Pakistanis for Peace
An American Pakistani's Hope For Peace in South Asia & Around the World~
Posts Tagged ‘ Bollywood ’
Say Hello! to Pakistan’s Glamour Side
As Reported by The Associated Press
Pakistan is better known for bombs than bombshells, militant compounds than opulent estates. A few enterprising Pakistanis hope to alter that perception with the launch of a local version of the well-known celebrity magazine Hello!.
They plan to profile Pakistan’s rich and famous: the dashing cricket players, voluptuous Bollywood stars and powerful politicians who dominate conversation in the country’s ritziest private clubs and lowliest tea stalls. They also hope to discover musicians, fashion designers and other new talents who have yet to become household names.
“The side of Pakistan that is projected time and time again is negative,” said Zahraa Saifullah, CEO of Hello! Pakistan. “There is a glamorous side of Pakistan, and we want to tap into that.”
But celebrating the lives of Pakistan’s most prosperous citizens is not without its critics in a country where much of the population lives in poverty. Advertising one’s prosperity could be risky as well since kidnappings for ransom are on the rise and attracting attention from Islamist militants can mean death.
Wajahat Khan, a consulting editor at Hello! Pakistan, said they were cognizant of the sensitivity of publishing a glamour magazine in a conservative Muslim country where many people are struggling and planned to be “socially responsible and culturally aware.”
“We are trying to be happy in a war zone,” Khan said Saturday at a news conference with Saifullah and other members of the magazine’s editorial staff. “We are trying to celebrate what is still alive in a difficult country.”
Khan said they would do everything they could to protect the security of the people they profile, but he wasn’t overly concerned.
“I don’t think terrorist networks are going to be reading Hello! anytime soon,” he said.
Pakistan already has a series of local publications that chronicle the lives of the wellheeled in major cities like Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi, especially as they hop between lavish parties. But the producers of Hello! Pakistan hope the magazine’s international brand and greater depth will attract followers.
Hello! was launched in 1988 by the publisher of Spain’s Hola! magazine and is now published in 150 countries. It’s well-known for its extensive coverage of Britain’s royal family and once paid $14 million in a joint deal with People magazine for exclusive pictures of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s newborn twins.
The market for English-language publications in Pakistan is fairly small. Most monthly and weekly magazines sell no more than 3,000 copies, said Khan, the consulting editor. But they hope to tap into the large Pakistani expatriate markets in the United Kingdom and the Middle East as well.
Hello! Pakistan will be published once a month and will cost about $5.50, twice as much as what many poor Pakistanis earn in a day. The first issue will be published in mid-April and will focus on the Pakistani fashion scene.
Saifullah, who grew up watching her mother and grandmother read Hello! as she hopped between London and Karachi, said it took her two years to convince the magazine to publish a local version in Pakistan.
“They were concerned about whether Pakistan was ready for a magazine like this,” she said.
But Saifullah thinks the timing is perfect to showcase Pakistan’s too often hidden treasures, citing Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, who recently became the first Pakistani filmmaker to win an Oscar for a documentary about the plight of female victims of acid attacks in the country.
“We want to tap into the aesthetically beautiful, the athletic, the fashionable,” said Saifullah. “There is so much going on on a daily basis that nobody ever covers. It’s totally unexplored.”
Pakistanis for Peace Editor’s Note– Pakistan is much more than bombings, extremism, and terror. The launch of this magazine in Pakistan not only helps illustrate to the outside world of a modern 21st century Pakistan but also stands as a bulwark to the Talibanization of Pakistan by the extremists.
Welcome To The First Annual Celebrity Religion Swap
By Wajahat Ali for Salon.com
Muslims worldwide groaned upon hearing the news that Oliver Stoneâs son, Sean, converted to Islam while filming a documentary in Iran.
Although we â the collective 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide â assume Sean Stone is a fine, upstanding man and sincerely wish him spiritual contentment, we earnestly ask Allah why Islam only attracts controversial celebs (in this case, the son of a controversial celeb) who further tarnish our already toxic brand name?
We plead to the heavens for an answer as to why he converted in Iran, of all places, which is currently the most feared and loathed country in America and about as popular as herpes.
We have patiently endured, oh, Allah.
We miraculously survived Mike Tyson, who converted to Islam while incarcerated, and then angrily threatened Lennox Lewis in an infamous interview: âI want your heart. I will eat his children. Praise be to Allah.â
Awesome.
Islam has the lowest favorability rating of any religion in America. If Islam were a world economy, it would be Greece. If it were a professional athlete, it would be San Francisco 49ers punt returner Kyle Williams, who muffed two critical punts, which helped the New York Giants reach the Super Bowl. If Islam went to the prom, it would be the ugly girl with freckles and an overbite standing in the corner with a bucket of pigâs blood teetering precariously over its head. If Islam were a Republican presidential candidate, it would be Newt Gingrich.
A diverse jirga of American Muslim leaders decided âenough was enoughâ and held an emergency meeting at Lowesâ Home Improvement store in Dearborn, Mich., to strategize how to bolster Islamâs faltering image.
A consensus emerged that we needed to draft popular, mainstream celebrities whose successful addition to our starting lineup would boost our international brand name. After all, 1,400 years of civilization and the religious practices of 1.5 billion solely rest on the tanned shoulders of the rich, famous and beautiful.
Inspired by comedian Dave Chappelle, one of the few Muslim converts who could be considered a net gain, the Muslims held a âReligious Draftâ this week, inviting major religions to participate on hallowed ground: McDonaldâs.
The following is a summary of the proceedings.
THE FIRST ROUND PICK
Since it was universally accepted Islam was the 2011 Indianapolis Colts of world religions, they had first pick.
Predictably, the Muslims drafted free agent Liam Neeson, who recently said, âThere are 4,000 mosques in [Istanbul]. Some are just stunning and it really makes me think about becoming a Muslim.â The Irish actor is experiencing a pop cultural rebirth as the 21st century embodiment of uncompromising, kick-ass masculinity and sage paternalism. On behalf of Muslims, he took revenge against France, which recently caved into hysteria and banned the burqa. Neeson single-handedly destroyed the entire country with his bare fists in the blockbuster action film âTaken.â Muslims believe Neeson will help rebrand them as Jedi Knights, due to his portrayal of Jedi Qui-Gon in âStar Wars: The Phantom Menace,â and replace their current image as Dark Lords of the Sith.
Rumors circulated that many Evangelical Christians felt slighted by this pick since Muslims stole their digital Avatar of Jesus: Neeson voices âAslan the Lionâ from the âNarniaâ movies.
The rest of the dayâs picks were organized according to different types of celebrity.
ATHLETES
In a surprise move, the Buddhists requested Mike Tyson from the Muslims. Exhausted from voluntarily suffering for the past 2,500 years, the Buddhists decided Tysonâs crushing right uppercut could âreally eff up China.â
In turn, the Buddhists decided to offer the Beastie Boys â the aging, versatile, hip-hop trio from Brooklyn â sensing they peaked with their 1998 âHello Nastyâ album. The Muslims accepted, acknowledging the songs âSabotageâ and âShake Your Rumpâ as perennial favorites in Egypt and Lebanon.
The Buddhists selflessly threw in Richard Gere and DVD copies of âAmerican Gigoloâ to sweeten the deal.
The Jews intervened and said they wanted the Beastie Boys back on their team. They offered the Muslims Ben Roethlisberger, two-time Super Bowl champion quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Having read about Big Benâs dubious history of sexual impropriety, the Muslims passed, but decided to donate Mike D of the Beastie Boys to the Jews as a truce offering. Allegedly, the Muslims could never forgive Mike D for the horribly weak rhyme âEverybody rappinâ like itâs a commercial, acting like life is a big commercialâ on the song âPass the Mic.â
The Jews accepted the offer.
The Muslims, feeling emboldened, made an ambitious pitch to the Christians for Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow, who âjust wins.â
Muslims offered former NBA all-star Shaquille OâNeal, who fell from their graces after he acted as a giant genie in the box-office bomb âKazaam.â They also threw in Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, the controversial Denver Nuggets star who converted to Islam and refused to stand for âThe Star-Spangled Bannerâ before games. The Christians were initially enticed, seeing this as a perfect âborn-againâ moment, but they passed.
The Muslims went aggressive and promised they wouldnât supplant the Constitution with Shariah and replace the White House with minarets unless Tebow and Mel Gibson crossed over.
The Christians, anxious to excommunicate Gibson, agreed. For the 2012 NFL season, Tebowing will now consist of prostrating and praising Allah after every touchdown. The Christians asked the Muslims to preserve Tebowâs chastity and not introduce him to Miss USA Rima Fakih or hot Arab women from the reality TV show âAll-American Muslimâ; the Muslims said theyâd try, but they promised nothing.
COMEDIANS
The Jews made a play for comedian Dave Chappelle, a Muslim, citing his hit series on Comedy Central âChappelleâs Showâ as a creative juggernaut that still influences the masses â especially several rabbis, who apparently love saying, âIâm Rick James, bitch!â after performing circumcisions.
The Muslims immediately rejected the offer, saying Chappelle is perhaps the only living proof that Muslims can be intentionally funny.
Instead, they offered Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as an example of an unintentional comedian and provocateur in exchange for Israel cooling down its dangerous rhetoric of a preemptive strike on Iran.
Furthermore, the Muslims offered the newly acquired Mel Gibson straight up for Jerry Seinfeld.
The Mormons tried to intercept Seinfeld by playing one of their highest cards: âNapoleon Dynamiteâ actor Jon Heder. The Jews pretended not to hear this mockery and allowed the Mormons to slink away with some shred of remaining dignity.
The Jews finalized a deal with the Muslims and rumors have circulated since that Mel and Ahmadinejad are under house arrest in Tel Aviv, forced to watch âThe Chosenâ and âFiddler on the Roofâ on repeat while listening to Jerry Lewis perform comedy.
MUSICIANS
Sensing friendly relations, the Jews humbly approached the Muslims for rapper Ice Cube, citing his immense street cred and respect from the hip-hop and African-American communities. The Jews conceded the Matisyahu experiment, although initially promising, had failed, as the Hasidic reggae rapper never lived up to his âKing Without a Crownâ potential.
The Muslims mulled it over for a considerable time. The jirga decided they would retain eternal rights to Cubeâs 1993 hit single âIt Was a Good Dayâ from his multi-platinum album âPredator,â but ultimately release him because he inexplicably starred in the awful family comedy âAre We There Yet?â
Muslims in return asked the Jews for Kabbalah-worshipping Madonna, sensing serious comeback potential after her excellent Super Bowl halftime show.
Catholics made a request for multi-talented actor and hip-hop artist Mos Def from the Muslims, who soundly rejected any and all future offers, stating the entirety of the Middle East and North Africa could never bear to part with Defâs song âMs. Fat Booty.â
Instead, Muslims counter-offered with alternative rock artist Everlast, whose 1998 single âWhat Itâs Likeâ has made a surprising comeback on radio stations due to the economic recession. The Catholics still remember Everlast as the lead singer of the hip-hop band House of Pain, who produced the classic party anthem âJump Around,â before his conversion to Islam. The Catholics accepted; South Asian Muslims danced to âJump Aroundâ one last time; and the Muslims in return received Taylor Swift and her legions of pubescent female fans, along with her former boyfriend Taylor Lautner, who played the ethnic werewolf in the âTwilightâ movies.
The Muslims had finally secured their most promising young-adult celebrity.
POLITICIANS
The Mormons halfheartedly offered Mitt Romney. The Evangelicals promised Michele Bachmann and her lifetime supply of blinks. The Catholics, out of sheer desperation and embarrassment, bartered Newt Gingrich and his third wife, Callista.
The Muslims decided to stick with their boy, Barack Hussein Obama, in hopes of retaining the White House in 2012.
MISCELLANEOUS
Muslims threw a Hail Mary and asked fundamentalist Christians for Chuck Norris, who so thoroughly kicked the Middle Eastâs entire ass during the â80s. The Muslims respected Norris for his ability to fire an Uzi, perform a roundhouse kick and wave an American flag at the same time. In return, Muslims offered the infamous WWF wrestler the Iron Sheikh and even agreed to teach the Christians the impregnable camel clutch. Norris, humbled by the offer, respectfully declined, and admitted that although he enjoyed killing hordes of fictional Arabs in jingoistic action movies like âDelta Force,â he currently fancied himself an intellectual and activist committed to exposing the nonexistent threat of Shariah infiltrating America. The Muslims were saddened, but collectively agreed to watch Norris in the summer action film âExpendables 2.â
The Hindus decided to play their strongest card, actress Julia Roberts, and made a request for journalist Lauren Booth, former British Prime Minister Tony Blairâs sister in law, who converted to Islam in 2010. The Hindus saw her as the perfect revenge and giant, henna-painted middle finger to England for the British Empireâs previous colonization and exploitation of Indiaâs resources. The Muslims thought this was reasonable and now the âPretty Womanâ flashes her million-dollar smile behind a burqa.
THE CHOSEN ONE
Finally, the draft ended with all the religions coveting âthe chosen one,â who would single-handedly redeem their public image both at home and abroad.
The Mormons offered former Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, highlighting his excellent Chinese and fine hair. The Muslims initially offered NBA Hall of Famer and current cultural ambassador Kareem Abdul Jabbar. They sweetened the deal and threw in President Obama. The Jews presented Steven Spielberg and his entire film library. The Hindus humbly offered Bollywood actors Amitabh Bachan, Aishwarya Rai and a picture of Gandhi signed by Ben Kingsley. The Buddhists presented Tina Turner, Herbie Hancock and Tiger Woods.
But, it was sadly to no avail.
The Christians and Church of New York decided to keep NBA superstar and New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin. Rumors circulated that they were talking to China about a potential trade to ensure the ambitious superpower does not ask the United States to repay its debt, thus financially crippling and utterly destroying our great nation.
All in all, âit was a good dayâ for the Muslims in the first Religious Draft.
Wajahat Ali is a playwright, attorney, journalist and essayist. His award winning play”The Domestic Crusaders,” was published by McSweeney’s in 2011. He is the lead author of “Fear Inc., Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America.” He is currently writing a pilot for HBO. He is co-editing the anthology “All American: 45 American Men on Being Muslim” published in June 2012. More Wajahat Ali
The Pornification of New India
By Damayanti Datta for India Today
On February 7, three Karnataka ministers were captured on television poring over a phone screen, watching a woman in a petticoat gyrating wildly. They lost their jobs for watching pornography in the sacred precincts of the Legislative Assembly. The incident is a high-profile sample of a definitive reality: porn is pervasive through the Internet across India, easily and freely available, not just to leery politicians but to children and adults in millions of ordinary homes.
It is a sign of the times that the most famous international porn star has Indian roots and was on Indian television. Sunny Leone, 30, appeared on the reality show Big Boss 5 and has now launched a clothes-on Bollywood career. Her fake breasts, that won the 2010 fame Award for Favourite Breasts in Los Angeles, have brought her the honour of being named among the 50 Most Desirable Women by the nation’s biggest daily this month.
The organised $12 billion (Rs.60,000 crore) American adult entertainment industry, to which Leone belongs, has bred explicit images beyond the limits of imagination. And they are free. Fuelled by the Internet and facilitated by high-speed data service, pornography, born in dozens of studio lofts around the world, has entered teenagers’ mobile phones with the force and sweep of a dangerous flood. It threatens to swamp conventional notions of morality, raise tensions in bedrooms, lure children into a world they do not understand, and initiate a culture that threatens the mores of family life as we know it.
The writing is on the wall. Google Trends show the search volume index for the word ‘porn’ has doubled in India between 2010 and 2012. With instant Net connectivity and flexible payment options, online porn is increasingly affordable, accessible and acceptable. Seven Indian cities are among the top 10 in the world on porn search, reports Google Trends, 2011. One out of five mobile users in India wants adult content on his 3G-enabled phone, according to an 2011 IMRB Survey. Over 47 per cent students discuss porn every day, says a public school survey by Max Hospital in Delhi. Porn tops the list of cyber crimes in India, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.
Rape, penetration, oral, anal, lesbian, gay or group porn are yesterday’s news. There is now a hectic crossover of porn subcultures on the World Wide Web. Consider MILF (or Mothers I Like to F***) porn. “Check out the most notorious hot, mature moms going crazy and getting f****d by young studs,” invites one of the 40,600,000 MILF websites. “A hot and sexy bride is getting raped brutally,” says a ‘ravished bride’ porn site. There is ‘pregnant porn’ (“Are you ready to see these moms-to-be in action?). There is ‘incest porn’ that welcomes you to sites with “xxx videos full of mother and son, dad and daughter”. Child porn blends with ‘teen porn’, promising “fascinating porn actions starring our young models”.
New jargon and innovative formats, borrowed from foreign cultures, are trendy on the web. For the uninitiated, chikan (“to grope” in Japanese) porn is all about public molestation in trains. ‘Bukkake’ parties involve repeated ejaculation on a woman by several men. Shemale and futanari porn mean “live action” with transsexuals. Anime and manga refer to Japanese formats of sexually-explicit comics and animation. A new focus is the service sector, with “shy massage girls” seducing clients, doctors and “hot babes in nurse uniforms” getting wild. In ‘corporate porn’ “busty secretaries” go down on their knees to pleasure their boss.
Sunny Leone (or Karen Malhotra) takes credit for the ‘pornification’ of India. “My presence on Bigg Boss has empowered a lot of people to be open about their sexuality,” she tells India Today. One of the richest adult actresses in the industry, with her SunLust Pictures in Los Angeles reporting a top line of over $1 million (Rs.5 crore), she is now getting ready to debut in filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt’s Jism 2, playing a professional body double. The most-searched Google celebrity-powered by India, Bangladesh and Pakistan-she has 1,47,326 Twitter followers.
Leone’s success indicates the greater acceptability of porn in daily life. Internet is the new tool, exploding every embarrassing sexual adventure of public personalities and making every lurid detail an item of private consumption. Coming after the midwife Bhanwri Devi’s sex cds with Rajasthan politician Mahipal Maderna in November 2011, public reaction to the Karnataka fiasco has ranged from indignation to amusement, but not shock: if political parties engaged in a morality-in-politics war, social activist Anna Hazare demanded the ministers be sent to jail and media professional Pritish Nandy summed up Bollywood’s reaction by calling them the “3 idiots”.
“A porn star doesn’t automatically mean prostitute,” says Leone, now seeking respectability. She talks about her parents’ initial shock turning into respect, how they taught her to be a “good person”, years of hard work, restrained personal life, professionalism and lack of regrets. Like the girl-next-door, she tweets how she is learning Hindi, cooking sabzi and massaging hair oil. Her endeavour will not be too difficult. Young adults, who grew up with cable TV, DVD players and the Internet, have been exposed to much more adult material than their parents. As filmmaker Pooja Bhatt points out, “Young people don’t respond negatively to Sunny because they have already logged on to her website.”
She is not wrong. Even school students discuss porn. Dr Samir Parikh, chief psychiatrist, Max Healthcare, calls it “risky indulgences”. In a survey on 1,000 children from top public schools in Delhi in 2010, he found 47 per cent boys and 29 per cent girls visiting porn sites and talking about it in school. “I understand sexual inquisitiveness and peer pressure around sexuality, but pornography on the Internet is fake, unreal, often violent and downright perverted,” he says. “Moreover, a new technology in young hands could lead to irresponsible behaviour and ruin their lives.” He obviously has in mind the stream of MMS scandals that have hit campuses across the country since 2004, when two Class XI students of a school in Delhi created a sensation. In many of these cases, either one partner was not aware of being filmed or did not anticipate the videos would get circulated-as in May 2011 when JNU student Janardan Kumar, 22, made a video of the girl he was intimate with and used it to blackmail her after being rejected.
Campus porn is a thriving subterranean culture. Try talking to students in various campuses of Delhi: “Have you ever heard of MMS videos of students being circulated on the campus?”
Diksha Singh, 20: “Every couple of months there is a fresh case. It’s so common, I don’t even blink.”
Raghav Verma, 19: “All the time. It’s shocking to see a classmate’s intimate details on video camera.”
Mehak Suri, 18: “My ex-boyfriend tried that with me, and when it didn’t work he sent me threatening emails and messages.”
Amaira Kapoor, 20: “You will be surprised to know how many cases go unreported and unaccounted for.”
Sakshi Wakhlu, 21: “A year ago, one girl got high, went with a group of boys and had sex with them. The men came back and talked.”
The arrival of smartphones is changing the country’s porn landscape further. India has the lowest penetration of smartphones, 10 per cent, among the youth globally. But with email, social networking, chatting, messaging and gaming, it is a device every youth craves for. And now there are even porn applications. Imagine a ‘pocket’ girlfriend or boyfriend, who can strip, talk dirty, make sexual noises. “These are some of the ‘apps’ that can be downloaded on smartphones,” says Pranesh Prakash, programme manager with Bangalore-based think-tank Centre for Internet and Society. “App download data shows the popularity of sex-themed apps on smartphones, apart from the adults-only stores,” he says. Age restrictions for applications? Mostly a pop-up asking if one is over 17. With over 50 per cent of all Internet users in the country accessing the web via mobile phones already, as estimated by TRAI, smartphones are the future of anytime-anywhere porn.
The threshold of what can be called ‘pornography’ is shifting. Mainstream and hardcore entertainment are coming closer. The Dirty Picture, biopic of south siren Silk Smitha, raked in Rs.50 crore in its very first week in December 2011, with its noisy orgasms, titillating cleavage and fiery dialogues. It’s also hard to draw the line between porn and art in raunchy item numbers, from Sheila ki Jawani to Munni Badnam Hui. “What heroines do in films today is what vamps did yesterday,” says filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt. Some item numbers are more obscene than nudity, he feels. “People tell me, how can someone who made Saaransh, Arth and Zakhm, make films like Jism and Murder” he adds. “I say, get off the high horse.”
Kolkata certainly is getting off the high horse. A city with the least taste for pornography, going by India Today Sex Surveys, is also one of the top seekers of porn online, reports Google Trends. Leone’s CDs are bestsellers here. Teenage boys creep up and ask, “Sunny Leone ka CD chahiye?” (Want Sunny Leone’s CDs?), at Chandni Chowk market in central Kolkata, the city’s piracy hub. Step inside the dingy alleys between shops selling electronic goods, and piles of pirated blue film come out of hiding-Rs.120 for just a CD and Rs.250 for one with Leone on the cover. Ask too many questions and they show you the door. The police are their friends, although motorcycles stand ready for sudden crackdowns. “Sunny’s CD is selling like hot cakes, 200 a day,” says one. Leone is not pleased. “If you are stealing my movies in Kolkata, that is flipping horrible,” she has tweeted. But who cares? A 33-year-old customer puts away her CD in his plastic bag with quiet satisfaction. “I will have to watch when the wife is not looking,” he grins.
If a married man watches porn,is it considered cheating??
My husband secretly watches porn. Why are men like this? He knows I hate porn.
My husband watches porn alone. He refuses to watch it with me.
My husband watches porn very often. Should I be worried?
I feel insulted whenever my boyfriend watches porn.
There are 2,690,000 such postings on Google, from wives and girlfriends globally, on a range of sites on the web-health, marriage, empowerment, agony.
Watching porn alone is a rising trend among men, thanks to the Internet. Check out India Today Sex Surveys: in 2009, with video as the most popular porn format, just 10 per cent men out of 2,661 watched porn alone. This year, with smarter access and gadgets, it zoomed to 44 per cent. “It is usually a sign of cybersex addiction,” says Dr Vijay Nagaswami, Chennai-based expert on sexual psychotherapy. “Compulsive pornwatchers often become dysfunctional. They stay up late for online porn to get active on instant messengers, webcams, demand more private time, neglect family, work and normal sexual activity.”
Even five years back, it was difficult to get locals to dub foreign porn films in Gujarati. But now, mobile shop owners in Ahmedabad do brisk business in porn, supplying primarily to youngsters. They download content on hard discs and then transfer those to the memory cards of eager youngsters-Rs.100 to Rs.200 for a 30-minute film. “It’s good business. Sometimes I get more than six customers, all boys,” says Rajesh Patel, a porn-provider.
It’s good business in Chennai, too. In a small shop opposite the high court in Burma Bazaar, the hub of pirated movies in Chennai, Ramu is doing his puja. He throws flowers at the gods, and looks at his customer. “English, Tamil also.” His voice goes an octave lower, “Triple.” Who cares for storylines? Many of these films are shot in the city or taken off the Net. Ramu sells at least 100 discs a day, mostly to distributors. The CDs are mostly of Indian couples having sex, sometimes verging on rape. “This business can’t be hit by recession,” Ramu says. “People will always buy porn.”
The buzz is, although the Karnataka ministers claimed they were watching clips of a real-life gang-rape at a rave party, they were either watching Indonesian hardcore ‘abik’ porn or model Poonam Pandey’s YouTube video, Bathroom Secrets. But what do most Indians watch? Google Trends indicates that the average Indian pornwatcher opts for more tame keywords, ‘sex’ and ‘how to kiss’, the most. New research by computational neuroscientists Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam from Boston University, US, on a billion porn and erotic web searches across the world, shows that the five most popular porn sites for men are webcam or video sites featuring anonymous graphic sex, with a monthly traffic of 7-16 million visitors. For women, the most popular is the “erotic” site fanfiction.net, which gets over 1.5 million visitors a month and has more than two million stories, 50 per cent being “romance”.
How big is pornography in India? Of the 500 top Indian websites this month ranked by the leading global web information company Alexa, at least 24 are porn sites. Nearly a dozen porn sites are more popular than some leading news sites and that of the Bombay Stock Exchange. Leone, one of the top five global porn stars, says 80 per cent of her web traffic and 60 per cent of her “high six figures” revenue come from India. The content, she says, is “everything and above”. “I can sell anything you want as long as you have a credit card.”
The only other major-league porn actor of Indian origin in the US, Priya Anjali Rai, also says she has a lot of fans in India, but not many paying customers. Adopted from New Delhi by American parents and brought up in Arizona, Rai keeps her Indian name for her work: “That’s what makes me different from everybody else.” Both Leone and Rai insist they only do “vanilla” porn, “boy-girl stuff”. The US, specifically the Los Angeles area, has the biggest porn industry in the world, followed by London and Budapest, estimated between $4 billion (Rs.20,000 crore) and $15 billion (Rs.75,000 crore) annually. Top porn stars easily earn a quarter of a million dollars annually.
Those who think production and distribution of pornography in India are not allowed, think again. “A lot of amateur videos are being produced,” says Namita Malhotra, author of Porn: Law, Video and Technology. “They have been there for long. But now from print they have gone digital. Amateur videos are a new phenomenon,” says a lawyer associated with Alternative Law Forum in Bangalore. “It’s unorganised,” says a Bangalore-based photographer involved with the porn industry. There are a few big houses who run multi-crore businesses. The small players use small video cameras so that they can be seen on mobile phones. “Ever since the mms scandal, we make false scandal videos, called kaand,” the photographer says. “It’s normal sex. Not like those foreign videos where they use horses and 10 men at the same time.” Do they go online? Sometimes they are sold, but always with the permission of the model, “No force,” he insists. “The money is good, so that we don’t tell anyone.” His best moment? When a model asked him to shoot her in different ways, to try to create a scandal and get noticed.
Has the battle against porn been lost? Anti-porn feminists in the US have admitted defeat. India is not quite there. Despite the hyper-sexualised climate, ministers do get thrown out over porn. To cyber law expert and senior associate of SNG & Partners Rahul Sud, India is on the right track. “Personal consumption of porn has never been an offence,” he points out. “Child pornography, publishing and transmitting are.” Press Council of India Chairperson Justice Markandey Katju has rolled out the red carpet for Leone, but not before comparing her to history’s “fallen women”, Amrapali or Mary Magdalene.
Does Leone care? She is busy stretching, bending and sweating. Not in a girl-boy-girl orgy online but on a Bikram Yoga mat in Hollywood. “OMG, I’m so tired,” she tweets. She has the same vital statistics as Marilyn Monroe, 36-24-34, and she is determined to look her best for those semi-nude scenes in Jism 2. “We Indians are proud of you!,” tweets one of her admirers. “Thank you,” she tweets back. She has every reason to be grateful.
– With Indira Kannan, Nishat Bari, Kiran Tare, Gunjeet Sra, Shravya Jain, Avantika Sharma, Lakshmi Kumaraswami, Uday Mahurkar and Tithi Sarkar contributing.
Pakistanis for Peace Editor’s Note– The porn phenomena is not isolated to just India in the subcontinent. Across the border, Pakistan was recently ranked as first in the world in terms of pornographic Google searches. This is a result of two conservative societies where sex is a taboo. One can only hope that these ancient and slow changing cultures can adapt to the new realities regarding sex.
Pakistan Takes Giant Step With Trade Move
By James Lamont for The Financial Times
The move to grant Most Favoured Nation status to India by Pakistan marks a small step for the world trading system. But it is a giant step for Pakistan.
For decades, these two nuclear-armed rivals have strangled trade along what in centuries past was a commercial highway between the subcontinent and central Asia. Today bilateral trade totals a paltry $2.7bn â a fraction of its potential.
The obstacle is ideology. Pakistanâs leadership insisted that trade ties were conditional on progress in resolving a bitter dispute over the territory of Kashmir, a Muslim majority region claimed by both countries after the end of British rule in 1947.
Indiaâs leadership was obligingly intransigent.
The âin principleâ granting of MFN and easing of business visas, responding to Indian signals of goodwill, are courageous moves by Pakistanâs civilian and military leaders.
They have immediately attracted criticism from domestic industrial sectors which fear greater competition. Executives in Pakistanâs pharmaceuticals industry were quick to warn that their companies would be hurt by market access for Indiaâs generic drugs companies.
Other sceptics hold up the example of Indiaâs Bollywood film industry, already swamping the Pakistani entertainment market, as a sign of worse to come.
More menacingly, Kashmiri groups have condemned the decision as a betrayal. The United Jihad Council called trade liberalisation a âdirect contraventionâ of Islamabadâs fight for Kashmir. It threatened âgrave consequencesâ of going soft on Hindu-majority India.
Many fear that militant attacks on India will ensue in a bid to sap Delhiâs confidence in peace with Pakistan, and derail negotiations. Such attacks already rain down almost daily across Pakistan.
Most of all, the move reflects a mighty shift in opinion in Rawalpindi, the headquarters of the powerful Pakistani army, at a time when the local economy is weakening.
A section of the armyâs leadership is deeply worried about a mismanaged economy and anxious to put Pakistan, growing at 3 per cent, on a higher trajectory similar to the economies of India and China. With good reason. Railway workers go unpaid, industrialists are starved of power for their factories, and foreign investors, alongside Pakistani talent, are being frightened away by security risks.
More long term, some generals view the hostile position against India as unsustainable, and see incentives to normalise ties. They also say that Pakistanâs long-term military expenditure, supported by assistance from the US, cannot be borne by a broken economy.
Many of Pakistanâs most powerful industrialists are encouraging this change of heart. They see opportunity for cement, agriculture, banking and engineering in more access to the Indian market. More broadly, they say that the benefits of opening up more to China will only bear fruit when India too can compete in the local market.
From their offices in Karachi and Lahore, they dream of Pakistan forming a regional trade grouping with fast-growing China and India akin to that formed between Canada, Mexico and the US by the North American Free Trade Agreement.
That is of course a long way off thanks to one of the most intractable of world conflicts.
Some diplomats in Islamabad are highly sceptical of regional integration so long as the disputes fester over Kashmir and a security menace pours out of the border regions with Afghanistan.
They say that security still dominates the strategic debate in Pakistan. Any bilateral relationship is hamstrung by failure to find agreement on Kashmir.
Earthmovers are already busy at the Wagha border, the principal land crossing between the two countries, preparing a new freight handling facility for rising commerce.
The current limitations are plain to see. A delegation of Pakistani traders crossed the post on Tuesday on their way to a fair in Chandigarh, the capital of Indiaâs Punjab state. The existing facilities, usually catering to about 20 foot passengers a day, were entirely overwhelmed.
Both sides need to capitalise on what are baby steps towards more open markets. The first thing they can do is improve the infrastructure linking the two countries. The second is to ease other obstacles like quantitative restrictions, customs procedures and formidable non-tariff barriers.
The far bigger task is to resist efforts to blow up reconciliation through commercial ties, and to proceed equally purposefully on some of the thornier issues that make the region one of the worldâs most dangerous.
Why My Father Hated India
By Aatish Taseer for The Wall Street Journal
Ten days before he was assassinated in January, my father, Salman Taseer, sent out a tweet about an Indian rocket that had come down over the Bay of Bengal: “Why does India make fools of themselves messing in space technology? Stick 2 bollywood my advice.”
My father was the governor of Punjab, Pakistan’s largest province, and his tweet, with its taunt at India’s misfortune, would have delighted his many thousands of followers. It fed straight into Pakistan’s unhealthy obsession with India, the country from which it was carved in 1947.
Though my father’s attitude went down well in Pakistan, it had caused considerable tension between us. I am half-Indian, raised in Delhi by my Indian mother: India is a country that I consider my own. When my father was killed by one of his own bodyguards for defending a Christian woman accused of blasphemy, we had not spoken for three years.
To understand the Pakistani obsession with India, to get a sense of its special edgeâits hysteriaâit is necessary to understand the rejection of India, its culture and past, that lies at the heart of the idea of Pakistan. This is not merely an academic question. Pakistan’s animus toward India is the cause of both its unwillingness to fight Islamic extremism and its active complicity in undermining the aims of its ostensible ally, the United States.
The idea of Pakistan was first seriously formulated by neither a cleric nor a politician but by a poet. In 1930, Muhammad Iqbal, addressing the All-India Muslim league, made the case for a state in which India’s Muslims would realize their “political and ethical essence.” Though he was always vague about what the new state would be, he was quite clear about what it would not be: the old pluralistic society of India, with its composite culture.
Iqbal’s vision took concrete shape in August 1947. Despite the partition of British India, it had seemed at first that there would be no transfer of populations. But violence erupted, and it quickly became clear that in the new homeland for India’s Muslims, there would be no place for its non-Muslim communities. Pakistan and India came into being at the cost of a million lives and the largest migration in history.
This shared experience of carnage and loss is the foundation of the modern relationship between the two countries. In human terms, it meant that each of my parents, my father in Pakistan and my mother in India, grew up around symmetrically violent stories of uprooting and homelessness.
But in Pakistan, the partition had another, deeper meaning. It raised big questions, in cultural and civilizational terms, about what its separation from India would mean.
In the absence of a true national identity, Pakistan defined itself by its opposition to India. It turned its back on all that had been common between Muslims and non-Muslims in the era before partition. Everything came under suspicion, from dress to customs to festivals, marriage rituals and literature. The new country set itself the task of erasing its association with the subcontinent, an association that many came to view as a contamination.
Had this assertion of national identity meant the casting out of something alien or foreign in favor of an organic or homegrown identity, it might have had an empowering effect. What made it self-wounding, even nihilistic, was that Pakistan, by asserting a new Arabized Islamic identity, rejected its own local and regional culture. In trying to turn its back on its shared past with India, Pakistan turned its back on itself.
But there was one problem: India was just across the border, and it was still its composite, pluralistic self, a place where nearly as many Muslims lived as in Pakistan. It was a daily reminder of the past that Pakistan had tried to erase.
Pakistan’s existential confusion made itself apparent in the political turmoil of the decades after partition. The state failed to perform a single legal transfer of power; coups were commonplace. And yet, in 1980, my father would still have felt that the partition had not been a mistake, for one critical reason: India, for all its democracy and pluralism, was an economic disaster.
Pakistan had better roads, better cars; Pakistani businesses were thriving; its citizens could take foreign currency abroad. Compared with starving, socialist India, they were on much surer ground. So what if India had democracy? It had brought nothing but drought and famine.
But in the early 1990s, a reversal began to occur in the fortunes of the two countries. The advantage that Pakistan had seemed to enjoy in the years after independence evaporated, as it became clear that the quest to rid itself of its Indian identity had come at a price: the emergence of a new and dangerous brand of Islam.
As India rose, thanks to economic liberalization, Pakistan withered. The country that had begun as a poet’s utopia was reduced to ruin and insolvency.
The primary agent of this decline has been the Pakistani army. The beneficiary of vast amounts of American assistance and moneyâ$11 billion since 9/11âthe military has diverted a significant amount of these resources to arming itself against India. In Afghanistan, it has sought neither security nor stability but rather a backyard, whichâonce the Americans leaveâmight provide Pakistan with “strategic depth” against India.
In order to realize these objectives, the Pakistani army has led the U.S. in a dance, in which it had to be seen to be fighting the war on terror, but never so much as to actually win it, for its extension meant the continuing flow of American money. All this time the army kept alive a double game, in which some terror was fought and someâsuch as Laskhar-e-Tayyba’s 2008 attack on Mumbaiâactively supported.
The army’s duplicity was exposed decisively this May, with the killing of Osama bin Laden in the garrison town of Abbottabad. It was only the last and most incriminating charge against an institution whose activities over the years have included the creation of the Taliban, the financing of international terrorism and the running of a lucrative trade in nuclear secrets.
This army, whose might has always been justified by the imaginary threat from India, has been more harmful to Pakistan than to anybody else. It has consumed annually a quarter of the country’s wealth, undermined one civilian government after another and enriched itself through a range of economic interests, from bakeries and shopping malls to huge property holdings.
The reversal in the fortunes of the two countriesâIndia’s sudden prosperity and cultural power, seen next to the calamity of Muhammad Iqbal’s unrealized utopiaâis what explains the bitterness of my father’s tweet just days before he died. It captures the rage of being forced to reject a culture of which you feel effortlessly a partâa culture that Pakistanis, via Bollywood, experience daily in their homes.
This rage is what makes it impossible to reduce Pakistan’s obsession with India to matters of security or a land dispute in Kashmir. It can heal only when the wounds of 1947 are healed. And it should provoke no triumphalism in India, for behind the bluster and the bravado, there is arid pain and sadness.
âMr. Taseer is the author of “Stranger to History: A Son’s Journey Through Islamic Lands.” His second novel, “Noon,” will be published in the U.S. in September
-Pakistanis for Peace Editor’s Note– Aatish Taseer’s brutally honest and forthright column is one of the best articles I have read in a long time. Â As a Pakistani American, I find a lot of truth in what he is saying, no matter how ill received it may be back in Pakistan, I feel that Aatish does make some good points and it was well worth sharing with you readers.
Life in India on International Women’s Day
Amruta Mehta for The Guardian
A child of the late 80s and 90s, I was a young girl when satellite television was introduced in India.
It brought along an overdose of Bollywood, soaps and reality TV, which I feel has been brutal on India’s girls. In response to youth culture prompted by these changes, the moral police has been raising its head, targeting young girls.
Perhaps it is due to the ubiquity of information and dramatisation of the news media, but I feel that violence against women in India has increased greatly during my lifetime. While it has become increasingly easier for urban Indian women to work even after marriage, the expectations on them remain cripplingly unrealistic.
As I sought out strong Indian female role models while growing up, I found that phenomenally powerful women abound. India’s first female police officer, Kiran Bedi, has influenced tens of thousands through radical prison reforms, daring to question the practices of generations of men before her. She is bringing India’s women centre-stage in the fight against corruption. Women are CEOs of large companies, philanthropists, and icons of style and grace.
We’re a country of over a billion people, with a large young population, deep socioeconomic disparities, and an ancient democratic tradition. It should come as no surprise that youth movements working for equality are everywhere. The promise that India’s girls hold can be felt in the electrifying energy around young female doctors and IT workers, and girls who ferociously compete for the best grades with their male classmates.
I was the first girl in my extended family to travel abroad alone for study. For this, my mother faced much character assassination. I have been lucky to have had parents who responded by trusting me unconditionally.
These are the people we must celebrate on International Women’s Day: apparently ordinary men and women who blaze trails at the risk of violence and ostracism. Development progresses due to them, inch by inch, from one generation to another.
I do believe that our time has come. I believe in my generation â and I hope you will too.
–Amruta Mehta, a respected group member of Pakistanis for Peace, is from Mumbai, India, and lives in the Netherlands, where she works in scientific media.
Thou Shalt not Mock or It May Cost You Your Life!
By Manzer Munir for Pakistanis for Peace
In the wake of the murder of Salmaan Taseer, the Governor of Punjab a couple weeks back, I did a great deal of contemplation about the situation in Pakistan and the current state of affairs of Pakistan and indeed in much of the Muslim world.
The current situation, especially in Pakistan and when it concerns the rights of the non-Muslims, is apparently the worst of anywhere in the Muslim world. Indeed, the plight of Asia Bibi, (also known as Aasia, Ayesa Noreen) Islam and Islamic Blasphemy laws have come under rightful scrutiny as of late.
One question that tugs at the heart of the debate for me is why is it that Muslims seem to get so very offended to the point they want to KILL you over a remark or something that comes out of your mouth? As Americans, we wonder to ourselves, âHavenât they ever heard of sticks and stones may break my bones, but words donât hurt me?!
Sadly, what the fundamentalist preachers at all the podiums of their Friday sermon or khutbah, nor any of their brethren on the run and in caves like the Taliban and Al Qaeda fail to realize that we are all Godâs children. And God, Allah, Yahweh, Jesus, or whatever name you assign him, he is One and the same God of all religions. He is too big to fit into just one religion, concept, version or story of him.
And we all are his creations. Not one of us is superior over the other in his eyes and he judges us all equally. To him, the children of these three religions and its offspringâs are all related to each other. Adam being the first man, then Eve, and then all the Biblical figures and names such as Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, yes especially Jesus. He is their Messiah too!
Jesus, in fact is mentioned some 28 times in the Muslim holy book, Quâran whereas their own prophet Muhammad is mentioned only 4 times. And the fact that Jesus is also considered by Muslims to be the Messiah, it is sad that his followers should get such abject treatment in Pakistan and sadly, many Muslim countries.
If only the bad guys realized the connections between Christians and Jesus only then would a Pakistani Christian woman, suffering needlessly in a cell tonight going on 2 years away from her children in solitude, and constantly fearful for her life, would see her horrific ordeal come to an end.
These people are incapable of understanding basic rights, freedoms and even the unhindered concept of free will. No, they are primitive minded in their their spiritual and daily lives. They fail to see that a Christianâs God and a Muslimâs God are the one and the same. And he never would agree to laws like Pakistanâs Blasphemy laws at all. Why? Well because the Muslim God is known first and foremost as a Gracious, Merciful, Compassionate God.
In fact, the Arabic phrase Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim is a beautifully poetic phrase which offers both deep insight and brilliant inspiration to the average Muslim who says it countless times as he or she starts each day and till they rest their head to sleep. â It has often been said that the phrase Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim contains the true essence of the entire Qurâan, as well as the true essence of all religions. Muslims often say this phrase when embarking on any significant endeavor and the phrase is considered by some to be a major pillar of Islam. This expression is so magnificent and so concise that all except one chapter of the Qurâan begins with the words Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim.â
The common translation:âIn the name of God, most Gracious, most Compassionateâ essentially is saying that God is compassionate, and full of grace. So how would this God punish Asia Bibi? What would he do if he is so full of compassion and mercy? Would he even punish her? And if he is such a gracious and a compassionate God, then wouldnât he feel that nearly a two year jail sentence in solitary is already far more than her crime not to mention being away from husband and children and being worried about mob vengeance on her or the death penalty?
That God may act in a multitude of ways and we cannot ever know till said Judgment Day. That is what Judgment Day is all about after all. In fact, this is probably one day when the man upstairs works overtime judging all of us mankind, from the beginning with Adam to the last standing comes till Tribulation and the End of Days. It is only he, the Creator who will do the judging and this is something that the men with the loudspeakers who climb to the top of the minaret five times a day to call the faithful to prayers, just do not really understand, in my opinion. They apparently constantly seem to forget and pass judgment from the pulpit and this in turn helps set the âpopularâ opinion amongst the ultra-religious faithful of Pakistanâs society.
My only prayer to this Creator is that may he keep Asia Bibi safe tonight and continue to give her strength. And if God should call her home and have her die a death at the hands of the real savages those that not only kill but shockingly, in your name, then please Allah grant her heaven just as you should governor Salmaan Taseer, a man who was only defending the rights of all your children, including those of other faiths. He was being compassionate and gracious towards a fellow human being God, as he was only trying to emulate his creator, You Lord. Ameen.
And while you are at it Lord, will you also please let the imam at the microphone know that âThou shall not mock, should not cost you your life.â Afterall, âThou shall not kill is one of your top 10 commandments, whereas mocking prophets or religious figures does not make the list!
Manzer Munir, a proud Pakistani American and peace activist, is a Sufi Muslim who is also the founder of Pakistanis for Peace and blogs at www.PakistanisforPeace.com and at other websites such as www.DigitalJournal.com, www.Allvoices.com, www.Examiner.com and www.open.salon.com as a freelance journalist and writer. He asks that you like the Official Facebook Page of Pakistanis for Peace to get the latest articles as they publish here: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Pakistanis-for-Peace/141071882613054
Pakistan Bans India Osama Bin Laden Comedy
From The BBC
Pakistan has banned an Indian comedy called Tere Bin Laden (Without You Laden), about a lookalike of Osama Bin Laden.
The country’s film censor board has objected to the way the movie portrays Bin Laden and warned that it could trigger a “terrorist attack”. The film was due to have been released in Pakistan on Friday.
Its main distributor told the BBC that an appeal has been filed against Thursday’s decision. In a statement the film board said that Tere Bin Laden was “unsuitable for public exhibition”.
They said it was a “controversial subject which depicted the character of Osama Bin Laden in a comic way… and contains vulgar and objectionable dialogue, abuses and derogatory remarks”.
The board said that the film also “portrayed a bad and negative image of law enforcing agencies of the country”. Correspondents say that it is not unprecedented for Pakistan to ban films, especially if they are linked to India – Islamabad’s longtime regional arch rival.
But the impact of such censorship is likely to be limited, correspondents say, because DVDs are the most common means of watching movies in the country and pirated ones are easily secured.
The BBC’s Syed Shoaib Hasan says that although the announcement of the ban was unexpected, it was not altogether surprising as the country’s government remains touchy on the subject of Bin Laden. His current whereabouts are unknown, with some US officials maintaining that the world’s most wanted man is hiding in Pakistan.
The main distributor for the film, Nadeem Mandviwala, told the BBC that the the ministry of culture will announce its decision against the appeal on Friday. “I find it quite disturbing that we cannot portray Osama Bin Laden and the law enforcement agencies,” Mr Mandviwala told the BBC.
“It’s acceptable that we make comedies about the president and prime minister all the time, but not Osama.” Indian films are popular in Pakistan, though only some make it to the big screens.
Tere Bin Laden is about a struggling Pakistani journalist who tries to sell an interview of a fake Bin Laden as a scoop who wants to move to the US to fulfil his American dream.
When he comes across a person who looks like Osama, he decides to sell his interview as a scoop to the international media, which results in a series of goof-ups.
Though the film is a comedy, the director says they have been careful about the authenticity of locations in Karachi, facts about Osama Bin Laden and the context of the story
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