When Dhurandhar stormed Indian cinemas in late 2025, it did more than become one of the most successful Hindi films in history. It reignited a long-running debate about the political direction of Bollywood.
The espionage thriller by director Aditya Dhar follows an Indian intelligence operative, played by Ranveer Singh, who infiltrates the Pakistani criminal underworld to dismantle a terrorist network targeting India. The plot blends fictional espionage with real events from the recent past, including the 2001 attack on India’s parliament and the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, weaving in archival footage and real audio recordings for effect.
Dhurandhar quickly became one of the biggest Hindi movies ever, grossing over Rs 10bn (£81.6m) worldwide within three weeks of its release. It also became the highest-grossing Hindi film ever at the domestic box office with roughly Rs 8.31bn (£67.8m) and the highest-grossing Indian movie of 2025 worldwide.
This Thursday will see the release of Dhurandhar: The Revenge. Rushed out less than four months after the original, it has smashed records for advance bookings for preview shows and its trailer was viewed over 39 million times on YouTube within 24 hours of dropping. If the hype is anything to go by, the sequel appears set to cement hypermasculine nationalism as one of Bollywood’s most reliable box-office formulas.
At the centre of the debate around the original Dhurandhar is the way its narrative was constructed, claiming to be “inspired by true events” while dramatising intelligence operations and terrorist plots behind real-life attacks. Critics say the film selectively deploys real tragedies to build a politically-charged story about national security and revenge.
One of the film’s early sequences recreates the 1999 hijacking of an Indian passenger aircraft from Nepal to Afghanistan by five militants linked to the Pakistan-based Harkat-ul-Mujahideen group. In it, Ajay Sanyal, the fictional director of India’s Intelligence Bureau played by R Madhavan and widely seen as inspired by incumbent national security adviser Ajit Doval, urges the hostages on the plane to shout “Bharat Mata ki Jai”, meaning “Victory to Mother India”. The passengers stay silent, fearing retaliation from the hijackers. One of the militants then mocks them, saying “Hindus are a cowardly nation” – a scene that also opens the sequel’s trailer.
Critics say the scene establishes the film’s central dynamic, portraying Pakistan-linked militants as brutal antagonists and Hindus as victims of cross-border terrorism. For many, the blend of history and mythmaking creates an immersive patriotic thriller. For others, it blurs the boundary between history and propaganda in a perfect representation of the kind of Hindu nationalist rhetoric that’s flourishing under the rule of Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
In one scene, intelligence officials trace financing for terrorism to counterfeit currency allegedly printed in Pakistan and smuggled into India through networks that include butcher shops. Critics note this detail carries a subtle communal undertone since the meat trade in India is largely run by Muslims.
The storyline also suggests that demonetisation, the sudden withdrawal of high-value banknotes by Modi’s government in 2016, dealt a decisive blow to those networks. In real life, the policy caused widespread cash shortages and economic disruption, and its efficacy in achieving the government’s stated goal of cracking down on tax evasion is debated.
The Indian Express argues that Dhurandhar pushes “a bigoted vision” while The Wire says “the venom in Dhar’s film is strategically spilled through the selective truths it wants to tell”.
Scroll describes it as a “techno-jingo gorefest”, adding the deliberate violence in the film is both a “stylistic choice” and the “only strategy to deal with Pakistan-sponsored terrorist strikes on India”.
Aditya Dhar has truly crossed a limit of cheapness in Bollywood.
— Dhruv Rathee (@dhruv_rathee) November 18, 2025
The extreme violence, gore and torture shown in his latest film trailer is the equivalent of watching ISIS beheadings and calling it “entertainment”.
His lust for money is so unhinged that he is willingly…
Political commentator Dhruv Rathee describes the film as “well-made propaganda”, comparing it to the “Nazi propaganda films during Hitler’s time” and arguing that it’s “more dangerous” because the audience is likely to ignore the actual facts when they are packaged as gripping entertainment.
Film critic Anupama Chopra describes it as “an exhausting, relentless and frenzied espionage thriller” driven by “too much testosterone, shrill nationalism and inflammatory anti-Pakistan narratives”.
Tellingly, the controversy around Dhurandhar encompasses even the reactions to it. Any critic who appeared to say anything less than complimentary about the film when it released drew a wave of trolling and abuse on social media. The scale of this abuse prompted the Film Critics Guild of India to issue a statement condemning what it described as “targeted attacks, harassment and hate” directed at reviewers.
Propaganda at its best. I’m educated enough to see through the distorted facts but a commoner can easily buy into this. Demonetisation defence was the most funny propaganda. 2films set in Pakistan just as to give massive BJ to BJ party & demean the opposition in India #Dhurandhar
— bk. (@CalIMeDon) December 6, 2025
The Independent contacted some of the critics who were subjected to online harassment, but none agreed to speak on the record.
Films rooted in historical grievances and national security have become increasingly popular in recent years, with prominent examples including Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019), The Kashmir Files (2022), The Kerala Story (2023), Article 370 (2024), and The Sabarmati Report (2024).
Uri: The Surgical Strike and The Kashmir Files each made around Rs 3.42bn (£27.6.m) worldwide, and The Kerala Story crossed Rs 3bn (£24.2m), placing them among the most commercially successful Hindi films of their respective years.
In 2024, Modi attended a special screening of The Sabarmati Report at parliament alongside senior cabinet ministers, and BJP-ruled states granted the film tax exemptions.
Few filmmakers embody this trend as clearly as Dhar himself, who was catapulted to fame by Uri , a film dramatising airstrikes on alleged militant bases across the border in Pakistan following an attack on an Indian military camp in Uri, Kashmir, in 2016.
In Dhurandhar, IB Chief Ajay Sanyal didn't pass the intel about fake currency notes to the govt. He says the current govt (Congress) won't do anything and they will have to wait for another govt. What a piece of propaganda this is! IB works for the country, not for a party.
— Kaushik Raj (@kaushikrj6) December 7, 2025
The film became one of the year’s biggest box-office hits, won Dhar a National Film award, and saw its catchphrase “How’s the josh?” used by multiple BJP ministers during campaign rallies ahead of the 2019 general election.
Dhar then co-wrote and produced Article 370, centred on the Indian government’s decision to tear up the constitutional autonomy of the restive Himalayan region of Kashmir. Ahead of its release, Modi praised the movie at a campaign rally, saying it would “help people get correct information” about the policy.
Dhurandhar: This end BGM is stuck in my mind
— Shikhar Sagar (@crazy__shikhu) March 10, 2026
Peak Shashwat pic.twitter.com/99zBHf495W
Two years ago, film scholar Ira Bhaskar told Al Jazeera that films like Dhurandhar were no longer tied to elections and that soon Bollywood would “see big-banner, big-budget films being made to serve propaganda purposes”.
Whether you see it as pure spectacle or storytelling with a political agenda, Dhurandhar points to a pattern Bollywood has returned to repeatedly over the past decade: chest-thumping patriotism tinged with religious polarisation remains a bankable combination.
