Bollywood films in Pakistan: Pari becomes 9th film to be banned in 15 months

Pakistan’s Central Board of Film Censors has banned Anushka Sharma’s horror film Pari from being released in the country as the content of the film was deemed unfit for the country's audience. According to reports, the use of black magic shown in the movie violates the tenets of Islam. “Pari’s script, dialogues and storyline go against our Islamic values. The concepts within Islam have different ideologies about magic. This film stimulates the viewers in favour of black magic and promotes thoughts that are contradictory to our religion,” a CBFC member told The Express Tribune.

With this, Pari becomes the 9th movie to be barred in Pakistan in the last one year. Bollywood used to contribute at least 60 to 70 per cent to the film exhibition business of the country, before a blanket ban was imposed in 2016. Apart from the Central Board of Film Censors, there are provisional boards in Punjab and Sindh. Often movies that the provisional boards have allowed with some cuts get stalled at the central board, revealing a lack of coordination among the three boards.

Here are the movies that were shown a red flag in Pakistan in the last one year for various reasons:

PadMan (February, 2018)

The Akshay Kumar-starrer movie, aimed at creating awareness about menstrual hygiene, was banned as the film was against Pakistan’s “traditions and culture”.

Tiger Zinda Hai (December, 2017)

Though Salman Khan enjoys a huge fan base in Pakistan, his film Tiger Zinda Hai was banned for apparently showing the national security and law enforcement institutions, agencies, individuals in a demeaning manner. Its prequel Ek Tha Tiger (2012) was also not released in Pakistan.

Partition: 1947 (August 2017)

This Gurinder Chadha movie was banned in Pakistan for alleged misrepresentation of Jinnah.

Tubelight (June, 2017)

Salman Khan’s Tubelight was stalled in Pakistan for a different reason altogether. While it was released in India during Eid, the Pakistani distributors were not interested to import Tubelight as the Salman Khan-starrer would have hampered the business of their local Eid releases.

Naam Shabana (March, 2017)

The movie was initially allowed to be released with some mandatory cuts. But after a theatre in Islamabad showed the film without the cuts, the movie was completely banned for there were some references to terrorism.

Jolly LLB 2 (February, 2017)

This was a judicial satire-drama but was stopped in Pakistan as the protagonist, played by Akshay Kumar, was a lawyer who came across a case of an innocent man who was killed and declared a Kahmiri terrorist, while the real person was hiding in Uttar Pradesh.

Raees (January, 2017)

In this film, Shah Rukh Khan played the role of Raees Alam, a Muslim mafia who built an alcohol empire in Gujarat. Though Pakistani actor Mahira Khan was in the movie, it didn’t see the light of day in her country. 

Dangal (December, 2016)

Dangal was not released in Pakistan as the censor board wanted the film-makers to edit out two scenes: one showing the Indian flag and the other with the national anthem. Actor-producer Aamir Khan decided not to release the movie in Pakistan.

After Uri attack, the Indian Motion Picture Producers’ Association took a decision to ban Pakistani actors from working in India. This met a retaliatory move from the theatre chains in Pakistan who decided not to import Indian movies. The ban was lifted in January 2017.

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