‘Tere Bin’ Writer Defends Inclusion of Marital Rape, Saying “This is Not an Unusual Occurrence”

Wahaj Ali and Yumna Zaidi starrer “Tere Bin” is undoubtedly the most popular TV serial of the year. The 7th Sky Entertainment’s presentation has been trending on You Tube across Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal and other countries where Pakistani content is being watched. The show’s hashtag #TereBin has been trending again but this time for all the wrong reasons.

The last 2 minutes of recently on-aired episode and next episode’s promo indicate a possible marital rape. In a recently published interview of ‘Tere Bin’ writer Nooran Makhdoom for Arab News, she not only confirmed the marital rape in the serial but also went on to defend it by saying that “It’s a situation which was demand of the serial that will lead to the climax. If the audience isn’t getting it, I can’t change it”.

Due to the popularity of serial, several fan clubs, ids and hashtags of ‘Meerasim’ and ‘Yumhaj’ remained active to create content and celebrate the serial and particularly the phenomena that was created, i-e, ‘Murtasim’. However, the marital rape has even devastated the dedicated fans. The fans kept the social media abuzz to show their disappointment. “It’s just a drama. The audience should wait for the entire story to unfold instead of taking issue with every episode”, said Makhdoom.

The writer further defended it by saying that “It’s not like this has happened on screen for the first time. It’s just that this project has received such wide recognition that people react strongly to the recent twist. If you speak of my social responsibility, I created a story and I stand by it. And this is not an unusual occurrence; it has happened before.”

Here we need to remind Nooran that this certainly is a first of its kind of a case. In most of previous projects where marital rape was shown, the person who commits it is never shown as the “hero”. He is either a negative character like the one Ahsan played in “Qissa Mehr Bano Ka”, or he is a mentally challenged person like Imran Ashraf’s ‘Bhola’ in “Ranjha Ranjha Kardi”, or someone who is brainwashed by Talibans like Fawad Khan’s character in Shoaib Mansoor’s film “Khuda Key Liye”. Here the character ‘Murtasim’ is shown as a protagonist who loves his wife and that’s what makes it problematic as the character can easily give wrong message to its male following.

What you think Nooran’s statements in defence of latest development in “Tere Bin”? Let us know in comments.