In the wake of deadly bombing and shooting attacks in Mumbai, India, in November 2008, anti-Pakistan sentiments surged in the country. Shortly afterward, in 2009, one of the most revered Sufi devotional music ensembles in Pakistan, Fareed Ayaz, Abu Muhammad Qawwal and Brothers, celebrated globally for their mastery of the form known as qawwali, arrived in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru to perform at a cultural festival. The organizers had managed to arrange visas for them after great difficulty.
During the performance, Fareed Ayaz laughingly said, “Here, people say I am from Pakistan, and there, people say I am from Delhi,” illustrating how fluid and fractured identities in the subcontinent are. His family, originally from Delhi, had moved to Karachi (in present-day Pakistan) after Partition in 1947. The qawwali art form originated in the Sufi shrines of Delhi in the 13th century.
Ayaz then called on the audience, saying, “Let’s go to that undivided land,” following this up with the famous Rajasthani folk song “Padhaaro Mhaare Des” (“Come to My Country”). It was a beautiful yet poignant moment captured in a video that remains on YouTube, recalling the shared culture that has bound the two countries and their people together for decades.
Today, however, that symbolic space — which was once filled with music, cinema and memories of a shared history — is experiencing unprecedented strain in the aftermath of the recent conflict between India and Pakistan.
After the Indian government held Pakistan responsible for a deadly attack on tourists in Kashmir on April 22, which led to the suspension of key treaties, the revocation of visas and the closing of borders, it also curtailed the availability and access of Pakistani art and entertainment in India.
The government banned the Instagram accounts of several Pakistani artists, along with YouTube accounts of Pakistani entertainment channels. In recent years, Pakistani dramas had found a dedicated viewership in India, and Pakistani artists had become household names in the country. Following suit, prominent film associations also issued notices threatening action against their members for collaborating with Pakistani artists and asked the government to charge them with treason for doing so.
Later, when the conflict escalated to military exchanges, the Indian government took this crackdown a notch further and ordered online streaming platforms, including Spotify and Apple Music, to remove all content in India originating from Pakistan, such as web series, films, songs and podcasts.
These bans have gone further than previous ones. In the past, they were limited to physical collaborations between Indian and Pakistani artists in Bollywood, and Pakistani films were not allowed to be released on Indian screens. This time around, the Indian government has effectively put up digital borders, deepening the red lines surrounding cross-border collaborations and Indian consumption of Pakistani art and entertainment.
In return, the Pakistan Broadcasters Association decided to stop airing Indian songs on Pakistani radio stations — a move that was lauded by the Pakistani government. The release of Indian films, TV shows and advertisements was already banned in the country after the last escalation between the countries in 2019. Indian content remained available on global streaming platforms, however, and continued to be part of people’s lives in Pakistan.
Yet this time around, the Indian bans have drawn a strong response from the Pakistani entertainment industry. Members initially responded with disdain and humor, but these turned into intense anger after the Indian missile strikes in Pakistan. That popular Indian actors — who have long been admired in Pakistan — lauded their government’s military offensive added to the anti-India sentiment. Some in Pakistan asked for Indian content to be curtailed in response. Popular entertainment journalists said it was becoming hard for them to feel good about engaging with Indian content and unfollowed several Indian artists.
Hindi cinema — popularly known as Bollywood — and its actors and music have always been loved in Pakistan, thanks to linguistic and cultural similarities. Their popularity has endured through political tensions, and Indian entertainment has served as a strong bridge connecting Pakistanis to India culturally and emotionally.
Despite bans, people continued to consume Bollywood music. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Pakistani weddings are incomplete without dance performances to Bollywood music. Global streaming platforms like Spotify and Netflix helped evade the bans and Indian artists, such as the singer Arijit Singh, have been among the most-streamed artists in Pakistan.
Likewise, Pakistani singers have been household names in India. Ghazal singers, such as Ghulam Ali and Mehdi Hassan, have had a huge following, along with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, who popularized qawwali globally. During the 1990s, Pakistani rock bands were immensely popular and singers such as Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Atif Aslam and Shafqat Amanat Ali became mainstays in Bollywood. In one (rare) case, the Pakistani singer Adnan Sami even became a naturalized citizen of India.
Growing up in Delhi, my friends and I didn’t even realize until much later that many of our favorite singers and songs were Pakistani. For instance, it was only earlier this year that I learned that “Sutta” (“Cigarette”), a song that was an anthem in Indian high schools during the 2000s, was created by Zeest, a Karachi-based band.
In the last five years, too, as Pakistan saw the rise of a new generation of independent musicians, many of them found immense popularity in India and their music was easily accessible online.
Coke Studio Pakistan, a musical series launched by the beverage brand in 2008 to promote the country’s culture, which has since become a cultural institution in South Asia, enjoys a cult following in India. The fusion of traditional music with contemporary genres like rock, pop, hip-hop and electronic music resonated with Indian listeners, inspiring local spinoffs.
In fact, the comment section of Coke Studio Pakistan’s YouTube videos is often cited as an example of a middle space, in which people from India and Pakistan expressed mutual admiration and cross-border solidarity. It would not be uncommon to find comments on its videos, such as “An Indian here, listening with tears. Love to our Pakistani brothers and sisters” or “Why can’t our politics be like our music?” But now, for the first time, Indian listeners cannot access Coke Studio Pakistan. Before the ban, songs from the latest season were among the most-streamed songs on Spotify in India.
While music had been bridging gaps for years, in 2014, when a new Indian TV channel, Zee Zindagi, started airing popular Pakistani dramas in India, long-held stereotypes about Pakistani people started softening in the country. A political discourse that saw Pakistan through the prism of conflict and terrorism had created perceptions that people there were religiously conservative and regressive.
After watching Pakistani dramas, however, Indians realized how strikingly similar their own life stories were and could see that they were the same people, living middle-class lives, navigating love, family tensions, gender roles and aspirations. For instance, my mother and her two sisters, who earned their doctorates despite economic hardship and gender-based discrimination, could find their lives reflected in “Zindagi Gulzar Hai” (“Life Is a Bed of Roses”). One of the most popular Pakistani dramas, it follows the story of a young woman, Kashaf, who lives with her single mother and two sisters, who were abandoned by their father. She wins a scholarship to study at a prestigious university and aspires to be a bureaucrat.
As Pakistani dramas became popular in India, several Pakistani actors were offered roles in Bollywood films, including Fawad Khan, Mahira Khan, Saba Qamar and Sajal Aly, among others. Fawad became a sensation and heartthrob in India. Though he starred in only three films, he won brand endorsement deals, appeared on the covers of several magazines and hosted popular award shows. Mahira worked in just one film, but it was opposite the superstar Shah Rukh Khan, considered a matter of prestige for any new actor in Bollywood.
The love affair between Pakistani artists and Bollywood faced an abrupt break in 2016, when an attack claimed by a Pakistan-based jihadist group killed 19 Indian soldiers in the border town of Uri. A blanket ban was imposed on collaborations with Pakistani artists in Bollywood and Zee Zingadi pulled all Pakistani content from its lineup. It was the first such ban on Pakistani artists in India. In a hypernationalistic environment, led by the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), new red lines were drawn.
Despite the bans and a strong anti-Pakistani rhetoric in Indian politics, Indian viewers were not deterred from engaging with Pakistani art and entertainment. Indians continued to watch Pakistani dramas on YouTube, where channels uploaded full episodes, catering to a pan-South Asian audience in both the subcontinent and the diaspora.
Until the channels were banned in India, popular shows had started to draw tens of millions of views per episode. They would trend on social media in India, sometimes outperforming Bollywood content, while attracting new Indian audiences. It would not be an overstatement to say that Pakistani dramas had become a mainstay in numerous Indian households.
I would get a sense of their rising popularity in everyday interactions. For instance, in October 2024, when I was on a trip to the southern Indian city of Bengaluru, one of my friends — a man in his 40s — shared how he had been hooked to the Pakistani drama “Kabhi Main Kabhi Tum” (“Sometimes Me, Sometimes You”). This surprised me because I would typically find Indian women gushing about Pakistani dramas, and more so in northern India, where Hindi is predominantly spoken.
My friend spoke Kannada, a language native to the southern state of Karnataka. But the simple love story of a couple in Karachi who accidentally get married and build a life together, despite familial challenges, had resonated with him, showing how Pakistani stories were finding acceptance among diverse audiences in India.
While Pakistani dramas were on the rise in India, a new generation of Indian and Pakistani artists, operating outside the ecosystem of Bollywood, had started collaborating.
In 2020, Zee Zingadi relaunched as a streaming platform, Zee5, which started commissioning web series and films in Pakistan. However, when the first Pakistani web series, “Churails” (“Witches”), was released and sparked conversations on contentious issues such as feminism, patriarchy and gender roles, the platform was made inaccessible in Pakistan. Later, Zee5 started uploading its Pakistani shows on YouTube for audiences to watch.
Since the Punjabi language is spoken on both sides of the border, Punjabi music naturally crosses over. In 2022, when the famous Punjabi singer Sidhu Moosewala was murdered in India, his death was widely mourned in Pakistan. Months later, a viral video showed Indian soldiers dancing to one of his songs that was apparently being played by Pakistani soldiers manning the outpost at the de facto border dividing the region of Kashmir between the two countries, known as the Line of Control. An Indian police officer had posted it on X with the caption “bridging the divide.”
The small but rising Punjabi film industry in India has also recently started collaborating with Punjabi actors and comics in Pakistan. Since many stories are shot in other countries, such as Canada, where there is a considerable Punjabi-speaking population, it made such associations logistically easier.
In 2022, the Punjabi popstar Diljit Dosanjh worked alongside the veteran Pakistani actor and comedian Sohail Ahmed, marking an important collaboration between two of the most popular Punjabi personalities. This year, speculation had been rife that Hania Amir, a Pakistani actor who enjoys a considerable fan following in India, would star in Dosanjh’s next film, set to be released in June. Dosanjh had earlier invited Amir onstage during his concert in London’s O2 Arena last year, creating a memorable cross-border moment that went viral online.
While Bohemia, a Pakistani-American rapper, had been working with Indian artists for decades, shaping the South Asian rap scene, a new generation of hip-hop artists had just started to collaborate with each other. For instance, the popular Pakistani rapper Faris Shafi had been teaming up with major Indian rappers such as Raftaar, Seedhe Maut and Prabh Deep since 2022. The Indian rapper Krishna Kaul, known as KR$NA, had worked with the Karachi-based hip-hop duo Young Stunners on some tracks. Pakistani producers such as Talal Qureshi and Umair were also sought-after in India.
One of the most popular recent cross-border moments was a 2024 diss track. “Kaun Talha” (“Who Is Talha”) by the Pakistani rapper Talha Anjum was a response to the Indian rapper Naezy, who had dismissively questioned Anjum’s presence when asked about potential collaborations with Pakistani artists. Using the phrase as a recurring motif, Anjum referenced prominent Indian rappers who recognized his stature. Anjum was the most-streamed Pakistani artist on Spotify, amassing over 242 million streams in 2024 and partnering with Mass Appeal, the global hip-hop label co-founded by the Grammy Award-winning artist Nas.
But all this would come to an abrupt halt.
Recently, fashion had also become a talking point. Stores in Dubai would often serve as a common base for people to access designers from both countries. During the much-discussed Ambani wedding in 2024, several popular Indian celebrities had worn clothes by popular Pakistani fashion designers, such as Faraz Manan, Iqbal Hussain and Mohsin Naveed Ranjha. The Pakistani actors Hania Amir and Mahira Amir were also recently seen wearing Indian designers, including Manish Malhotra, Mahima Mahajan, and Rimple and Harpreet. Maryam Nawaz, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s daughter and the current chief minister of Punjab province, was also often seen wearing Indian designers at public events.
With collaborations emerging in other areas, it seemed that Bollywood would open its doors again for Pakistani artists. In 2023, the Bombay High Court had dismissed a petition seeking a complete ban on artists from Pakistan performing or working in India. Just days before the attack in Kashmir, a new Indian film starring the Pakistani superstar Fawad Khan was preparing for release. Khan was making a comeback to the Indian stage after almost a decade and promotions were underway in Dubai. But all activity was abandoned after the attack, promotional content was removed and now the release of his latest film is indefinitely stalled — raising big questions about the future of all cross-border collaborations.
As relations between India and Pakistan hit an all-time low, does it mean people cannot consume culture from each other’s countries? Do Indians not watch Pakistani dramas? Many have been using virtual private networks to access Pakistani content and artists online. Do Pakistanis boycott Indian content? A new Indian web series was the most viewed on Netflix in Pakistan after the conflict. These are some of the questions on everyone’s minds — accompanied by unexpressed grief at the new red lines.
Speaking about cross-border cultural exchanges on her YouTube show, the veteran Pakistani journalist Aamna Haider Isani said she was unsure about their future. “During a state of war, there is a pause. Nationalism supersedes everything else,” she said. But she reiterated that, given the long and rich cultural history that the nations share with each other, it will be tough to put a complete stop to it.
For now, the hope is that, despite these state-built walls, culture might once again find ways to cross borders.
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