Atif Aslam’s Tajdar-e-Haram Rings Out Over Bollywood Film Promotion at Wagah Border, Drowning Out the Speeches
Atif Aslam Wagah was not a billing anyone had planned. Bollywood actors Ayushmann Khurrana and Sara Ali Khan arrived at the Wagah-Attari border on Tuesday to promote their upcoming film Udta Teer, and the loudest voice at their event turned out to be coming from across the fence.
The two actors were addressing fans and Indian security personnel with Pakistan’s Bab-e-Azadi crossing and the Pakistani flag visible directly behind them when Coke Studio’s celebrated rendition of Tajdar-e-Haram, sung by Atif Aslam, rolled in from the Pakistani side at full volume. Their speeches were still going on; they were simply no longer the easiest thing to hear.
Khurrana, visibly emotional, told the crowd that every visit to the border moves him, while Sara Ali Khan opened with a “Namaste” and a message of love for the audience. Neither carried clearly over the music filling the air behind them.
The story followed the pair home. When Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions posted the promotional video on Instagram, the border-speech scenes had quietly disappeared and the original background sound had been replaced with a different track. Pakistani social media users spotted the edit at once. One wrote that Dharma had to lay music over the clip because keeping the original sound would have been embarrassing; others demanded the unedited version. An Indian user read it differently, saying the loud music from the Pakistani side had backfired as a disruption and instead handed the actors another viral moment.
Udta Teer, which releases on October 23, has been courting controversy well before its opening. The film centres on a Pakistani spy who loses his memory during a mission and comes to believe he is an Indian officer, and Indian media reports say several critics have described it as carrying an anti-Pakistan narrative. Nepal’s censor board has also refused it a public screening certificate, without citing a specific reason.
