As Pakistani artists accuse India of pettiness, cultural isolationism and Islamophobia, they conveniently overlook their own silence on terrorism and alignment with anti-India propaganda.
In a region where every act of statecraft is judged through the twin lenses of security and symbolism, India’s decision to freeze cultural engagements with Pakistani artists is both morally anchored and strategically prudent.
For over a decade, Pakistani actors, singers, and entertainers have posed as neutral artists while operating, in effect, as cultural extensions of a hostile regime. They have shown no solidarity in the wake of terror attacks on Indian soil, routinely amplified Rawalpindi’s anti-India rhetoric during times of crisis, and eagerly monetised India’s vast entertainment platforms to build their fame, all without the burden of reciprocity or accountability.
Such an arrangement was bound to collapse. The turning point came after the April 2025 Pahalgam massacre, where 26 Indian civilians were slaughtered by Pakistani and Pakistan-backed terrorists. In the wake of the attack, India did what any self-respecting democracy would do. It withdrew the welcome mat for those who, while draped in artistic respectability, had long been serving as the cultural mouthpieces of its tormentor.
It had become painfully evident that many high-profile Pakistani entertainers operated less as independent artists and more as cultural emissaries for Islamabad’s official line. In the immediate aftermath of India’s retaliatory strikes following the Pahalgam massacre, both Fawad Khan and Mahira Khan, Pakistani celebrities who owe much of their recognition beyond Lahore and Karachi to Indian audiences, took to social media not to condemn terrorism, but to denounce India’s response.
Words like ‘shameful’ and ‘cowardly’ were hurled at New Delhi. Prayers were offered for ‘their side’, followed by the predictable chants of ‘Pakistan Zindabad’, conspicuously omitting any reference to the 26 innocent Indians butchered by Pakistani terrorists in Pahalgam. And all this while the Pakistani military continued pounding civilians in Poonch and Rajouri with long-range artillery, killing over twenty, injuring more than fifty, and leaving many permanently disabled, including women and children.
Fawad Khan, in particular, chose to grieve selectively, expressing sorrow only for casualties on his own side, while urging India to exercise ‘better sense.’ This was not a call for peace. It was a calculated display of moral selectivity. And from an Indian lens, it reeked of opportunism dressed up as principle.
The pattern is unmistakable. When innocent Indians are killed in terror attacks, Pakistani artists maintain radio silence. But the moment India pushes back diplomatically or militarily, these same voices leap into action, decrying Indian aggression while conveniently ignoring the provocation. For many in India, this confirms what has long been suspected. These figures are not apolitical ambassadors of art, but willing participants in a broader ecosystem that thrives on anti-India sentiment and strategic denial.
The All Indian Cine Workers Association rightly captured this sentiment, calling such behaviour an insult to Indian soldiers and a mockery of national grief. These artists have reaped enormous benefits from Indian platforms, film deals, fanbases and financial gain, but when it matters most, they speak not as global citizens, but as scripted agents of a hostile state. In doing so, they forfeit the credibility that makes cultural exchange possible and expose their real agenda and inherent bias against India.
And let us be honest. Cultural exchange with Pakistan has always been a one-way street, a lopsided arrangement. India giving, Pakistan taking. Pakistani singers have crooned their way into Bollywood’s biggest soundtracks. Pakistani actors have headlined Indian films, earned awards, and built massive fanbases across India. Pakistani dramas have found airtime on Indian television and applause from Indian viewers.
Now flip the lens.
Have Indian artists enjoyed anything close to this level of access in Pakistan? The answer is no. Since the Pulwama terror attack in 2019, Pakistan has enforced a formal ban on Indian films. Indian TV channels such as Star Plus, Zee and Sony remain blacked out across the border. Even during quieter periods, Pakistan has treated Indian cultural content as a threat to its national interest. The hypocrisy is staggering.
Pakistani artists stay conspicuously silent when Indian civilians are killed by their country’s proxies, but the moment India retaliates, they turn into poets of peace. It is an asymmetry that stings and one that Indians are no longer willing to entertain.
Moreover, India’s entertainment industry is one of the largest and most dynamic in the world. It does not need Pakistani talent to sustain its cultural engine or enrich its creative landscape. The same cannot be said for Pakistan, where success stories like Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Atif Aslam, Mahira Khan and Fawad Khan were significantly shaped by their access to Indian audiences. Pakistani music racks up millions of Indian streams. Pakistani serials owe much of their digital afterlife to Indian viewers. But the moment tensions rise, the gratitude vanishes and the script flips to nationalism and victimhood.
And contrary to the convenient fiction being peddled by some Pakistani celebrities, India’s cultural ban is neither an act of state censorship nor an outburst of Hindutva-driven arrogance. It was public sentiment, not political fiat, that demanded the crackdown. In fact, when the ban briefly lapsed earlier this week due to a bureaucratic oversight, the government found itself on the back foot as a tidal wave of public outrage erupted across the country.
Hashtags trended. Veterans’ groups, civil society collectives and thousands of ordinary citizens raised their voice in unison. The backlash was so intense that the government had no choice but to issue fresh orders within 24 hours to reinstate the ban and close the procedural loophole. That was not the state acting on impulse. It was the state responding to a popular mandate.
Pakistani artists, when confronted with this fact, chose to gaslight rather than introspect. Instead of acknowledging their own silence on terrorism or complicity in narrative warfare, they began throwing around rhetorical smokescreens, accusing India of state-sponsored Islamophobia, as though the entire ban was driven by religious prejudice rather than national pain.
The irony is staggering. A country like Pakistan, known globally for harbouring UN-sanctioned terrorists and enabling jihadist proxy groups, calling anyone else Islamophobic is not just absurd, it is darkly comic. If anything, Pakistan has done more to embarrass the faith it claims to defend than any of its imagined adversaries. Using terror as a tool of statecraft while persecuting its own minorities is hardly a position from which one can preach moral superiority.
India is home to more Muslims than Pakistan. If this country were truly Islamophobic, Pakistani celebrities like Mahira Khan, Atif Aslam and Fawad Khan would not be household names across Indian cities. They would not have built their global careers on the back of Bollywood collaborations and Indian fanbases. Nobody in Delhi is fuming in a cold conference room, furiously scribbling names of Pakistani singers onto blacklists. No one in South Block is losing sleep over a Pakistani drama going viral on YouTube. This whole narrative is fiction.
But fiction is familiar terrain for Pakistan’s cultural establishment. Former PAF fighter pilot Faisal Mumtaz Rao’s wife, TV presenter Nadia Khan, went on air claiming that India had staged the Pahalgam terror attack just to block Pakistani shows, which, according to her, had become too popular with Indian audiences, causing discomfort in New Delhi.
In the same breath, she made sexually suggestive remarks about the Indian Prime Minister on national television, only to be awarded days later by the Pakistan Armed Forces for demonstrating extraordinary patriotism throughout Operation Sindoor. If this is the face of Pakistan’s cultural diplomacy, it explains precisely why the Indian public no longer wants any part of it.
There was once a time when it was possible to argue that art should transcend politics. That time has passed.
Pakistan’s entertainment industry has allowed itself to serve as a cultural extension of the state’s soft power apparatus. This is a regime that offers sanctuary to UN-designated terrorists and wages hybrid warfare as a matter of policy. When such a state exports artists to Indian platforms without a shred of reciprocity or remorse, it is called cultural intrusion, not cultural exchange.
And India is under no obligation to underwrite that intrusion. Not morally. Not politically. Not economically.
And India has lost nothing by shutting its doors to so-called Pakistani artists. Not cultural prestige. Not creative depth. And certainly not revenue. Bollywood continues to thrive. Indian audiences still enjoy world-class music, cinema and digital content without needing cultural imports from across the border.
It is Pakistan that has forfeited access to its largest entertainment market and biggest soft-power amplifier. Its artists have lost both visibility and credibility.
India, meanwhile, has gained something far more valuable: clarity.
Clarity that peace cannot be pursued through playlists. That national grief outweighs box-office chemistry. That if a neighbour uses art as a smokescreen to launder aggression, there is no obligation to entertain the farce.
India is simply refusing to legitimise those who stay silent on terrorism yet posture as peace ambassadors on Instagram. Giving them space on Indian platforms while their country harbours those who murder Indian civilians is not generosity, it is complicity in narrative warfare, a self-inflicted wound.
Pakistani artists now crying foul would do well to examine their own record. This fallout was not caused by Indian hostility. It was precipitated by Pakistani hubris. Their refusal to condemn terror. Their willingness to parrot state propaganda. Their mistaken belief that Indian goodwill was permanent and unconditional.
India will no longer allow its screens, its stages or its sentiment to be weaponised in a cross-border information war. If Pakistani artists want Indian platforms, they must respect Indian pain. And if they want Indian audiences, they must acknowledge Indian loss.
This ban is not a pause. It is a posture. A declaration that India’s cultural space is no longer available for rent to apologists of terror.
Until change comes not through lyrics but through leadership and accountability, this ban will hold as a firewall between propaganda and public trust.
Because in today’s India, hostility and hospitality cannot go hand in hand.
(Author can be reached at: [email protected])
