Bhansali’s digital show under fire in Pakistan

Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s upcoming web series, Heeramandi, based on Lahore’s red-light district, has created an uproar in Pakistan. The filmmaker is facing the heat for not being “his story to tell”. Pakistani actor Ushna Shah is the latest to express her ire at Heeramandi being made by “an Indian filmmaker.” She tweeted, “Culture of collaboration is one thing but this is appropriation. Mimicking ours will make the project lose authenticity. India has a plethora of rich culture and history to film, this isn’t theirs to make.” Bhansali’s dream project, which drops on Netflix, has been in the planning for 14 years. It dwells upon the lives of courtesans in the pre-Partition era. Shah added, “Not a single Netflix original has been made by Pakistan. Heeramandi was what is present-day inner-city Lahore. We needed this... of course, it was all India once but if the little history that leans towards Pakistani culture/language/city is commissioned to India, what historical film will Pakistan make?” Bhansali, who considers the project an important milestone in his journey as a filmmaker, sparked a social media debate across the border after the show was announced in August. “This [Heeramandi] is in Lahore but it is being produced by Indians. Then we will criticise how they showed a false narrative. God knows when we will tell our stories,” writer-actor Yasir Hussain said in his Instagram story. Actor Mansha Pasha earlier expressed her sadness and wrote that “because in Pakistan a fictional narrative is often censored, others take up the stories that are native to our country. In the end, what will be left will be our stories told from someone else’s mouth.”

No collision ahead?