Recently, BB made a comment claiming that Indians don’t watch Pakistani dramas while Pakistanis are very familiar with Bollywood. While it is certainly true that Indian media has greater penetration in Pakistan than Pakistani media does in India–which is only to be expected since Bollywood is a much larger industry– it is also a fact that there are many fans of Pakistani dramas in India. As I pointed out in a comment, Fawad Khan and Mahira Khan became well-known in India after the success of Humsafar. Sanam Saeed also became well-known after Zindagi Gulzar Hai (in which she starred opposite Fawad Khan) aired on Indian TV. While the film industry in Pakistan has struggled for many reasons, our drama industry is going strong. One point to note is that unlike Indian soap operas, Pakistani dramas generally come to an end after twenty five or thirty episodes. This means that there is no need to keep a story going by having people return from the dead etc–this is not specific to Indian soaps since American soaps are also like this.
I personally don’t watch Pakistani dramas (I don’t really watch TV and what media I do consume tends to be Western). I think the last Pakistani drama I watched was Barzakh which also starred Fawad and Sanam and was coincidentally made for an Indian streaming service (ZEE Zindagi).
Anyway, I came across this reel today on IG which is called “Indians after watching a Pakistani drama” and I thought I’d share it here. This is basically light entertainment but it does prove that there is an audience in India for Pakistani content. Presumably, the user didn’t make this video just for the Pakistani audience.
I am of the opinion that art transcends national borders so there is nothing wrong with this. Just as Pakistanis are fans of Lata Mangeskhar, Asha Bhosle and Muhammad Rafi, Indians are fans of Mehdi Hassan, Ghulam Ali, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan etc. Though the two countries obviously have political tensions–both see each other as hostile states– we do share a common culture and there is nothing wrong in acknowledging that fact.
funny video – we wouldn’t take BB’s pronouncements on Indo-Pak so seriously.
it’s far too deterministic, legalistic and again he has a habit of ignoring the “Spirit” of the law and of things in general.
he assumes that if India is 2x per capita more than Pakistan and is more “influential”; Pakistanis will simply keel over..
it’s much more complex that that. power ≠ money alone
Yes, it was a funny video that just coincidentally came into my feed today.
There was a similar video a while back (I don’t recall who made it now) which was a comedy sketch where the guy’s mother had been watching so many Pakistani dramas she started speaking Urdu with a Pakistani accent and saying things like “salam aliekum”. I think she referred to his dad as “Abba” instead of “Bapu” or whatever.
The point is that art transcends national borders. It goes both ways. Obviously since India’s creative output is bigger, Pakistanis are more familiar with Indian products than vice versa.
Bollywood is dying in Pakistan.
The best way to guage this is to look at online memes that Pakistanis make. Most meme clip content is coming from the 80’s, 90’s and 00’s Bolywood movies, harkens to a past era that is now fast getting old.
Modern Bollywood is mostly trash now; too ideological, apeing Western culture, can’t speak Urdu, no good songs etc etc. Everyone in my generation and before watched Indian movies 20 years ago. Almost no one I know in the new generation watches them.
Pakistani dramas have mostly the same shitty storylines, but I think the homeliness appeals to women (who are its primary watchers). PK dramas do have good local aesthetics, good taste, good lanaguage and mannerisms that most Indian soaps lack.
I don’t really watch movies (Indian or otherwise). The last Bollywood movie I watched was “Padmavat”. I think I also watched “Bajirao Mastani”.
I do agree with you that in the last few years a lot of Bollywood movies have become anti-Pakistan/anti-Muslim by default. “Padmavat” is a good example with the characterization of Khilji. This would certainly be a turn off in Pakistan.
Regarding Pakistani dramas: from what I’ve read most of the stories are about crying women and toxic men. There was a recent drama in which the “hero” burned the “heroine’s” car and she ended up married to him at the end anyway. So there’s a lot of extremely toxic masculinity. I don’t see the appeal but clearly these dramas have an audience.
On the contrary, many Pakistani dramas were pushing the poison of feminism onto Pakistani society – although this seems to have changed suddenly after Trump cut off USAID. I knew a couple of women involved in the production and they were all very ideologically motivated to spread feminism in Pakistani society, however ideology does not always sell so they have to appeal to realism.
Like I said, I don’t really watch dramas so I’m just going by what I’ve read.
I can only refer you to this recent article in DAWN:
“Prime Time: The Problem With Meri Zindagi Hai Tu”
https://www.dawn.com/news/1988781/prime-time-the-problem-with-meri-zindagi-hai-tu
If I were a woman and a dude set my car on fire, I would not end up married to him. I would have him locked up in a psych ward. My father would have made sure of that.
I’m just going to add my opinion as someone who occasionally looked at TV soap operas in the Indian context. See, there are a few things that both of you are missing here. Firstly, there is this distinction between high art and low art within the broader context of South Asia, where films are often seen as “superior” or greater than television, which is seen as “inferior”. Film stars get paid more than their television counterparts.
As is common in these situations, film and other “higher” genres tend to take in/attract people who come from more privileged backgrounds; upper caste, upper class, male, urban, educated, etc. Television tends to be more centered around underprivileged groups, including a lot of women. However, to make it in the field of television to become a leading figure, like a producer or main lead, you need to have a degree of education and connections.
The convergence of these two factors leads to a unique situation: many television productions are led by women who are educated, well-connected, and progressive. At the same time, their main audience (usually housewives and lower or middle-class women) tends to lean more conservative and traditionalist in nature.
This inevitably leads to a clash in values that results in the strange dynamic you see on television: a vaguely progressive outlook on issues from a privileged perspective confined by conservative norms. Also, most of these productions use the female gaze quite extensively to make it appealing to women, even if men cannot understand it. Think Twilight shoved into a South Asian setting.
The best example I can think of is (this is kinda a shameful teenage nostalgia for me, so don’t you dare judge me) is the 2011 Hindi serial: “Iss Pyaar Ko Kya Naam Doon?” (god I feel the teenage cringe coming through my veins). The female lead can have a job, get physically intimate with the main lead, but no kissing because it is considered socially inappropriate (even if the main lead can literally forcefully grab the female lead). The female lead can break traditional norms and get an office job, but she was praying like a lunatic and preaching about the glories of “Sanskar”. Somehow it was very progressive for its time, yet somehow very conservative and traditionalist at the same time.
Oddly enough, this show explains why Bollywood (even Hollywood, for that matter) is “Dying”. The serial represents a form of common monoculture, where it appeals to people from a wide background. It was somewhat progressive and appealed to liberal figures, in addition to being within traditional norms, and appealed to conservatives.
Bollywood (and Hollywood) kinda did the same thing on a larger scale; it was composed of universal tropes that everyone can understand, and it talked about issues from an abstract perspective without looking at specific issues unique to a specific region. Over time, differences emerged across the globe as a result of diverging development trajectories that broke the monoculture we all shared. This breakdown led to the formation of a niche or resurgent regional identity that wanted media that catered to their specific needs. As the monoculture gave way to specific cultures, broader entities like Bollywood and Hollywood weakened over time. To stay relevant in this diverging world, these entities try to be appealing by using Western ideals, nationalism, religion, etc., to stay relevant.
Lastly, Bollywood has a very unique problem (from my perspective); it has no clear base audience. Like Tamil cinema has Tamil country, Punjabi cinema has Punjab, while Bollywood doesn’t have a specific “Hindi” area. Most of the “Hindi” regions have regional languages and industries that compete against Bollywood (Bhojpuri cinema, for example). Most of the main Bollywood audiences are limited to the urban centre, but it has an “on-off” relationship with the people outside their main base. Bollywood is always stuck in between appealing to a broader audience by using more abstract/universal themes or honing in on regional or specific issues/themes to appeal to a specific subset of people. Think Udta Punjab (looks at drug abuse in Indian Punjab) vs Mohabbatein (Generic romance), similar to mono-culture vs specific culture statement. It’s part of a broader identity crisis in a sense.
Soap operas are obviously aimed at a female audience. In the US, for example, they are aired in the middle of the day when men are usually at work. Of course, nowadays many women are also working outside the home. So the audience was meant to be housewives who had the TV on while doing other things.
One can make a comparison with “romantasy”–a literary genre that is geared towards women.
For example, “A Court of Thorns and Roses” is one of the most popular romantasy books of recent years. Its audience is mostly young women.
There’s a podcast I listen to called “The Book Club” with Dominic Sandbrook and Tabitha Spence which just did a whole episode on ACOTAR.
On the issue of soaps propagating conservative values: I wrote a whole piece some years ago about the Pakistani drama “Humsafar” (one of the most popular Pakistani dramas in recent years). It’s linked above but I’ll put the link here again:
https://www.brownpundits.com/2026/04/25/humsafar-and-shakespeare/
One thing that I should clarify is that the film industry in Pakistan is not very significant. There are many reasons for this which are beyond the scope of this comment. One of them is the Islamization that Pakistan went through under General Zia. Also, the competition from Bollywood which is far more successful and in a language which is intelligible to most Pakistanis.
So in Pakistan the drama industry is the major outlet for most actors.
Women low-key love abusive behaviour from attractive men. Pretty much all women fantasy porn is about this. (What they don’t love is abusive aggressive behaviour from ugly or poor men)
Since females are the primary target audience of these dramas, they tend to show this because that’s what the market demands.
I would not read too much into this.
What’s more concering was that foreign funded NGOs were trying implement anti-family messaging in the last 15 years – and that messaging has suddenly dried up after their funding dried up.
These comments are getting a bit absurd ..
I don’t agree that “women love abusive behavior”.
It is dramas such as this that normalize abuse. This is similar to those Indian movies from a few decades ago that showed the hero stalking a woman or “eve teasing” only for her to fall in love with him. This was seen in the West as sexual harassment, while Indians thought it was romantic.
You are right to the extent that there is a trope that is common cross-culturally of women falling in love with a dangerous man and though their love fixing the man. Psychologists refer to this as the “beauty and the beast” trope.
Yes of course there is a serious discussion to be had about dark erotic subtexts but these sort of “generalised” comments are frankly offensive.
But it also speaks to how important it is have diverse voices at BP..
I think Q represents a quite common strand of thinking in Pakistan. Even many women aren’t all that bothered by misogyny in dramas. Because these shows clearly have an audience. And it is true that many of those shows are written by women and based on novels written by women.
But I don’t want to make this sound like a uniquely Pakistani problem. We can look at classic works of English literature such as “Wuthering Heights”. This book is often thought of as a romance between Heathcliff and Cathy. But when you actually read the book you find out that Heathcliff is a horrible person. He literally hangs a dog. He kidnaps young Cathy and forces her to marry his son etc. His treatment of his own wife Isabella (Cathy’s sister-in-law) is appalling.
Yet he is considered the embodiment of the romantic hero. So there is definitely something to the “beauty and the beast” trope.
Regency & Victorian Britain is like modern-day Pakistan?
I wouldn’t go that far.
My point was that even classic literature features this “Beauty and the Beast” trope. Pakistani dramas are certainly not great art at the level of “Wuthering Heights”.
We can see the popularity of things like “50 Shades of Gray”. Q is not entirely wrong though I don’t agree with his views.
Wuthering Heights was written by a female.
I’m sorry. What exactly is your point?
“Wuthering Heights” is a classic of English Literature. It is still being read 200 years after it was written. It is a classic of the Gothic genre.
If you are arguing that Charlotte and Emily Bronte did a lot to introduce the “Byronic Hero” that went on to influence later romance novel tropes then yes this is a correct argument.
Here’s a whole piece I wrote about “Wuthering Heights”
https://kabiraltaf.substack.com/p/why-should-one-study-literature-the
“50 Shades of Grey” was also written by a “female” but we can’t really compare trashy fiction to real Literature like “Wuthering Heights”–Sorry I am a snob when it comes to Literature. That’s what having a degree in the thing will do to you.
Is BP ready to take a side quest to the the manosphere?? 😆
I don’t agree with his comment. I thought about not publishing it but I erred on the side of freedom of speech. It doesn’t cross my red lines.
In Pakistan, there have continued to be debates in recent years about the toxic masculinity expressed in our dramas and the misogynistic views of some people in the industry–including the screenwriter Khalil-ur-Rehman Qamar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalil-ur-Rehman_Qamar
One of my family friends is Bee Gul, who is a famous Pakistani screenwriter. She would definitely qualify as “feminist’ under Q’s definition.
Q is right that misogyny unfortunately does sell in Pakistan.
Yes thankfully your thread your rules 🙂
Touche
yeah lets leave out the manosphere vs feminosphere arguments.
[…] S Qureishi on Indians and Pakistani dramas […]
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I have put this clip as Pakistani drama!!
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/18trsYojEQ/
It is a depressing day for those who are against Hindu nationalism.
Bengal was one of the last regions that was anti BJP.
Muslim nationalism this miraculous event that splintered the Indian Subcontinent?
Hindu nationalism is of course an unspeakable evil..
We’ve gone over this a million times.
The Muslim-majority parts of the colony had the right to opt out of a Hindu-majority nation state. This is simply the right of self-determination.
India is a constitutionally secular state. Hindu nationalists are OK with making minorities into second-class citizens.
Whatever the problems with Mamta Banerjee, she was in the forefront of the resistance to this. West Bengal is about 27% Muslim.