EARLIER this month, nearly a decade after lifting a 40-year-long embargo on Bollywood films, Pakistan reintroduced the ban. The announcement came on the heels of a move by Indian Motion Pictures Producers Association (IMPPA), a trade organisation, to ban Pakistani actors and technicians from working in India.

The past few weeks have been particularly tense between the two nuclear-armed nations. On September 19th, 19 soldiers were killed at an Indian army base in Uri, some 6km from the “line of control”, the de facto border between the two countries in Kashmir. The Indian government claimed that the attackers crossed over from Pakistan. In response, it carried out strikes against militants in Pakistan-held Kashmir. India also boycotted a regional summit scheduled to be held in Pakistan and threatened to review a 65-year-old water-sharing agreement with its neighbour.

Caught in the cross-fire are those from the Indian film fraternity who have spoken against IMPPA’s decision to ban Pakistani artists. Protesters in Uttar Pradesh burned an effigy of Salman Khan, a brawny Bollywood superstar, for saying that “Pakistani artists are just artists and not terrorists”. MNS, a thuggish nativist political party in Mumbai, threatened violent attacks on Indian film-makers who hire Pakistanis. On September 23rd it gave Pakistani actors 48 hours to leave the country.

For nearly two decades, since the 1999 military conflict near Kargil, a familiar script has played out in India every time tensions rise between the countries. A toxic political climate surrounds so-called “anti-national” behaviour, which in this case includes striking a conciliatory tone towards Pakistani movie professionals. In August Divya Spandana (also known as “Ramya”), a South Indian actress, was threatened by a lawyer with charges of sedition under a colonial-era law after she remarked that Pakistan was “a good country, not hell”.

Yet beneath the political grandstanding, actors and musicians from the two countries are respected and sometimes revered on both sides of the border. In India, songs from the 1940s by the late Pakistani legend Noor Jehan remain popular; concerts featuring Ustad Ghulam Ali, a 75-year-old ghazal singer from Pakistan, sell out fast. Pakistani actors such as Fawad Khan and Ali Zafar have earned dedicated fans in India. Bollywood stars are household names in Pakistan and their movies open to packed houses.

Yet if Bollywood films are a mainstay of entertainment in India, so too are 24-hour cable news channels, the most popular of which serve up a populist fare of nationalism and Pakistan-bashing. News anchors encourage shrill, one-sided debates in which guests—anywhere from six to well over a dozen—shout over one another. Last week Arnab Goswami, India’s most popular news host, demanded that a Bollywood actress leave his show for failing “to talk with respect” to the father of a soldier who had been killed in action; she had opposed the decision to cut ties with Pakistani artists.

Unsurprisingly, the Indian government, led by the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, has kept mum. Within hours of the reported strikes across the border, billboards congratulating the defence minister and the prime minister, Narendra Modi, popped up in Uttar Pradesh, where state elections are round the corner. The ban on Pakistani artists burnishes the party’s appeal among voters in India’s most populous state, but only serves as a minor distraction from the more pressing issue of rising cross-border terrorism.

Until the ban is revoked, however, Pakistan’s domestic film industry, which produces fewer than a dozen titles each year, will have more to lose than its neighbour. More than 50 Bollywood films are released every year in Pakistan, where they rake in more than half of the box-office revenues. Distributors fear that an outright ban may cause irreparable damage. Last week Pakistan’s media regulator also took Indian TV shows off air (previously they had been allowed for a maximum of 86 minutes a day).

Meanwhile, as politicians and celebrities bicker, two superstar playback singers—India’s Sonu Nigam and Pakistan’s Atif Aslam—are performing together to packed audiences at neutral venues in America and Canada. Officials and public figures in both countries could do well to sing to the same tune.

Correction: An earlier version of this article confused Noor Jehan and her songs of the 1940s with Shamshad Begum and her songs from the 1970s. Sorry for the mix-up.