Mere Pass Tum Ho has created quite an uproar. While there are people who love watching this show, there are plenty of women who find the drama serial offensive because it devalues women. For the first time a petition has been filed in the court to ban an episode of a drama, the last episode of Mere Pass Tum Ho. According to this petition the drama Mere Pass Tum Ho’s story , “is based on humiliation of respectable women community.” This is the first time that someone has asked to put a ban on the last episode of a drama because of the way women are portrayed in it.

Now the question is that whether this is the actual reason for asking for a ban or the actual reason are the interviews of the writer. We all know that the writer Khalil-ur-Rehman Qamar has given several interviews in which he said that a woman who cheats on her husband is a non woman. He has made several other remarks which were indeed derogatory. But the petition does not say that the drama’s last episode should be banned because of the writer’s comments, it says that it should be banned because of the way women have been portrayed in the drama.

What About These Dramas?

The question is that are women represented in a respectable way in most Pakistani dramas? In the most popular dramas of recent times and even the past men have been shown beating their wives, putting them through mental torture, kidnapping women, raping their wives and there was even a drama in which the rape victim relied on his rapists for years. Dramas like Beqasoor, Chup Raho, Sangat, Mere Khawab Reza Reza, Khasara, Titlee and so many more showed women who were either greedy or were humiliated in every single episode. In Sangat, the victim stayed in the same house with the rapist and also took help from him raising the child she had as a result of the rape. No one filed a petition, why?

In Mere Khawab Reza Reza and Khasara wives were shown leave their loving husbands for men who had more money. In Titlee a woman was shown so shallow and selfish that she leaves her ugly rich husband for a good looking man. The man playing her husband’s role was even tanned to look even more unpleasant.

Real Reason

In drama serial Gul-e-Rana, the hero marries the heroine on gun point then he gives her sleeping pills and rapes her while she is unconscious. In Ishq Tamasha, the man marries a woman out of vengeance, tortures her mentally every single day and in the end she dies but no one had a problem with that. No one raised hue and cry then and no one asked that these dramas should be banned. Is the reason for that is that if women write such dramas it is okay or is the real reason behind asking for the ban is to tell the world that Khalil-ur-Rehman Qamar should not been voicing his misogynist views in interviews. If that is the reason then whey is Mere Pass Tum Ho being banned? PEMRA should then ban the writer from giving interviews like they do with other hosts and guests of talk shows.

Geo’s Munafiq

Mere Pass Tum Ho’s story is one the viewers have seen many times before in other dramas. The promos of Geo’s latest drama Munafiq humiliate women much more than Mere Pass Tum Ho ever did. There is so much pressure on the people involved to apologize too. The truth of the matter is that people who are constantly scanning Mere Pass Tum Ho for misogynistic dialogues are actually those who want the writer getting banned. They want to teach the writer a lesson.

If Mere Pass Tum Ho’s last episode should be banned then the authorities should also make sure that Munafiq does not even go on air! Yes, the writers have a responsibility to writer progressive scripts but saying that a drama showing one unfaithful woman should be banned or is a threat to women is an illogical reason. Mere Pass Tum Ho has 3 other female characters who represent different kinds of women. Mehwish is just one woman who was unfaithful to a man.

There are so many Pakistani dramas in which men are shown as unfaithful and unreasonable people. Yahan Pyar Nahi Hei and Mere Bewafa being two such examples, there are so many more. Why has a man never filed such a petition? Is it okay for the writers to show men as unfaithful and unreasonable creatures?