MUMBAI, India_As tensions with rival Pakistan fuel jingoistic fervor in India, a Hindu nationalist party has withdrawn its opposition to an upcoming Bollywood film after its producers promised they no longer would work with Pakistani artists.
The deal appeared to clear the way for the Oct. 28 release of "Ae Dil Hai Mushkil" ("This Heart is Complicated"), a romantic drama that had been threatened with violence because its cast includes Pakistani actor Fawad Khan.
The Hindu party, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, or MNS, picketed outside the producers' offices and vowed to burn theaters that showed the film, timed for release on the eve of the Hindu festival Diwali. Twelve party workers were arrested in the past week for threatening a theater owner in Mumbai, India's film capital.
The chief minister of Maharashtra state, Devendra Fadnavis, earlier said police would deal firmly with any protesters who broke the law.
But on Saturday, Fadnavis brokered the deal between the MNS and producers, signaling that even the state's top elected official was eager to capitalize on the anti-Pakistan sentiment that has swept India. Fadnavis is a member of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The $2.3 billion Bollywood film industry, India's biggest entertainment draw, includes a small number of Pakistani performers and technicians. The head of the MNS party, Raj Thackeray, called for them all to be banned from the country after a Sept. 18 attack on an Indian army base along the disputed border with Pakistan, in which 19 soldiers died.
India blamed the attack on Pakistan-backed militants and retaliated days later with a cross-border attack that sent relations between the nuclear-armed neighbors _ which have fought three wars since 1947 _ to their lowest point in years.
The tensions quickly spilled into entertainment. After Bollywood producers said they would not work with Pakistani artists, Pakistan's media regulator Friday banned all Indian film, television and music from the country.
Free speech advocates criticized partisans in both countries for encouraging intolerance, but public opinion in India seems to side with the nationalists.
"We have always protested against Pakistani artists, but Bollywood never understood earlier. Now they have realized," Thackeray said Saturday. "Pakistan bans our films and channels as per whims and fancies. So why are we rolling the red carpet for Pakistani actors?"
Thackeray said that as part of the deal, any producer who cast a Pakistani actor would pay $750,000 to the Indian army relief fund. It wasn't immediately clear how such a deal would be enforced _ or whether the state supported it _ but critics decried it as a form of extortion.
Thackeray's party is a virtual nonentity in formal politics, holding just one seat in the 288-member assembly in Maharashtra, a vast western state that includes Mumbai.
But his army of working-class supporters is notorious for threatening and vandalizing films and plays that they say go against Hindu or Marathi culture.
