Now Reading: Nawaz Sharif wore out his Dev Anand CD over one song turn
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Nawaz Sharif wore out his Dev Anand CD over one song turn
Netflix's Operation Safed Sagar has unearthed a curious footnote from the 1999 Kargil War era: former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif's obsession with actor Dev Anand. According to journalist Punya Prasun Bajpai's…
The Story in Brief
Netflix's Operation Safed Sagar has unearthed a curious footnote from the 1999 Kargil War era: former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif's obsession with actor Dev Anand. According to journalist Punya Prasun Bajpai's 2024 Outlook article, the story begins before the Kargil conflict, when PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee took the inaugural Delhi-Lahore bus on a peace mission. At Sharif's personal request, Dev Anand accompanied him. The actor had studied in Lahore before Partition and was greeted with a hug at Wagah by Sharif.
The admiration deepened later. Sharif's wife revealed that their family CID CD had been worn out because Sharif repeatedly replayed Dev Anand's turn during the song Leke Pehla Pehla Pyaar in slow motion. After Sharif's ouster in 1999, they met several times in London, where Sharif would insist on visiting Harrods for hot chocolate. Dev Anand died in 2011, but his last words to Sharif were: "I will come to Pakistan to meet you, Nawaz."
The Indian Opinion
The tale of a former head of government obsessing over a film star's shoulder turn is charming, but it risks softening the record of a leader whose tenure included the Kargil misadventure and nuclear tests. Some accounts portray Sharif as merely a sentimental fan, but Pakistani history judges him harshly for the 1999 coup. A sharper test would be whether Operation Safed Sagar, the Netflix series that triggered this anecdote, acknowledges the war's causes or just the retro glamour. One song does not erase a conflict.
Source: ndtv.com
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