Does a Pakistani actor posing nude mean things are changing?

The unlikeliest things can happen in Pakistan. This time, it seems an actor from next door might not just have become some sort of rallying cause for liberals of sorts, always under siege, if not actively bumped off by assorted fundos in that country, but may even herald some sort of change in the ‘permissible’ limits imposed on women. A stir was caused when Veena Malik, something of a lower-rung starlet, posed in the buff for an Indian magazine, with the words ISI written on her arms.

Even as she claimed the photos had been morphed — which the magazine denied — and even as it seemed this was all part of a choreographed publicity stunt, word filtered through that the reaction in Pakistan seems to have been, well, rather muted. One would have expected to see sundry ‘religious’ potentates screaming bloody murder and calling for the head of the offending female, what with much less leading to deathly fatwas and plain bumping off in that troubled land.

But, as it turned out, most Pakistanis didn’t seem to have much of an adverse opinion, or just plain didn’t care enough about one of their lot posing provocatively for a magazine in the perceived hostile neighbour’s land. Which, as you might expect, is a bit much in a country where honour killings and other such ‘direct solutions’ to anything resembling free choice are quite normal.

So, the ‘ Pakistani WMD’, as she was dubbed, turned out to be a bit of a flop. Then again, a surprising number of women activists and writers came out in her defence, more so as the lady had the courage to take on a fiery mullah on TV once. Others, of course, called her a classic case of commodifying female bodies. Whatever the case, there were no fatwas, no cash prizes for killing, not even street protests. Is this progress, then?