MNS issues diktat to all Pakistani artistes: 'Leave India in 48 hours, or else...'

The MNS’ film wing — the Chitrapat Sena — has issued a 48-hour deadline to all Pakistani artistes to leave the country. [caption id=“attachment_3016964” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] The MNS’ diktat to all Pakistani artistes in India is to leave within 48 hours[/caption] On Friday, 23 September, the MNS Chitrapat Sena’s president Amey Khopkar issued a statement saying: “We gave a 48 hour deadline to Pakistani actors and artists to leave India or MNS will push them out." The MSN’ diktat comes at a time when ties between India and Pakistan are particularly tense, after the attack by infiltrators in Uri, Kashmir, that left 18 Indian military personnel dead. The MNS’ strident anti-Pakistan stance is not new. In January this year, the Raj Thackeray-headed political organisation had threatened to disrupt a proposed concert by ghazal maestro Ghulam Ali, if it was held in Mumbai. The MNS’ political rival, the Shiv Sena, had also joined in the protest. Ali’s concert — which had incidentally been planned by the Nationalist Congress Party, and was scheduled for a month after the Pathankot terror attack  — was finally cancelled. In October 2015, the MNS had refused to allow the screening of Pakistani actress Mahira Khan’s film Bin Roye in Maharashtra, while in 2012, MNS chief Raj Thackeray slammed musician Asha Bhosle for working with Pakistani singers on a TV show aired on the channel Colors. “Pakistan and Bangladesh are aiming to destroy our country and she makes artistes from Pakistan big,” Thackeray said. Calls for Pakistani artists to leave India have been growing after the Uri attacks. Singer Abhijeet, who was last in the news after his incendiary tweets against a woman journalist invited a police case, criticised Indian filmmakers for “feeding and breeding” artistes from across the border. The MNS’ Chitrapat Sena was most recently in the news for protesting against the Marathi dubbed version of MS Dhoni: The Untold Story. Khopkar had said at the time that dubbed movies would eat into the business of Marathi films. The Mumbai Police later responded to the controversy by issuing this statement:

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