“Inside Pakistan’s Khalistan Film Project”, Khalsa Vox, January 07, 2026
“As India and its Punjab region continue to command global attention for rapid economic growth, institutional reform, and social progress, Pakistan’s Punjab remains mired in corruption, scandals, and chronic mismanagement. Rather than confront its domestic failures, the Pakistani state has increasingly leaned on anti-India narratives, mobilizing state-aligned media houses, social media influencers, YouTubers, and filmmakers to manufacture distraction and shape public opinion through cultural production.
This instrumentalization of cinema is not new. For decades, Pakistani films and television dramas have repeatedly depicted Sikh characters – particularly Sikh women – through a narrow and deeply contested lens. Several productions have relied on Islamization or “conversion romance” tropes that many Sikh commentators view as degrading and ideologically loaded. Films such as Veryam (1981) are remembered for portraying a Sikh woman’s emotional movement toward a Muslim male lead in a manner that implicitly positions Islam and Muslim culture as superior and more desirable. Larki Punjaban (2003), centered on a cross-border romance between a Pakistani Muslim man and an Indian Sikh woman, has been criticised for resting on the fantasy of Sikh women emotionally or spiritually gravitating toward Islam and Muslim Pakistan despite its late narrative “twist.” Similarly, Bilqees Kaur (2012) situates a Sikh-origin female character within a Muslim household, normalizing absorption into a Muslim identity rather than affirming Sikh identity with independent dignity.
Taken together, these storylines are widely seen by Sikhs as part of a broader civilizational hierarchy embedded in Pakistani popular culture, one that subordinates Sikh agency, particularly that of women, to narratives favoring Islam and Pakistani nationalism. This pattern is reinforced by stage and screen comedy, where caricatured “Sardar” figures, often performed with fake turbans and exaggerated mannerisms, are deployed for laughs, echoing the wider “Sardar joke” culture and reducing Sikhs to loud, naive, or buffoonish stereotypes rather than serious historical or political act…..”
Read full article at khalsavox.com
