Category: RecoveringNewsJunkie

Bollywood calling Pakistan. Again.

So a new trailer for a hindi acshun phillum dropped recently, and its another one of those that throws around the ‘based on true events’ tag for additional street cred. This time around though, there’s a bit of a twist. The plot apparently centers around the Lyari Gang wars in Karachi, with some additional fictional tempering of course.


Unsurprisingly, this will elicit a whole gamut of reactions from either side of the Radcliffe line, especially due west. The preview is unusually long, and somewhat unsurprisingly filled with shocking violence – the recent success of movies like Kill and Animal were bound to result in a race to ever-increasingly levels of ‘ketchup’ and fireworks. But apart from that, at least to me, didn’t seem very novel or interesting. I am mildly curious about the world building that the movie manages to pull off.

Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Netflix series Heeramandi is another example of this phenomenon. Where the Indian movie industry is accused of ‘cultural appropriation’ and telling a story that is “Pakistani, and not Indian”. With that one, as much as I am… unimpressed with Bhansali’s output – I view him more as a choreographer, less of a filmmaker, one who is far more successful at spectacle, not so much with cinema – I still think that the stories of the subcontinent should be accessible to all. Lahore after all, especially pre-partition Lahore is as much a legacy of Ganga Ram as it is of the Mughal Empire, or the Sikh, for that matter.

This time around however, the setting isn’t historical or pre-partition. Is there an argument to be made that this is “cultural appropriation”?

For me, more than anything, its yet another missed opportunity. In an alternate timeline, a movie like this would have been a golden opportunity for Pakistani actors to get visibility on a much larger Indian stage, and the quality of the output could have been immeasurably raised with behind-the-scenes contributions – production design, location and language expertise, to name a few.

Somewhere down the line, if things finally start reverting to ‘normal’, perhaps future projects like these will incorporate Pakistani participation and be better for it.



Does India need more Radhakrishnans? Is it getting them?

This opinion piece on the Print’s website lays out a familiar argument about shifting academic focus towards Indic heritage against excessive hagiographic obeisance at the altars of ‘western’ scholarship. But apart from the standard diatribes, the name Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan jumped out for me.

Where are the Radhakrishnans of our time?

The growing Pakistan-Afghan Conflict. What next?

Most of us keeping up with news from the sub-continent are aware by now of the recent escalation in the long-simmering friction between Pakistan and Afghanistan.  The historical ‘divide’ regarding the Durand Line is something that never really went away as much as the Pakistani state attempted to pretend that its a fait accompli.  And now with the Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan managing to to challenge the Pakistani state’s writ, and inflicting ever increasing costs on PakMil, the threats to punish Afghanistan further are flowing thick and fast from Islamabad.

Pakistan, obviously enjoys a military supremacy over Afghanistan in multiple orders of magnitude. But as we have seen in Ukraine, or even in Afghanistan over the last few decades, the underdog can inflict some serious costs. And keep it going.

Question is, where does Pakistan go from here? With the growing reported rapprochement between the Taliban and New Delhi, there’s every chance that the Afghan air defenses may be quickly ramped up from non-existent, to at least some level of deterrent.  Rumors are rife on the internet about Indian supply planes landing at Bagram.  And simply bombing Afghan border posts has diminishing returns.  The Taliban do not appear to be in any conciliatory mood.

In many ways, this has many parallels to India’s experience with Pakistan backed jihadi groups in the 30+ years starting from the late 1980s.  Its almost impossible to deter and defend against insurgency in mountainous terrain.  Especially when the insurgents find succor in the local populace.

So, what next for “Khyber Pakhtunkhwa” and Pakistan? How realistic is the possibility that the Pakistani military will be able to succeed “this time” when it has already ‘failed’ a few times post-9/11, and had to make repeated ‘peace’ deals with the TTP or its predecessors in the past?

The shooting war seems to have gone a bit quiet for now, but the war of words is quickly escalating.  It seems like the Taliban are being ‘good students’ of the ISI and have adopted the tactic of releasing catchy music videos to make propaganda points.

Brown Pundits