Yehi tou lagta hai Steve Hanke babu ko, who took to Twitter to share a video of smoke rising from a building, claiming that it was a nuclear power plant in Karachi, and then proceeded to blame authorities for not taking the matter seriously.
We would also like to point out that Steve Hank is a professor of Economics at the very prestigious John Hopkins. A professor of his stature is expected to share only the truth.
Except, its not true. The video, from 12th June, is not of a nuclear power plant blast but its from a fire at a grid station in DHA, which left residents without light for hours.
But if Pakistanis are good at anything, it is making memes to roast others. And we got some hilarious responses.
⚠️ LATEST UPDATE This explosion is now beyond control. The authorities have officially given up after Dr. Shahid Masood and Commander Safeguard weren’t able to help either. The local population has started evacuating towards safer locations using these single-passenger planes. https://t.co/fcRY2FY6q8pic.twitter.com/rndHDi5kec
As expected, local authorities in Pakistan have been slow to report on a Godzilla sighting that is the main cause of storm in the Arabian sea near Karachi. WATCH: https://t.co/cnBdJrxnWnpic.twitter.com/iCcFuEm0Iv
Actor Adnan Siddiqui has commented about Bollywood’s misrepresentation of Pakistanis in their films. The recent Bollywood movie Mission Majnu became a trolling affair as the film stereotyped Pakistanis.
While many rightly called out the makers of the propaganda film on Twitter, Siddiqui took to Instagram and shared his two cents on the matter. “How much misrepresentation is too much misrepresentation?” he asked his followers on Instagram.
Adding on, the actor, who starred in Bollywood offering Mom, alongside late superstar Sridevi and Sajal Ali, commented, “I mean come on, with all the money you have, hire some good researchers to do homework on us. Or allow me to help. Make sure to take notes—no, we don’t wear skull caps, surma, tawiz; no, we don’t ask janab about their mijaz; no, we don’t go around throwing adaab.”
Siddiqui went on to comment, “There’s so much in Mission Majnu that’s distasteful and factually incorrect. The hero’s saviour complex would’ve been accentuated more if the villain was shown at par. A weak antagonist embellishes an even weaker protagonist.”
He concluded, “Poor story, poorer execution, poorest research. Next time, come and visit us. We are good hosts. Will show you how we look like, dress up and live.”
Malhotra previously addressed stereotyping of Pakistanis and India’s knack for making films on this side of the border. When asked if his character in the film helps perpetuate stereotypes of Pakistanis in Hindi films, the actor told Film Companion, “We have consciously made an effort in the writing that it is never to take on a particular community. I recently did a film called Shershaah, which is based on India and Pakistan, and the battle that we had, which was documented.”
He added, “Once you see the film, consciously we never really concentrated, barring maybe four scenes on the other side (Pakistan), it was purely about this side (India) and this man’s journey, (Army captain) captain Vikram Batra sacrificing his life… So there is the same conscious effort (with Mission Majnu), and there is no personal animosity with anyone, these are just documented historical points, which we will never get complete facts of, so for that, you need to establish possibly certain characters in an x amount of time.”
The actor further responded about certain scenes in the trailer and added, “And the shots they are referring to (from the trailer) are meant to be tongue-in-cheek in the film. So, I think it will be a fair dialogue once everyone sees the film… it is never about a community or taking a dig, which digresses from the film… a religion or a community is never an issue in the film.”
There has been a steady rise in Bollywood film productions which often overtly or covertly portray an anti-Pakistan sentiment. Malhotra’s Mission Majnu isn’t Bollywood’s first attempt at wrongly depicting Pakistan and history. His Student of the Year co-star, Alia Bhatt, too, essayed a spy in the 2018 film, Raazi. One such film released in 2021, Bhuj: The Pride of India, which stars Ajay Devgan in the lead role, ironically features a rendition of Madam Noor Jehan’s iconic song Zaalima CocaCola.
Films portraying an anti-Pakistan narrative gained traction after the Uri attacks in 2016. Uri: The Surgical Strike, starring Vicky Kaushal was one of the first military-inspired films showing Pakistan in a negative light. While Akshay Kumar’s spy thriller Bell Bottom, inspired by the hijackings of Indian Airline flights in the 80s, was banned from screening in KSA, Kuwait and Qatar. The countries in question deemed the film to be unfit for exhibition.
As if pretending we greet everybody with ‘adaab’ and wear kajal around our eyes wasn’t enough, now Bollywood can’t even get a simple Urdu text typed properly.
Twitter was in fits after the trailer for ‘Mission Majnu’ releasedand we got some *chef’s kiss* memes from our twitter users
But now, eagle-eyed netizens have found another hilarious reason to keep mocking the film and the abysmal representation it offers of Muslims. In a viral post by twitter user @karakmufti, a scene from the movie shows a sign in a masjid where the Urdu text is quite absurd.
Ok, so my Urdu isn’t great, but I feel like “کیپ یور شوس حری” is not a correct translation of “keep your shoes here”. pic.twitter.com/FWmiUoTJ5j
This led to users trolling the film all over again, like comedian Jeremy McLellan sharing that the makers of the film had relied on Google Translate for the Urdu text.
There were many other hilarious reactions to this translation error that are just too brilliant to miss out. For instance, another translation error found in the movie.
This is just pure laziness on part of the production team. India has a large Urdu speaking population and they couldn’t find one Urdu speaker to do production design for them? @NetflixIndia really poor effort. https://t.co/5QXZxOlLW8
It’s 2023 but Bollywood can’t seem to get over its obsession of portraying lame and rather bizarre stereotypes about Pakistanis in its movies.
Netfilx released the official trailer for Mission Majnu that features Sidharth Malhotra as an Indian spy on a covert operation to expose nuclear weapons in the heart of Pakistan that India must “neutralise”. Everything was fine till Malhotra dresses up like a ‘Muslim Pakistani’. So Indian filmmakers have a starter pack for actors playing the roles of Muslims and Pakistanis. A man with kohl-rimmed eyes who spits adaab in every sentence, wearing a namaz ki topi [skullcap] and something green in the background somewhere to show that this is a Muslim person or from the Muslim community. Women would be shown wearing lehnga aur ghagra, with lots of bangles, and yes the tradition of adaab continues for them too. However, the reality is far different.
The matter of the fact is that Bollywood has been successfully fooling the world by portraying and creating this image to represent Pakistanis. One of the leading film industries in the world has been adamantly bent on trying to portray and represent Pakistanis as a threat. Due to this portrayal, for the longest time people believed it to be true when it comes to Pakistan.
Bollywood has been making bad anti-Pakistan propaganda for years now but a little research would tell them that no, Pakistanis do not look, wear or talk like they depict in their movies. From Veer-Zaara in 2004 to Mission Majnu in 2023, Bollywood’s depiction of Pakistan and Pakistani lifestyle has been completely wrong. No, we don’t live in 19th century Lucknow. Lahore, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Karachi, Peshawar, Quetta and other cities of Pakistan don’t have men with kajal going adaab-adaab or roaming around in sherwanis as if it’s a norm.
What is even more appalling is to witness that in India, most leading Bollywood actors are Muslims, some originating from Pakistan and yet they don’t wear and look like anything Bollywood so often depicts Muslims, be they in India or Pakistan.
We hope that for once Bollywood comes out of its propagandist thinking and portrays ‘Pakistani Muslims’ as they are.
