Perhaps the bravest person in Pakistan is Mr Zaheer ud din Khan, chairperson of the Central Board of Film Censors. The Central Board permitted the release of the Indian film, The Accidental Prime Minister, although it was canny enough to schedule its premiere on 18 January, the day after Chief Justice Saqib Nisar had retired from the Supreme Court bench.
Twenty-four hours sooner, and it might have incurred the judicial wrath of the irascible outgoing chief justice who, in October last year, had reinstated the ban on the transmission of Indian content on our Pakistani television channels. In his obiter dicta, he had made this unimpeachable argument: “They are trying to [obstruct the construction] of our dam and we cannot even ban their channels?”