Overreacting to Saif Ali Khan

The recent comments by Saif Ali Khan on Pakistan have led to a barrage of insults and tirades against him, with people attempting to ban him and his films for life, in Pakistan. A source privy to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority said: “He will now, in essence, become a phantom… Already there is a movement from the public itself to ban commercials that have him as the star. So it’s not something that people will mind us doing”. An uncouth person even made a sexist video berating him, which went viral. So why such a strong reaction?

Pakistan is not a country well liked in India, and sadly in most of the world these days. There are Hindu extremists in India who bad-mouth Pakistan every single day, and some of them are even in power now, at the centre and some of the states. If one gave so much importance to their tirades against our country then we would not have airtime for anything else. Remember Bal Thackery? We never gave him or people of his ilk that much airtime, so why give Saif — an actor who was commenting on a ban being imposed on his film — such importance?

One reason, I think, is the fact that Saif Ali Khan is a Muslim and Pakistanis cannot tolerate such things from an Indian Muslim. Saif Ali Khan, or Nawab (even His Highness Nawab), is a scion of both the Pataudi and Bhopal royal houses. He is successful at what he does, which shows that Indian Muslims can also make it in India, and Pakistanis cannot tolerate that. Even after nearly 70 years of independence, Pakistanis get conscious when an Indian Muslim says anything about them, and think that the success of an Indian Muslim somehow negates or takes away from their existence. This outlook is obviously ridiculous and should be changed.

Pakistan is there to stay and whatever an Indian Muslim says or does should not create an existential crisis. There are successful Muslims in India just as there are successful Muslims in Pakistan, there are poor and downtrodden Muslims in India and there are poor and downtrodden Muslims in Pakistan (mind you, at least 30 per cent of Pakistan — 97 per cent Muslims, live in extreme poverty). Similarly, Hindus kill Muslims in India, and Muslims kill Muslims in Pakistan, but both ways people get killed in riots, bombs and random attacks. This is how the world is, and we should try and improve our own lot before getting into a fix about what is happening elsewhere.

Let us look at what exactly happened in this case: Kabir Khan, the director of the famed Bajrangi Bhaijaan, which showed Pakistan in a good light, made another movie, Phantom, which showed that certain men in Pakistan carried out the 26/11 attacks in Bombay. Both are works of fiction. Just as people or the government of India did not accept that Kashmir was in Pakistan because of Bajrangi Bhaijaan, millions would not have come out on the street demanding covert operations like that in Phantom. Producers, directors and actors make films mostly for commercial success and tap into whatever prejudices the public have, yet films are works of fiction and most people take them as such. What I find even more amusing is the fact that even after the ‘controversialisation’ of Phantom it still did not do well in India — just imagine how badly it would have fared if there would have been no such noise about it. It would have come and gone.

India has to also grow up, but let me leave it to them. As a Pakistani, let me just note that we should stop getting tensed up by the success of Indian Muslims and by their comments. We are two different countries, and let us behave as such.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 5^th, 2015.

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