Bollywood comes back to Pakistan

Happy days are here again.

The Pakistan government is poised to lift a 43-year ban on the import of movies from India. This will mean that some time soon Pakistanis will be able to watch the latest Bollywood movies on the big screen ... The ban on Bollywood movies was imposed in 1965, following the India-Pakistan war that year. But movies continued to be smuggled into Pakistan. Video parlors and shops stocked pirated DVDs and CDs, catering to the massive appetite of Pakistanis for Bollywood films. They could watch the latest movie less than a week after its release in India. But they had to make do with watching pirated CDs and VCDs of Bollywood films at home. That meant missing out on the full experience of Bollywood masala (spice).

But guess who's not happy about it? If you guessed the Moslem Jihadists you guessed right!

Even less welcoming will be Pakistan's jihadis and religious conservatives, who frown on Bollywood's song-dance culture. Pakistan's religious conservatives have even opposed the sari, not only because it is regarded as "Hindu" but also because it - in their eyes at least - reveals too much of a woman's body. These apprehensions resulted in the sari being banned during the military dictatorship of General Zia ul-Haq in the 1980s. Now, the conservatives will have to contend with more - Bollywood's rain-drenched women in see-through saris, the "item numbers" and so on.

Cue the Moslem Rage Machine.