Kathryn Bigelow’s Osama bin Laden Movie Sparks Protests in India

LONDON – Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow and her project centering on the hunt for Osama bin Laden that is shooting in India are facing a flurry of local protests from Hindu radicals.

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The movie is shooting in the Indian city of Chandigarh after Bigelow was denied permission to film in Pakistan. The Indian location is standing in for the Pakistani city of Lahore.

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But according to reports, right-wing Hindus are protesting the use of India to ape its sworn enemy.

Bigelow’s film Zero Dark Thirty centers on the hunt for bin Laden before the al Qaeda leader was killed in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad.

Reports say that Hindus in the Indian city are up in arms after billboards with Urdu signs were put up on shops in a market and auto-rickshaws were running with Lahore number plates.

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Burqa-clad women and men dressed in traditional Pakistani clothes also were dispatched onto the streets for filming.

Reports say a small group of protesters shouted slogans and some of them were seen arguing with cast and crew members as police tried to intervene.

The protesters claim the government should have denied permission to make the film on Indian soil.

Hindu-majority India and Muslim Pakistan have fought three wars since winning their independence from Britain in 1947. Suspicion between the nuclear-armed rivals lingers.

Bin Laden masterminded the 9/11 attacks on the United States and was killed in May by U.S. Navy SEALs in Pakistan.