On the Big Screen

A Gemini made artwork from the film Dhurandhar: The Revenge

I feel very sad for the people who did not like Dhurandhar. And even sadder for the people (including me) who loved the movie.

Dhurandhar (1 and 2) is a film that has the camera magic of Vikash Nowlakha, slow poison music composition of Shashwat Sachdev, casting magic of Mukesh Chhabra, and gripping screenplay of Aditya Dhar.

The record-breaking film filled theatres across the country. Superbly edited narrations, along with overdramatic events such as gore violence, mass action sequences, at its core left no time for the audience to think deeply about the film, reducing us all to mere spectators and not active participants. 

A propaganda narrative is not where we are trying to mine fake narratives, but one where there is inaccurate disclosure of all facts, thus biasing the viewer towards a certain agenda. Dhurandhar has its biases too. 

Dhurandhar’s pseudo-core narrative of being against terrorism, as said by Ajay Sanyal, is sadly propaganda, because the fight against terrorism is not on behalf of all, but is limited to one religious community. 

Showing reality selectively by witty non-disclosure of alliances during a 2002 Akali Dal and BJP alliance in which Muslim gangsters, muslim sardars rape a girl; a Sardar brewing Khalistani separatist tendencies hands in glove with a Muslim gangster, I guess that sums up the “Hindustan ka sabse bada dushman Hindustan hai” very core, systematically structured and subtle narrative. 

No one is unaware of Pakistan’s terror outfits, as skilfully depicted in the film. Today, we as a democracy are far better off than they are, because we can have an enthusiastic verbal battle during societal failures, and because we have the guts to admit our failures. 

Aditya Dhar has probably made one of the biggest Indian films ever made, but it's not the greatest. Highly non-inclusive, exclusionist narrative. The film ignores the great unconstitutional and illegal acts of degrading the national economy, like ‘Operation Green Leaf’, thus creating a distorted reality, lacking authenticity. 

Shaping political perceptions without force and setting the stage for the portrayal of the greatest leader of UP. Illusions of portrayal of a so called anti terrorist narrative film ignored the terrorising acts of demolitions, exclusion, and marginalisation in Khargone, Nuh, and Delhi. 

Another misrepresentation was that all the attacks mentioned before 2014 were not shown to have any retaliation from the government’s side, but surgical strikes post-2014 were shown with pride.

These acts of politics turned into missions, operations, romance drama, strategy, great characterisations instead of ideas, policies, and their consequences, like ever-increasing rates of border infiltration, counterfeit currency, organised crime, making people delinked from ground reality, leading to depoliticisation. 

But this is not new. Triumph of the Will by Leni Riefenstahl, glorifying Hitler and the Nazi Party, or antisemitic films like Jud Süß and Der ewige Jude, had mixed contemporary reception. Some were popular and filled theaters, especially early on when enthusiasm for the regime was high. They reinforced Nazi ideology for supporters. 

Several films over the past decade have systematically tried to spread hatred against several sections of society. Dhurandhar does the same, just a bit more tactically. 

The film fails to set the core message of not indulging in terrorism through education or introspection. It’s as if the victims of a terror outfit have no option but to be a macho MAN and fight against them in a foreign land. It’s as if leaders like Ram Mohan Roy and Birsa Munda had to light bombs with a cigarette to deal with problems. 

Our textbooks, films, roads, etc., are not things that carry value to our lives. They have become advertising ventures for several autocratic governments, be it left, right, or centre. 

Every film is propaganda. Propaganda through which our minds have systemically been narrowed to petty issues, but the onus is upon us to judge the authenticity of what we see, read, and hear, because we are the change. 

Rush Guha

March 5, 2026