Seeking a middle ground

This week, the production team behind the upcoming Bollywood drama, Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (ADHM), met the Mumbai Police commissioner to request improved security arrangements for the release of the film, which has been targeted for including Pakistani actor Fawad Khan in a key role.

The film will release next week, and while a prominent single-screen cinema association covering four states has already announced it would not screen the film in its theatres, Raj Thackeray's Maharashtra Navnirman Sena has said it will target even multiplexes that show the film.

The fault line has sharply divided the film industry - and everyone else. The clamour for banning Pakistani artistes from Bollywood began in the wake of the Uri attacks and grew stronger in the days following the surgical strikes across the border, an event that seems to have rallied national mood against Pakistan.

From Salman Khan to Mahesh Bhatt and Sidharth Malhotra to Priyanka Chopra, a slew of top stars have come out in the film's support. The film, directed by Karan Johar and starring, apart from Khan, Ranbir Kapoor, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Anushka Sharma, is one of this year's biggest releases. In the opposite camp are personalities like Akshay Kumar, Madhur Bhandarkar and, understandably, Ajay Devgn, whose own film, Shivaay, is releasing on the same day as ADHM.

Legible arguments have been made on both sides but in the hysteria occasioned by the surgical strikes, it has been difficult to parse light from heat. While the pro-ADHM camp insists that artistes and artists should not be held hostage to geopolitics, there is certainly an argument for finishing all cultural and sporting ties with Pakistan.

The reasoning that film and music personalities are somehow above the fray may have passed muster in another time but refuses to wash when art as an instrument of bringing the two countries closer has failed. It is worth asking if it ever worked. Doesn't our appreciation for Ghulam Ali and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan have more to do with similarities in culture between India and Pakistan than any attempt to unite the two countries?

That said, an interesting new chapter in the latest contretemps was signalled by film maker Anurag Kashyap who, writing on Twitter this week, asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to apologise for visiting the Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on his birthday last December.

Indeed, this government, buoyed by the personal interest of the prime minister, made huge blunders in its Pakistan policy in the first two years of its tenure. It started on a note of euphoria that seemed oblivious of our historically poisonous relationship, as though Modi's resounding victory had somehow changed the mood within Pakistan's intelligence establishment as well.

It was only after Uri that the narrative altered, and the change has been swift. Addressing a rally this week, Modi likened the surgical strikes to "Israel's exploits". That nation is famously known for ruthlessly going after its enemies, exemplified most starkly in the popular imagination by the systematic elimination of Palestinian terrorists that killed Israel players at the Olympic village in Munich in 1972.

Let it be said that India did nothing even remotely close with the surgical strikes. A comparison could be made if our intelligence took out the likes of Hafiz Saeed and Dawood Ibrahim who live with impunity in Pakistan. But it is instructive of the mood within the government that the prime minister, who speaks with caution since taking the chair, used the analogy.

In this backdrop, it is a legible question whether Johar, who hired Khan to work on his film in those wonder years when Modi and Sharif were bonding over birthday lunches, could have anticipated the renewed hostility between the two countries. It is worth noting that Khan earned national renown in India with shows telecast on Zee's Zindagi channel, which has since decided to suspend all Pakistani programming. Is there a case for retrospectively penalising that channel too? I wouldn't bet on it - Subhash Chandra, who owns Zee, made it to the Rajya Sabha this year with BJP's backing.

Meanwhile, Johar has released a video in which he appeals that his film be allowed to release without incident. He promises not to use Pakistani actors in future productions and points to how banning or boycotting his film will end up affecting the many Indian technicians who have worked on it. Beyond the histrionics, it is important to remember that hundreds of people - not the stars but lay Bollywood folk - depend on the film's success for their livelihood. This is a significant argument, and at this late stage, one that leads to the most satisfactory outcome for everyone involved.

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