines traditional values with modern ideas inspired from the west.

Well I wouldnt be hasty enough to say that. The majority of films coming out of Bollywood are not really reflective of contemporary Indian culture if there be such a beast. It is projectionist at best and a parody at the worst.

#However these bans show how miserably they have failed to Arab-ise the subcontinent.

Maybe they *are* different. Who can say. You and I have never been there. Maybe they are more ``arabic``, whatever that means. And perhaps happy that way too. Entirely possible that their cultural mores are different from ours. That a film that gets a ``U/A`` here will never get past the censors there.

A statement like this smells of cultural imperialism - I mean how can we make claims about what Pakistanis are really like unless we interact more closely with them in the first place? But the majority of us will never get that chance - atleast not for the next 10 years.

Dear Gaurav,

While your article doesn`t reflect it (its more of the we indians are so much better than you pakis... mentality).... you have a sound understanding of the events albeit from a more indian point of view, reading your interacts.

``If the Two Nation Theory was on the basis of religion/ethnicity AND geography, it would have worked.``

If you read the text of the Lahore Resolution which doesn`t mention Islam by the way... you will see that this train of thought is effectively reflected.

Moreover you will also no doubt appreciate that the argument s forwarded by Jinnah (in the last part of his life) were more intune with India is Not One nation and not that India has two nations... so the so called `tnt` does not irrevocably say that this is it no more nations... but is only countering the One Nation idea. (That is why Indira`s proud barak was a joke)

Furthermore you will no doubt also acknowledge that those clamoring for the ban on Indian entertainment products (mullahs and the military estabishment as you have pointed out) had historically a role against the Pakistan movement and not for it. Mullahas were allied with the Congress... and the Military had its own axe to grind given its own predisposition to a United India ... And while you have pointed out that the Congress had rejected the idea of a confederal India, you have failed to mention that Jinnah and the league had accepted it.


-YLH

Vertex

I am a critc of the TNT, not on ideological, but logistical and operational issues. While on religious grounds, one may say that Hindus and Muslims are two nations, the logistical difficulties of separating them were too enormous. Crores of Hindus and Muslims lived cheek by jowl, and separating them into 2 big cuntries was a fantasy. It is not like Israel where a few million Jews were relocated. The sheer size as well as the populations of the two proposed nations and the complexity with which these ``nations`` were interspersed is what made the TNT unviable.

If the Two Nation Theory was on the basis of religion/ethnicity AND geography, it would have worked.

That it did not work is evident by the fact that the nation it created houses less than 1/3rd of the people for whose sake it was created, i.e the subcontinent`s Muslims.

The subcontinent is either one nation....call it India, south asia, whatever...........or it is 40 different nations. It is NOT two or three nations.

The ideal way would have been for a loose federal set-up with each province having autonomy with only defence and foreign affairs centralised. But that did not work.

Which is why I do not blame only Jinnah & the league, but Nehru and the congress as well, for the partition.

I have always believed that while religion can serve as a very powerful tool to divide people, it is just not powerful enough to unite them into nationhood. Otherwise all lands between Morocco and Multan would have been one country.

About the other things, you misunderstand me. The subcontinent`s Islam is NOT Arabised. I am saying an effort is on to make it so and it should be stopped.

This year the MMA government in 2 provinces banned the celebration of Basant, a festival celebrated in the subcontinent for thousands of years, on the grounds that it was unislamic. now please dont reply giving me details of basant celebrations and how most pakistanis love flying kites then. i know all that. i am criticising the handful of gun-wielders or beard-wielders who are trying to make the liberal Pakistani society fundamentalist, like in the Arab world.

Most of you say they won`t succeed. I hope you are right, but I continue to be concerned.

I am sorry to say but the writer is under the illusion that its only the Mullahs who believe in the two nation theory, and the public outrightly reject it.....Pakistani`s dont treat Indians coming to Pakistan in the manner the indians treat us, when we are there....They humiliate us at the airports.....follow us around......make us wait for hours. I personally came to Believe in the two nation theory when i saw the Babri masjid Shaheed incident live on tv....When your so called secular police was standing and watching gleefully.....the reasons the mullah`s protest on Indian shows is that because the present day indian soaps have bhajans and poojas going on in half their running time....The Mullahs wants the Muslim children who see this program to avoid gaining any relevance to Shri Ram and bla bla....culture....After all we are Muslims in majority, and we have every right to protect our children from a pseudo culture produced on tv which is hardly followed back in india as well........Further More the TV operas on majority shows extra maritial affairs, illegitimate children, fighting over fathers estates......``bhabis`` fighting each other.....getting each others children killed......Now its not only Pakistan...but also the Indians who should avoid development of tolerance to such culture

gaurav,

i`m totally against bans on imported pop culture, whoever might be imposing them. i am, however, in favour of banning the songs in most indian movies. the pelvic gyrations give me a headache each time. any chances of the indian govt banning silly dances? prolly not, even pakistani movies have to have a number of songs or they wont be movies. and they`re equally silly (the dancing anyway, both nations are musically talented) also, what measures is the indian govt taking to clean up bollywood funding? according to the papers here, lots of shady underworld people fund indian blockbusters. and lots of sleazy people dominate pakistani visual media as well. uff the similarities...

shandana

it is a pleasure to be here, temporal :)

i wrote the article to post it on my blog and on dialognow, another Indo-Pak forum I have been a part of for over as year. Did not know chowk`s word limit till then. However I am grateful to them for publishing this piece nevertheless. Any future articles will not exceed 1000 words.

can`t edit it again sorry. am too lazy. would be willing to accept a 5-figure or 4-figure advance as a punishment for this laziness.

romair, let me explain you some things which have escaped your attention.

most of what you wrote about how indian films are openly accepted in pakistan is redundant. that is why my article is titled ``the most ineffective ban``

i know pakistani people are open about indian things. i am just criticisng the establishment and the clergy.

Unfortunately what does seem to be happening now, is that Indian movies are fully in anti-Pakistan propoganda mode.

hello!!! india makes hundreds of movies every year, of which barely a handful, like the ones you mentioned, dwell on pakistan. dont you think your statement is a sweeping generalisation?

However, I rarely see any of my Indian colleagues who have ever seen anything Pakistani, or know about anything Pakistani, while they lived in India. All their knowledge (like this article) seems to be the official Indian govt. line). Perhaps it is Indians who need to start opening up to things Pakistani; not vice-versa.

we are not ``closed`` to anything pakistani. PTV world is shown here, it was banned only during the kargil war, which is very obvious. indians appreciate anything pakistani that is good. junoon, nusrat, adnan sami, ghulam ali, mehdi hassan, strings......all make ``legitimate`` money in india. rest of the things are not good enough so we dont see them.

savvy?

A lot of good points mentioned, but you failed to mention the continued ban of Pakistani channels by the Indian government too. Also, what about the stopping of any sort of banning by either country, as being counter productive. Just because a ban can be violated doesn`t mean that, THAT is the only ban that should be considered to be superfluous and not beneficial.

Other than that, I don`t see how mentioning the Indian government`s claim and Musharaf`s denial brings any strength to your argument, infact it takes away from it.

It is true that Bollywood is losing out on revenue...but Bollywood film makers themselves do not respect intellectual property rights of Hollywood, European or any other film maker...they keep churing ``inspired`` versions of other people`s work without paying royalties... then what right does Bollywood have to b!tch when others do the same...in a way it is good that Mahesh Bhatt, Subhash Ghai and their ilk lose money...then people with creative talent who do not depend on glitz-glamor or rehashed bullsh!t can make movies that can give some meaning to the word cinema.