http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/opinion/bollywood-goes-to-war.html 2016-10-13 15:18:10 Bollywood Goes to War Pakistani terrorists hit India. India’s army hits back — and its film industry, too. === The Indian Motion Picture Producers’ Association is an industry group with no standing to speak for anyone but its members. Yet it made itself widely heard recently, and became headline news, when it Its stated goal was to express solidarity for India’s armed forces, which conducted The strikes against Pakistan were met This isn’t the first time terrorists from Pakistan have hit India. In January, Jaish militants And it isn’t the first time I asked T.P. Aggarwal, the president of the producers’ association, how many Pakistanis worked in India’s multibillion-dollar film industry. “Around 12,” he said. This is what happens after years of relentless antagonism between neighbors. Indians get angry at Pakistanis, generically, rather than at Pakistan’s jihadists, its military or its government. And all manner of opportunists ride that jingoistic sentiment. The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena is a right-wing party in Mumbai infamous for using violence to intimidate outsiders — typically poor street vendors and laborers it claims are out to steal jobs from locals. After the Bollywood ban, the party threatened to give Pakistani actors “ At one time, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena stood out for its brutish behavior. Now it is in lockstep with the government: Since the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party came into power in 2014, India has embraced hyper-nationalist rhetoric. While invoking the country’s honor, Indian politicians are pandering to their vote banks, in some cases by indulging their dislike of Muslims. One week after the producers’ call to ban Pakistani actors, a local party in Uttar Pradesh, northern India, Famous actors are easy prey. They are widely adored but also widely envied, and reliant on their audience to make their films a success. Hence, in India at least, they tend to avoid political discourse. In 2015, when the Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan broke the mold to condemn growing At a press conference last month, another film star, Salman Khan, spoke out against the recent ban. A TV anchor at Times Now, India’s version of Fox News, The anchor homed in on Fawad Khan, a Pakistani actor and singer popular in India. After noting that Mr. Khan had issued a statement about a terrorist attack in Peshawar, the anchor asked why Mr. Khan did “not say one word” for the Indian soldiers killed in Uri. The self-defeating nature of these knee-jerk reactions quickly became evident. Just one week after the Bollywood ban, the producers’ association had to beg the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena not to vandalize theaters screening films with Pakistani actors. “It’s the money of Indians that is at stake,” Mr. Aggarwal, the group’s president, pleaded. And though all the bluster is meant to pander to the public, it isn’t even an accurate reflection of middle-class attitudes toward, say, the armed forces. Some fetishize Indian soldiers in Kashmir as “ The disappearance in July of The Indian government’s hypocrisy is starker still. “We are proud of their sacrifices “ ‘Shocked’ is an understatement to describe what we feel,” a top general That’s no Bollywood ending.