Televisual Tales From Across the Border: Mapping Neo-Global Flows in Media Peripheries

Introduction

In 2014, with the launch of an Indian channel Zindagi, owned by a leading broadcaster Zee Entertainment Enterprises (ZEEL) that began broadcasting syndicated content from Pakistan (later from Turkey, Ukraine, Brazil and Korea), foreign programming on Indian television witnessed a revival. Since the 1990s, foreign programming on Indian TV screens was dominated by American and British television programmes and continues to remain so; however, the programming content that Zindagi offered was neither American nor British, but instead, ‘sarhad paar ki kahaaniyaan’ (stories from across the border) (Figure 1). With captivating fiction narratives from Pakistan and the channel tagline ‘Jodey Dilon Ko’ (uniting hearts), Zindagi ‘embarked a new beginning for cultural exchange’ and ‘initiated a different direction towards peace’ between India and Pakistan through television entertainment, albeit, only temporarily (Riyaz, 2014). In September 2016, due to the heated environment following the Uri attacks and the political friction between the two nations thereafter, Zee TV’s owner Subhash Chandra declared a ban on the broadcast of Pakistani TV series on the channel Zindagi. ¹ But during its brief stint, Pakistani content refurbished the Hindi entertainment genre for Indian audiences with a strong catalogue of successful TV series like Humsafar (soulmate, 2011), Zindagi Gulzaar Hai (life is a bed of roses, 2012) (ZGH, hereafter) and Aunn Zara (2013).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Source: www.aaghazedosti.wordpress.com

In India, the cable and satellite TV revolution that followed the economic liberalisation in the early 1990s dismantled the monopoly of the public service broadcaster Doordarshan (Vijayalakshmi, 2005, p. 19). Consequently, a spate of global and Indian private broadcasters transformed the Indian entertainment market from socially driven, domestically produced television dramas to commercially driven, globally acquired TV programmes. In the postliberalised era, foreign programming on Indian television has operated via two modes – canned- and format-based programmes. While a TV format is ‘a complex, coherent package of industry knowledge that is licensed to facilitate the making of another version of a program in another television market’ like Kaun Banega Crorepati (who wants to be a millionaire), Big Boss (big brother), etc., in canned TV programmes already recorded content is ‘physically stored and transported to its place of subsequent transmission’ and is later ‘dubbed or subtitled into the local lingua franca’ like House of Cards, Game of Thrones, etc. (Moran, 2009, p. 17). In the early 1990s, English-language canned programmes like Baywatch and Santa Barbara were held responsible for raising unattainable aspirations amongst the Indian middle class and endangering Indian culture due to their depiction of sex and violence. While these programmes were earlier broadcast in the English language, by the mid-1990s, as cable TV penetrated into smaller towns, the programmes began to be dubbed in Hindi to cater to wider audiences cutting across classes. The growing demand for Hindi-language content led broadcasters to produce Indian adaptations of fiction TV series like Hello Friends, based on an American sitcom F.R.I.E.N.D.S., and Jassi Jaisi Koi Nahi (there’s no one like Jassi), based on the Columbian telenovela Yo Soy Betty La Fea amongst others.

With an increasing viewership of indigenous content and a flourishing television industry, canned programming was temporarily interrupted by domestically produced Hindi-language soap operas like Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki (every home’s tale), Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi (because the mother-in-law was once a daughter-in-law), etc. during the last two decades. With exaggerated soap-opera aesthetics, melodramatic narratives and opulent sets, these saas–bahu dramas ² set in traditional backdrops ‘centralise(d) and idealise(d) the large Hindu joint family and Hindu womanhood’ (Mahadevan, 2010, p. 4). The popularity of these soaps resided in the audiences’ longing ‘to see family relationships, not so much as they are now, but more as they should be’ (Munshi, 2014, p. 70). However, in the process of venerating Indian families as virtuous and traditional, the Hindi entertainment genre was saturated with regressive storylines and often flat, static characters that many urban Indian audiences could no longer identify with. Furthermore, the penetration of cable TV networks into smaller towns, the expansion of English-language, foreign TV programming on Indian television, compounded by the emergence of new media technologies and cinema multiplexes in urban centres, drew the urban middle-class audiences further away from the TV set in general and Hindi entertainment in particular. The popularity of Pakistani TV serials amongst Indian audiences, especially in north India, can be understood in the context of a situation whereby the broadcaster Zindagi filled in the void created by the regressive Hindi General Entertainment genre on the one hand and English-language foreign programming on the other.

This article explores the social, political and industrial matrices of consuming Pakistani television content on the Hindi entertainment channel Zindagi during 2014–2016 and argues that not only do Pakistani serials provide a new imagination of ‘foreign’ that is devoid of British or American implications, but they also generate a fresh discourse on transnational media flows in the South Asian mediascape. These new flows, which I term ‘neo-global’ flows, emerge from media peripheries and chart complex media cartographies between non-West nations, thereby challenging erstwhile notions of Western media hegemony.

Emergence of Zindagi: New Routes of Distribution and ‘Neo-Global’ Flows

At the end of colonisation in August 1947, a former colony of the empire, British India, was partitioned into two separate states – India and Pakistan. The partition was based on religious assumptions that presumed Pakistan would be a separate nation state for the Muslim minorities. This geographical division uprooted and separated many Muslim, Sikh and Hindu families. ³ Ever since, despite sharing geographical and cultural proximities, India and Pakistan have remained in an antagonistic relationship. Although cross-border communication and peace building efforts on both sides of the border were facilitated amongst people via cross-border train and bus services as well as interpersonal communication, consistent political turmoil kept the two nations distanced. ⁴ As a result, populations that shared cultural identities, social histories and a moral ethos were kept apart due to the restrictive efforts of both governments and the regulated circulation of media imagery. Over the years, the only imagination that remained of the estranged neighbour was constructed via continuous bombarding of negative stereotypical images circulated by the film industries and news media of both the nations. The broadcasters at Zindagi capitalised on this lack of a realistic representation of the Pakistani identity in Indian media and attempted to initiate cross-border communication through the syndication of Pakistani dramas in India.

In his discussion of the spatial configurations of transnational television, Ramon Lobato considers ‘signal spillover’ as an important phenomenon in the distribution logic of transnational broadcasting. ‘Wherever two nations share a border, there is often accidental reception of TV signals on one or both sides’ (Lobato, 2019, p. 56). The distributional logic of ‘signal spillover’ is pertinent for discussing cross-border media interactions between India and Pakistan in the pre-Zindagi era. Although Zindagi’s broadcast of Pakistani TV serials gave Indian audiences a sneak peek into their neighbours’ socio-cultural environment, it is also true that certain sections of the Indian audience were acquainted with Pakistani serials and films much earlier. During the late 1960s and early 70s, prior to the transmission of programmes from Doordarshan’s Amritsar (1972) and Jalandhar (1979) units, Indian citizens residing in the border areas of Punjab and Himanchal Pradesh would unofficially receive spilled-over signals from PTV (Pakistan Television) (Talwar, 2010). ⁵ Although most Pakistani television content was in Urdu, the language’s close connections with the Hindustani language spoken in north India, and the mix of Punjabi words with Urdu, would charm the Punjabi population on the Indian side of the border. In an article published in The Caravan, Karanjeet Kaur points out that Pakistani programmes like Bakra Qiston Pe (the goat, in instalments, 1989) and Dhoop Kinare (the edge of sunshine, 1987) were popular amongst a section of the Indian audience who informally received copies of the episodes as VHS tapes by friends and acquaintances visiting Pakistan (Kaur, 2014). In another article, filmmaker and writer Paromita Vohra reminisces on her experiences of watching Dhoop Kinare in the 1980s on VHS tapes rented from a video rental shop in Gandhidham, Gujarat:

Five minutes into Dhoop Kinare, we were hooked and cooked… Why did we love it so much? Maybe because it had been some time since we had had a really engrossing series on Indian TV… Here was a world, which felt utterly familiar – the same importance to family, the same language, food and clothes – yet ineffably different, just a little bit exotic. (Vohra, 2014)

Vohra mentions how life came to a standstill when tape no. 4 of the series that was rented by another customer was not returned for three consecutive days and on the fourth day, she tracked down the customer and received the copy. While the charm of Pakistani serials and the relatability of their characters were revived via Zindagi, the modes of distribution have changed phenomenally. Zindagi’s contribution in popularising Pakistani television content amongst Indian audiences is of paramount importance in that it made Pakistani TV programming both mainstream and legal.

It is interesting to note that while Hindi General Entertainment Channels (GECs) like Star Plus and Colors have refrained from broadcasting Pakistani content in India due to legal and logistical issues, their United Kingdom and Europe feeds broadcast syndicated Pakistani content to cater to the larger South Asian diaspora. An interesting example to quote in this context is of a Pakistani TV serial Mera Naam Yousuf Hai (my name is Yousuf, 2015) broadcast exclusively for the Star Plus UK and Middle East audiences, considering the increasing number of Pakistani audiences residing there. In my field interviews, Sarika Shankarnarayan (2016), Marketing Head, Star Plus, UK, explained how the channel envisions its audiences in the UK market:

Our core audience is the Asian population – predominantly Indians, followed by Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. Pakistanis are a massive audience who add to your ratings. However, all our programming comes from India and is strictly Indian in many ways. To engage more Pakistani audiences, we got in touch with a Pakistani channel A Plus and did a syndication deal with them for Mera Naam Yousuf Hai. The show did exceedingly well here (UK) and raised our ratings by 40% (2016).

In a similar vein, Shruti Jain, Senior Director, Indiacast, the distribution arm of Viacom 18 responsible for domestic and international distribution of the network, explained to me in an interview how Colors’ second-line channel Rishtey that aired syndicated Pakistani content in the UK market was a pre-experiment for Pakistani channels and prepared the ground for their launch. ⁶

While these experiments were testing grounds for Pakistani channels in the UK and European markets, they could also be considered as pilot studies to understand the appeal of Pakistani content amongst South Asian audiences, especially the Indian diaspora that Zindagi may have taken a cue from. These experiments in programming indicate new distribution circuits in media flows within the transnational media market scene: an Indian channel Star Plus, which predominantly showcases Indian programming, syndicates content from a Pakistani channel to cater to a transnational audience residing in the United Kingdom. Arjun Appadurai’s proposition of ‘disjunctures’ created by global media flows comes most alive in this example as the key question remains how do we study such complex flows that cannot be contained within a simplistic binary of North–South flows (Appadurai, 1996)? These flows emanate from media peripheries and lead towards other peripheries that are paradoxically addressing an audience situated in the supposed centre (United Kingdom, here).

Throughout the twentieth century, globalisation was used as an umbrella term to validate capital, cultural, technological and media transactions amongst nations. This was primarily because these transactions mostly originated from the West to the rest of the world (Thussu, 2007). However, in the last two decades, cultural globalisation has led to intraregional as well as non-West to West media transactions amongst nations. Daya Kishan Thussu’s typology of the main media flows provides an elementary framework for understanding these flows. In Thussu’s observation, ‘dominant flows’ emanate ‘from the global North, with the United States at its core’, whereas ‘subaltern flows’ and ‘geo-cultural flows’ highlight reverse-order flows (Thussu, 2007, p.10). The ‘subaltern’ or ‘contraflows’, for example, Bollywood or Japanese animation, originate from the ‘peripheries of global media industries’ and not only have a strong regional presence but also target audiences outside the primary constituency (Thussu, 2007, p. 4). The ‘geo-cultural flows’ on the other hand cater to ‘specific cultural linguistic audiences’ and are aimed at but not limited to diasporic audiences scattered around the world, for example, Zee TV (Thussu, 2007, p. 13). Although the popularity of Pakistani serials in India may be understood through the prism of ‘geo-cultural flows’, conceiving them as reverse flows set against ‘dominant’ Western flows gives unwarranted precedence to the West. How do we define those flows which do not recognise Western media presence and operate within a new transnational economy that decentres the West? Borrowing from Thussu, but building further on the concept of such multidirectional flows, I propose the descriptor ‘neo-global flows’, which are not necessarily ‘contra’ in the way Thussu defines the term, but function in an economy independent of the West and may or may not be consumed along with dominant Western flows. Contemporary ‘neo-global’ flows discard the dichotomy of ‘dominant’ versus ‘subaltern’ flows, and instead acknowledge a multidimensional flow of production and exchange between production hubs situated in diverse geographies across the globe. Thus, Pakistani programming on Zindagi that caters to nondiasporic, cultural linguistic audiences may be best defined as a ‘neo-global’ flow that operates between media peripheries like India and Pakistan and must not be gauged against any Western flows. The term ‘neo-global’ also gains currency in the contemporary media environment as it recognises the prominence of media texts from non-West nations and dismantles the theories of media imperialism calling for a reassessment of media flows by decentring the centre.

The approbation of Pakistani serials in India and the resultant ‘neo-global’ flows can further be understood within the framework of ‘cultural proximity’ and ‘coevalness’ (Iwabuchi, 2002; Straubhaar, 1991). According to Straubhaar (1991), who examines the intraregional televisual flows in Latin America, other than the mostly preferred national programmes, audiences tend to choose programmes that are most proximate to them in cultural and linguistic terms. Cultural proximity is the ‘seemingly common attraction audiences feel for cultural products… that are close in cultural content and style to the audience’s own culture’ (Straubhaar, 2007, p. 26). It depends mainly not only on language but also dress, body language, humour, music, religion, etc. (Straubhaar & Pastina, 2005,p. 274).

Exploring the intraregional flows in East Asia, Koichi Iwabuchi’s study of the reception of Japanese TV dramas amongst Taiwanese audiences furthers Straubhaar’s thesis and provides an analogy to understand the popularity of Pakistani dramas amongst Indian audiences (Iwabuchi, 2002). Japanese dramas are preferred amongst its neighbouring Taiwanese audiences because they provide a model of lived experiences and modernity as perceived in East Asia as opposed to an aspirational modernity portrayed by American serials (Iwabuchi, 2002). While Iwabuchi agrees with Straubhaar’s proposition of ‘cultural proximity’, he elaborates the concept by observing its spatio-temporal dimension. Giving agency to the audiences, he argues that cultural proximity is not imbibed in the text and does not ‘exist a priori but occurs a posteriori’ whereby audiences ‘subjectively identify it in a specific program and context’ (Iwabuchi, 2002, p. 134). It is rather conceived as a ‘dynamic process of becoming’ in which the Taiwanese audiences share a comfortable distance and a sense of ‘coevalness’ or modern temporality with the Japanese (Iwabuchi, 2002, p. 156). A similar logic may be applicable in South Asia, where despite political differences, Indians also share a similar ‘coevalness’ with Pakistanis that resonates with their own sense of modernity. ‘Asian modernities’ as Iwabuchi terms them, serve the Asian audiences a possible reality of their present and not an unrealistic dream of the future (Iwabuchi, 2002, p. 146). The term ‘neo-global’ flows advances both Straubhaar and Iwabuchi’s exploration of intraregional flows amongst non-West nations by encapsulating not just intraregional but also transregional circulations amongst media peripheries. Thus, the media flows that Zindagi insinuated by broadcasting the content from Pakistan, as well as Turkey, Brazil, Ukraine, and Korea, may be best defined as ‘neo-global’ flows. In doing so, Indians encountered a modernity that was not restricted to South Asian sensibilities but found consonance with more expansive non-Asian, non-Western cultures, a phenomenon that Brian Larkin terms ‘parallel modernities’, which shall be discussed later (Larkin, 1997).

Refiguring Audiences and Zindagi’s Programming Strategy

Content syndication is a regular practice in the Indian television industry. However, until the arrival of Zindagi, most of the content that was acquired came from the United States or the United Kingdom, and hence, remained unrelatable for large sections of the Indian population. With Pakistani TV serials on Zindagi, Indian audiences witnessed a world that was foreign to them and yet very similar to their own. The popularity of Pakistani serials can be understood in the context of the overtly melodramatic Indian TV soaps that did not resonate with SEC A audiences, ⁷ much like Vohra’s case in the 1980s. An article in a Pakistani newspaper Dawn (2014) mentioned that Zindagi officials handpicked shows after sifting through 4000 hours of content. Zindagi’s Chief Creative Head, Shailaja Kejriwal explained in a telephonic interview that the channel’s market research demonstrated that since Indian television penetrated to the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, it had nothing to offer to the SEC A audiences, who had stopped watching mainstream Hindi television (Kejriwal, 2015). Pakistani dramas broadcast on Zindagi attempted to fill this vacuum created by the Hindi GECs. Kejriwal equates the arrival of differentiated content that came with Pakistani dramas to the arrival of a variety of cinematic experience that came with multiplexes.

Similar to Kejriwal’s perspective is that of Zee TV’s Bharat Ranga who said in an article published in The Caravan that Zindagi’s vision of syndicating Pakistani content returns to cable television’s original brief – ‘progressive audiences concentrated around south Mumbai and south Delhi. The top socio-economic category of consumers – “SEC A+” in marketing lingo – were the first consumers of cable television, and of Zee’s earliest soaps, such as Tara (Star, 1993–1997) and Hasratein (Yearnings, 1996–1999)’ (Kaur, 2014). Zindagi’s target audience were also the ‘English-speaking, smart phone-owning women between the ages of 15 and 44’ who lived in metropolitan cities (Kaur, 2014). Thus, it is clear that Zindagi operated in a space that was different from the Hindi GECs and catered to a ‘television-multiplex audience’ that was urbane, educated and cosmopolitan in its approach. Pakistani serials’ depiction of a balance between the tradition and modernity struck a chord with this set of audiences. The selection of content was also done considering the sensibilities of Indian audiences who prefer female-oriented narratives. In a telephonic interview, Geetika Johari from Zindagi’s programming team explained the programming model of Pakistani content:

Like we have the saas–bahu model, Pakistani serials have the two-sisters model. The point of conflict is between the two sisters either vying for the same man’s love or other such plots. The narratives are more grounded as opposed to Indian content, good looking artists and realistic representation. So, people liked that difference. (Johari, 2016)

While Johari’s analogy of the two-sisters model may hold true for a few Pakistani dramas like Maat (defeat, 2011) or Mera Naseeb (my destiny, 2011), it is untrue that all story plots worked similarly. On 23 June 2014, a Pakistani drama Zindgai Gulzar Hai, along with other Pakistani dramas like Aunn Zara, aired on Zindagi and took the entire nation by storm. Based on an eponymous novel written by Umera Ahmed and directed by Sultana Siddiqui, the 26-episode series revolves around the lives of its protagonists Zaroon Junaid (played by Fawad Khan) and Kashaf Murtaza (played by Sanam Saeed), who are poles apart in their ideologies and social statuses. Zaroon, a charming, affluent, educated but conservative Muslim boy falls in love with a fierce and liberal Kashaf who battles everyday misogyny in the family and outside. Living in a lower class Karachi neighbourhood with two younger sisters and a mother estranged from her husband, Kashaf’s only way towards socially upward mobility is through education. The narrative is driven forward by both the protagonists’ diary entries conveyed to the audience as monologues (Figure 2). The serial highlights the class conflict and gender roles prescribed for women in Pakistan’s societal structures. Although Zaroon loves and respects the women in his life, his frequent interactions with them reveal his regressive and patriarchal ideology that perceives that a woman’s duty should be directed towards her family and husband. Kashaf, on the other hand, is the ‘new traditional woman’ who fills the gap between ‘a pious middle class and a Westernised liberal elite’ (Hussain, 2016). Despite venturing out for work, she accepts male authority by cooking for her husband, raising a family and taking care of the household. Another Pakistani serial Humsafar, based on a novel written by Farhat Ishtiaq and directed by Sarmad Sultan, is the story of a rich boy Ashar (played by Fawad Khan), who marries his lower middle class cousin, Khirad (played by Mahira Khan). Although it is a forced alliance, eventually love blossoms between the two as they develop trust in each other (Figure 3). But this trust is broken when Ashar is trapped in a plot set by his mother that raises questions over Khirad’s fidelity. The two are separated. While the self-respecting Khirad dares to raise her daughter all by herself, Ashar ‘lacks her moral certitude and self-confidence, revealing a masculinity in crisis’. (Yaqin, 2017)

OPEN IN VIEWER Figure 2.

Protagonist Kashaf in the opening scene of Zindagi Gulzar Hai.

OPEN IN VIEWER Figure 3.

Protagonists Khirad and Ashar in a scene from Humsafar

Despite the chauvinistic male characters in these arguably progressive fictional narratives, modern Indian women audiences perceived these Pakistani serials to be emancipatory in comparison with Indian soap operas. As opposed to the submissive damsels-in-distress of Hindi soap opera women, Pakistani serials’ independent and strong-willed Kashaf or Khirad defy class and gender roles existing in the Pakistani social milieu. With their high production values, realistic settings, relatable characters and finite series, Pakistani TV serials targeted the ‘television multiplex audiences’ who were fatigued by the mainstream Hindi GECs. While ZGH and Humsafar were able to draw audience attention in large numbers, other serials like Kitni Girahein Baaqi Hain (how many knots are left to untie), Waqt ne Kiya Kya Haseen Sitam (what an unjust joke time has inflicted) or Behadd (limitless) were also well appreciated. Although Indian soap operas have also often dealt with the patriarchal setup of families, social and moral values, societal class differences and women’s empowerment, their hyperbolism and crude execution often takes away from the viewing pleasure and makes the content difficult for audiences to identify with. The exaggerated and unrealistic plots about saas–bahus, palatial households, women dressed in designer sarees, garish make-up and jewellery, deafening background scores that overpower the dialogues, the emotional histrionics of the actors, camera angles with extreme closeups and swish pans, fast-paced, shot-reverse-shot editing patterns and endless narratives create a melodramatic excess in the Indian soap operas. In contrast, the subtle melodramatic form utilised in Pakistani dramas, familiarity with the Hindustani language, characters with racial and ethnic similarities and cultural codes very familiar to one’s own social environment made a direct connection with Indian audiences despite the TV dramas being imported from a foreign country. Pakistani serials’ adoption of realist aesthetics like women dressed in casual salwar–kameez often without make-up, middle-class households, everyday situations that appeared believable, conversational dialogues, fast-paced narratives, long shots and slow pans provided them an edge over their highly dramatised Indian counterparts. With admirable acting skills, Pakistani television actors in their fictional roles captured Indian TV screens for a while, at least in urban north India. Actors like Fawad Khan and Mahira Khan also made an impact with their roles in Bollywood films, becoming icons that bridged ideological and cultural gaps between the two politically turbulent nations. ⁸ Since many popular dramas, like Humsafar and ZGH, are literary adaptations of popular Urdu novels, the narratives often concluded within 20–25 episodes. This characteristic of being a finite series, that remains absent in the contemporary Indian televisionscape, was a unique feature that fascinated Indian audiences.

Broadcast’s Censorial Interventions and YouTubing Pakistani Dramas

While the popularity of Pakistani dramas amongst Indian audiences must be credited to Zindagi, the role of the video-sharing website YouTube is worth mentioning in maintaining their popularity during and after the Zindagi phase. Since major Pakistani broadcasters like Hum TV, Geo TV and ARY Digital have a significant presence on YouTube, many Pakistani series were readily available on their respective YouTube channels, even before Zindagi’s launch. However, very few people who were already acquainted with Pakistani content watched these on YouTube before Zindagi brought Pakistani content into the mainstream. Many who initially watched Pakistani content on Zindagi soon switched over to YouTube and binge watched the entire series prior to its television broadcast. A user comment on a thread titled ‘Zindagi Gulzar Hai – A Masterpiece! on the website indiaforum.com describes the euphoria that ZGH created amongst Indian audiences.

Although the pleasure of binge watching the serial was a primary factor that led many young audiences to switch over to YouTube, it was aided by many other reasons. The finite series model of Pakistani serials made binge watching a possible mode of consumption for digital audiences. Since the narrative of Indian soaps goes on for several years, one cannot fathom what binge watching five hundred episodes of a soap opera could lead to, in terms of time and data expenses. Moreover, all Hindi GECs had pulled their episodic content off YouTube by 2014 and made it alternatively available on their respective mobile applications. So, Pakistani dramas became a major attraction amongst Hindi-speaking audiences who had at their disposal an array of programmes with full-length episodes that could be streamed at any time of the day.

The popularity of Pakistani serials on YouTube was soon gauged by the broadcasters and, as a precautionary measure, the titles of some serials were changed when launched on Zindagi. For instance, Hum TV’s popular drama Datsaan (fable, 2010) was renamed and launched as Waqt ne Kiya Kya Haseen Sitam for Zindagi audiences and Geo TV’s Mann ke Moti (pearls of the heart, 2010) was launched as Khel Qismat Ka (destiny’s game). Kejriwal explains that by retaining the same name, there were more chances of people watching it on YouTube than on Zindagi, which could directly impact the channel’s ratings, hence, the title change (2015). Besides binge watching, another advantage of watching Pakistani dramas on YouTube was the pleasure of watching full-length episodes without any censor cuts. Like all syndicated content, most Pakistani serials were broadcast ‘as is’ without any major alterations in the content. As informed by the channel officials in my field interviews, the only modifications made were in accordance with the Standards and Practices guidelines to avoid censorship issues. Therefore, scenes that were politically problematic, extremely violent, or depicted consumption of alcohol, etc., were often deleted. Apart from that, Johari mentioned that the broadcasters did not have the legal right to change the content. However, Waqt ne, set against the backdrop of the India–Pakistan partition and promoted as ‘a timeless love story’ by Zindagi, is an example that demonstrates censorial interference.

Based on a novel titled Bano written by Razia Butt, the plot of Waqt ne revolves around the romance of its protagonists, Hasan (played by Fawad Khan) and Bano (Sanam Baloch), who are separated in the India–Pakistan partition. Bano is abducted by a Sikh man Basant and is forcibly raped, converted to Sikhism, married and forced to give birth to his child. Zindagi’s business head, Priyanka Datta, clarified in an article on a Pakistani website hipinpakistan.com that, since the partition narrative unfolds through Bano’s perspective, a Pakistani Muslim, ‘we have neutralised it from the Indian perspective. We have edited the show with a very balanced approach’ (Bhutto, 2015). But evident ruptures in the narrative made it impossible for the audiences to follow the edited version of the series on Zindagi; therefore, many watched the original Pakistani version, Dastaan available on Hum TV’s YouTube channel. The alternative partition narrative that Waqt ne unfolded was at odds with the narrative that Indian audiences had been served with through oral histories, literature and media artefacts. While the Indian audiences willingly accepted the breaking down of the stereotypical ‘other’ through Pakistani dramas, the historical dimension of Hindu–Muslim riots and the ‘communal vilification of the Indian Hindus and India’ did not go down well with them (Bhattacharya & Nag, 2016, p. 9). Despite the edited version broadcast on Zindagi, the Broadcasting Content Complaints Council (BCCC) ¹⁰ received complaints against the show claiming it to be ‘anti-India and portraying Hindus and Sikhs negatively’ while depicting the Muslim community as victims. ¹¹ Thus, for a serial like Waqt ne, YouTube became a primary medium of access despite its regular broadcasts, not only due to the ease of access but also because of censorial interruptions. This is also indicative of how television’s repressive national framework upholds the ethical and moral rationalities of the nation–state, whereas the digital platform’s transnational structure enables the circulation of what may be considered unacceptable on television.

While terrestrial broadcasting no longer offers a ‘mediating space’ like Zindagi for Indian audiences, global digital platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime have become significant in familiarising India with its distanced ‘other’ in the post-Zindagi phase. Both these platforms include a number of Pakistani serials like ZGH, Daam (price, 2010) and Sadqay Tumhare (I offer myself to you, 2014) amongst others in their content catalogue. Netflix and Amazon Prime’s global presence and transnational appeal indicate new flows that go beyond territorial frontiers. The presence of Pakistani content on these platforms may, on the one hand, restrict its accessibility for Indian audiences for whom digital content is still a luxury, but, on the other, this broadens its availability for a transnational audience beyond India and Pakistan. Since television and nation are intrinsically linked to one another, geographical boundaries of nation–states find prominence in the discussion of televisual flows. However, digital platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime, although originating from North America, are not identified by territorial borders owing to their global reach and networked mechanism. Furthermore, the indirect hegemony of Western nations through ownership patterns of these platforms redirects our attention towards dominant digital media flows that still emanate from the West. Thus, while the descriptor ‘neo-global’ flows may be suitable to discuss the televisual flows between non-West nations, the complex trajectories that these digital platforms chart further complicate South Asian digital media flows. These flows require a new vocabulary and must be examined through the lens of scholarship on postnetwork television.

The Idea of a New Foreign and the Familiar/ Unfamiliar Paradox

The broadcast of Pakistani serials on Zindagi disrupted the equivalence of ‘foreign’ as necessarily ‘Western’ in Indian television programming. The earlier perceptions of ‘foreign’ that came with American and British TV programming during the 1990s saw foreign programming as culturally invasive and detrimental for the Hindu nation. The right-wing extremists characterised this as cultural contamination wherein the Hindu girls, in their process of socialisation, would often ‘allude not to Sita of Valmiki’s Ramayana, but to Gina of Star Plus’s Santa Barbara’ (Sinha, 1993). Satellite TV’s free-to-air availability, Western programming content, its functioning from outside the Indian territory and nonconformance to Indian laws became a concern for the naysayers (Oza, 2012, p. 53). Western TV programmes during the 1990s were largely perceived as impure, amoral and alien, and to endanger the social and moral fabric of the Hindu nation.

However, the imagination of the ‘foreign’ that Pakistani serials propagated was different from the earlier perceptions of foreign as morally and culturally invasive. The new ‘foreign’, although emanating from a Muslim nation, was familiar, had a similar social and moral ethos, was closer to home and essentially non-Western. The pleasures of watching foreign TV programming were altered with Pakistani serials as Indian audiences, for the first time, watched foreign content that did not require the cultural capital to comprehend a new language or read subtitles. Pakistani soaps’ usage of the Urdu language enhanced the ease of watching these programmes due to its striking similarity with the Hindustani spoken all over North India. ¹² The language used in Pakistani dramas was also the language of Bombay Cinema of the 1940s, 50s and 60s and Pakistani television serials of the 1980s like Tanhaiyaan (loneliness, 1985–2011) and Ankahi (unsaid, 1982) (Bhattacharya & Nag, 2016, p. 5). While the usage of Urdu words like behiss (insensitive) and taqaddus (purity) may have appeared difficult to comprehend, the familiar socio-cultural milieu of the Pakistani serials, along with the use of Hindustani, made comprehension easier. In fact, for some of the serials, a glossary of urdu words appeared on the TV screens that made understanding Pakistani texts easier and upgraded the urdu vocabulary of Indian audiences.

The broadcast of Pakistani serials on Zindagi challenged the propagandist representations of Pakistani people that the Indian media had been circulating and familiarised the audiences with a doubly distanced ‘other’ (Bhattacharya & Nag, 2016, p. 5). For Indians, these serials demystified the misconstrued mediatised perceptions of a middle-class Pakistani citizen. In an article in The Guardian, Kejriwal mentions how the test audiences for Zindagi who were shown Pakistani dramas were ‘stunned and excited’ when told that ‘these places were in Pakistan because they felt so familiar’ (Boone & Jain, 2014). Documenting the popularity of the Pakistani soap ZGH amongst Indian audiences, Nirupama Subramaniam mentions that the unique selling proposition of Pakistani serials lies in the act of ‘making the unfamiliar appear so familiar’ (Subramaniam, 2014). Due to a shared cultural history between the two nations, the iconography that appears in Pakistani serials, she asserts, is similar to their Indian counterparts; in fact, more realistic (Subramaniam, 2014).

A user comment on the discussion forum indiaforums.com enunciated the familiarity of ZGH for Indian audiences:

(User – nevah_mind): I’m very happy that a whole generation and maybe even more is getting to watch a complete story in a locally familiar language, in setups, which are so familiar to us, as against the soaps that dominate our serials…..for the first time, our people are seeing heartfelt stories (sitting in their homes), from Pakistan, which has people who live/believe/ react just like us (2014).

This ‘familiar–unfamiliar’ paradox dominated the conversations around ZGH and other Pakistani serials. While on the one hand, geographical and cultural proximity between the two nations rendered a familiarity with each other’s cultures, on the other, the circulation of mediatised images, especially from Pakistan, made the otherwise familiar, unfamiliar. As opposed to the dark and threatening images that both Indian and Pakistani propagandist news media were circulating of a state that resembled a quasi-Taliban setup with men draped in kurta–payjamas and women swathed in burqas, Zindagi made Indian audiences believe in a Pakistan that was modern, liberal and educated. Subramaniam corroborates:

Indian viewers now know that Pakistani women step out of their homes, they go to offices to work, an arterial road in Karachi pretty much looks the same in evening rush hour as it does in an Indian city, and that public transport is the same as in India—abysmal (2014).

It is interesting to note that the idea of a new ‘foreign’ was further extended by Zindagi beyond Pakistan to introduce stories from other countries with television serials like Fatmagul and Little Lord (2014–2015) from Turkey, Descendants of the Sun (2016–2017) from South Korea, Total Dreamer (2015–2016) from Brazil and Snowdrop (2015) from Ukraine. Unlike Western soap operas that depict aspirations towards an unachievable lifestyle for the postcolonial Indian viewer, these TV programmes portrayed identifiable characters trapped in familiar situations. Since these programmes were in a foreign language and belonged to a distant culture when compared to Pakistan, they were dubbed in a hybridised ‘Hinglish’ language – a mixture of Hindi and English that originated with Zee TV in early 1990s to cater to an urban middle-class audience (Thussu, 2000, p. 197). While dubbed content vis-à-vis original runs the risk of getting lost in cultural translation, Turkish TV series, in particular, were better received than their Pakistani counterparts and raised the overall ratings of the channel. A major reason to syndicate the Turkish shows to India was their success in Pakistan. Sunil Buch, Chief Business Officer, ZEEL, mentioned in an article that in the week 45 of 2015, Feriha was the most popular show on the channel with 3,68,000 impressions in the Urban Hindi Speaking Markets (Irani, 2017). Despite apprehensions that Turkey was linguistically and culturally different and twice removed when compared to Pakistan, Johari clarifies the popularity of Turkish dramas in India:

Turkish shows opened the world to us. In production quality, they were three levels ahead of Pakistani content – better looking actors, scenic locales, shot like a film, diverse storylines. They have similar family structures – parents taking a call on everything, respect for elders, maintaining the sanctity in relationships and so on (2016).

To comprehend the popularity of Pakistani and other foreign language serials on Zindagi, Brian Larkin’s conception of ‘parallel modernities’ is a useful framework. Similar to Iwabuchi’s concept of ‘Asian modernities’, Larkin (1997, p. 410), in his study of the circulation and consumption of Bollywood films amongst African Hausa audiences, suggests the term ‘parallel modernities’ to refer to the ‘coexistence in space and time of multiple economic, religious and cultural flows that are often subsumed within the term ‘modernity’. He argues that Bollywood films offer ‘images of a parallel modernity to the West’ and provide ‘imagined realities of other cultures’ to the postcolonial Hausa viewer alternatively also consuming his/her own culture (Larkin 1997, p. 410). Zindagi’s broadcast of Pakistani TV serials (also serials from Korea, Turkey, etc.) can also be understood in the light of Larkin’s conception of ‘parallel modernities’ that offers an insight into the experience of Indian audiences ‘who participate in the imagined realities’ of Pakistani cultures as part of their daily lives (Larkin 1997, p. 410). For Indian audiences, Pakistani serials offered narratives they could empathise with, characters whose daily struggles and aspirations were like millions of Indians and societal structures that resembled their own. The emphasis given to family morals, the position of women in the society, marriage alliances that were primarily arranged, respect for elders and the sanctity of relationships were values that Indian audiences could identify with. Many Indian women also began to imitate the fashion trends set by Pakistani actors and the popularity of palazzo pants and Karachi kurtas witnessed a dramatic upsurge. Through fashion trends, urdu vocabulary and a similar cultural and moral universe, Pakistani dramas offered to Indian audiences what Larkin terms a ‘mediating space’ whereby they maintained a balance between the Indian tradition and Pakistani modernity (Larkin 1997, p. 410).

Conclusion

This article has analysed the social, cultural and political implications of watching Pakistani television serials on the Indian channel Zindagi during 2014–2016. The popularity of Pakistani serials is mapped against domestic TV programming that is saturated with regressive saas–bahu plotlines on the one hand and foreign TV programming that broadcast in English language, and hence, remains incomprehensible to a large section of Indian audiences on the other. The article argues that the circulation of Pakistani dramas in India perpetuates new flows amongst media peripheries; termed ‘neo-global’ flows these operate in an independent economy not influenced by the West. Furthermore, it is argued that the Pakistani serials offered a ‘mediating space’ whereby Indian audiences witnessed a modernity that, despite being foreign, was more culturally resonant for them than American and British TV programming. However, this ‘mediating space’ ceased to exist once Pakistani TV serials’ short and successful stint came to an end in September 2016, when Zee TV’s owner Subhash Chandra imposed a ban on their broadcast due to the heated environment following the Uri attacks and political friction between the two nations. Since the right-wing Bhartiya Janata Party took over in May 2014, communal politics has been on the rise and peace building efforts between the two nations have been replaced by border ceasefire violations. This had a direct impact on the broadcast of Pakistani serials, as Indian audiences wished to boycott everything that came from the neighbouring nation. Due to increasing political pressure, film directors and television producers refrained from working with Pakistani artistes and actors like Fawad Khan and Mahira Khan, who were condemned for their silence on the attack. As a result, the channel immediately pulled off all Pakistani content from its programming schedule despite Chandra mentioning in a press conference that Zindagi still possessed 3000 hours of unseen content (Lakhani, 2016). Thus, a channel that had shouldered the responsibility of uniting the two nations with ‘sarhad paar ki kahaaniyan’ gave up on the possibility of peaceful collaborations and bilateral media relations between India and Pakistan. ¹³