- Sunday, June 15, 2025
By: Vibhuti Pathak
As political tensions between India and Pakistan intensify, the entertainment world is witnessing the fallout. Prominent Pakistani actors Mahira Khan and Fawad Khan have now been removed from the posters of their Bollywood films on popular music platforms like Spotify and YouTube Music. The visual edits mark a broader cultural shift tied to the growing diplomatic rift between the two nations.
Mahira Khan, who starred opposite Shah Rukh Khan in Raees, has been erased from the film’s album cover. The new artwork now features Shah Rukh alone, omitting all traces of Mahira. This follows a similar change involving actress Mawra Hocane, who has disappeared from the Sanam Teri Kasam album visuals. On those platforms, only actor Harshvardhan Rane remains on the cover.
Fawad Khan, once hailed as Bollywood’s cross-border heartthrob, is the latest to be impacted. His face has been edited out of the poster for the Kapoor & Sons song Buddhu Sa Mann, which also stars Sidharth Malhotra and Alia Bhatt.
More significantly, the video itself is no longer available for Indian viewers on YouTube. A notice reads: “Video unavailable. The uploader has not made this video available in your country.” The video was originally shared by Sony Music India.
Meanwhile, the poster of Khoobsurat, featuring Sonam Kapoor and Fawad Khan, remains unchanged—at least for now. However, insiders suggest that further changes could follow depending on ongoing developments in India-Pakistan relations.
These visual edits appear to be part of a broader unofficial crackdown on Pakistani talent in Indian entertainment, coinciding with Operation Sindoor—a strong retaliatory military strike carried out by India on May 7, targeting nine terror camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir. The Indian government has since escalated its stance on terror, vowing not to tolerate “nuclear blackmail.”
In a recent speech, prime minister Narendra Modi called the strikes a “new normal” and asserted a paradigm shift in India’s approach to dealing with cross-border terrorism. As a result, streaming platforms and OTT services have begun quietly phasing out Pakistani content, aligning with the government’s hardened stance.
When approached, Sanam Teri Kasam producer Deepak Mukut said he wasn’t consulted about the poster edits. “They didn’t ask me, it’s their decision. Whatever our government says, everyone has to follow,” he told Hindustan Times.
Actor Harshvardhan Rane responded to Mawra Hocane’s removal with a touch of irony, saying, “Now they will say that my PR team got this done! No, it’s again common sense I assume, weeding is being exercised.”
As India’s cultural and political landscape adjusts to this “new normal,” the erasure of Pakistani actors from Indian platforms signals a symbolic but powerful shift in the entertainment industry’s role in geopolitics.
