‘Dhurandhar: The Revenge’ and the perils of ‘nationalist’ violence

With DhurandharIn the second episode of , it’s as if director Aditya Dhar wants to prove that his critics are right and not wrong. There was a huge backlash against the first episode, with several critics calling it propaganda. Even ardent fans now have a hard time denying that the sequel is propaganda because the political messages are no longer subtle.

This propaganda is not in favor of the state, as in many Hollywood movies, but in favor of the government, and it collapses the state and the party. However, in a Bollywood landscape filled with propagandistic productions, the label “propaganda” is hardly new. What is more critical from a political reading is this: Dhurandhar It allows for the construction of a new kind of Indian citizen, for whom nationalism narrowly defined is the only virtue and is also associated with violence. This has serious consequences for both culture and democracy.

When Major Iqbal (Arjun Rampal), the barbaric ISI figure who wants to inflict untold horrors on Indians, is told by his father: “You said your people will win again this time, didn’t you?” The film, which is in the background of the visual of Prime Minister Modi’s oath ceremony in 2014, emphasizes the labeling of the main opposition in the Congress Party, the world’s largest democracy, as an ally of the Pakistani state that supports terrorism.

rewrite history

The film aims to rewrite history as it portrays demonetisation as a masterful move by Pakistan to counter India’s production of fake currency. Ultimately, demonetization led to over a hundred deaths, did not eliminate terrorism or black money (99.3% of money was returned to banks), devastated the vast informal sector, and reduced India’s GDP growth rate from 8.3% (2016) to 3.9% (2019). In a film praised for showing real events, many terrorists and gangsters were killed before 2014, contrary to what is depicted.

As histories are clearly rewritten for militarist-nationalist purposes, the film ends with a literal Army slogan: ‘Balidan Param Dharm.’ Here, every male citizen is encouraged to fulfill what sociologist Klaus Theweleit, who studies male fantasies and Nazism, calls “military masculinity.”

After all, the film is unashamed when the lead character Ajay Sanyal (R. Madhavan, who plays Ajit Doval) tells the lead character Jaskirat/Hamza (Ranveer Singh): We are men… made for fighting. For our cause. For our dreams. For our rights. “For our family.” Unsurprisingly, the female lead, Yalina (Sara Arjun), gets about 15 minutes of screen time in the four-hour film, as her husband sets out to avenge all the injuries of the nation.

“If the ‘Angry Young Man’ trope of 1970s Hindi cinema was a rebellious anti-hero who resolutely sided with the poor against the establishment against poverty and inequality, today’s angry young man is a hero of the establishment, especially the popcorn-eating classes.”

Reducing nationalism to performative violence

Being a real soldier and being a figurative soldier for the nation are intertwined. Young Jaskirat, whose father and grandfather were in the army, wanted to join the army himself. However, his dreams are dashed when his father and sister are murdered and another sister is kidnapped. In the face of a failed government that protects politically influential rapists and murderers (appropriately in Punjab), Jaskirat is “forced” to kill the 12 perpetrators and find her sister.

But if the visible face of the state gives him the death penalty, the invisible face of the state saves him from execution and turns him into a soldier of the nation. Anger at those who destroyed his family and at the government that failed to protect him is now directed at the external enemy, or at the internal enemies who aid the external enemy. As Jaskirat explains – after spending several years as Hamza spying in Pakistan – he gave up his longing to return to his family, as his sole obsession was completing his mission to eliminate the nation’s enemies.

This is witchcraft Dhurandhar It accomplishes: The reduction of nationalism from the Constitution’s goal of establishing a democratic republic that guarantees justice, liberty, equality, and fraternity for all, to the goal of establishing a republic solely dedicated to protecting the nation from enemies through executive violence. All other socio-economic goals are unimportant.

“Internal” enemies

While the external enemy is obvious, internal enemies aiding the external enemy are among the usual suspects: Khalistanis, Naxalites, Kashmir militants, Kerala People’s Front, Uttar Pradesh slaughterhouses, NGOs, socialists and universities. Here, even legitimate democratic opponents are called terrorist allies. While the film positions UP-don Atiq Ahmad as the linchpin of Pakistan’s terror network and shows Dawood Ibrahim saying there is fear in “our people” ever since the chaiwala came, it fails to mention that Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, who was once charged under terrorism laws for harboring Dawood gang terrorists, is a 5-term ruling party MP (until 2024).

Here, violence becomes the sine qua non of nationalist justice. If the “Angry Young Man” trope of 1970s Indian cinema was a rebellious anti-hero who resolutely sided with the poor against the establishment against poverty and inequality, today’s angry young man is a hero of the establishment, especially the popcorn-eating classes. They indirectly enjoy the violent nationalist justice it provides; This includes forcing a terrorist who called Hindus cowards to say:Bharat Mata ki Jai” while being killed.

The film doesn’t just depict horrific violence; It’s enjoyed as great entertainment, liberally utilizing British hip-hop, juxtaposed with pulsating music. Violence assumes, as cultural critic Henry Giroux puts it, “a dazzling and fascist aspect.” Comments from viewers stating that Jaskirat’s brutal killing of her family’s murderers was among their favorite parts of the film, demonstrating how films build common sense around vigilante justice in situations where the police have broad legitimacy when faced with murders.

unspeakable violence

While the film invokes a reductionist form of nationalism, it conveys that in reality only a certain form of violence should arouse citizen anger: terrorist violence. Commenting on Madhavan’s role, director Rajamouli said: “You have carried the despair and disappointment of a nation very well.” All other forms of everyday violence (including structural violence), massive inequalities (the top 1% of Indians now earn more income than in the last year of the British Raj), the million-plus lives lost to air pollution every year, the hundreds of thousands dying under the COVID-19 pandemic due to lack of healthcare, those lynched in the name of religion, children dying by consuming contaminated cough syrup, etc. It turns into unspeakable violence in the new nationalist cinema imagination.

Philosopher Hannah Arendt argued that the roots of totalitarianism lie in thoughtlessness and lack of critical thinking. India, with a population of 1.5 billion, is brimming with a treasure trove of human stories. Yet, Dhurandhar’s The new India wants us to turn our imagination into monochrome. The tsunami success heralds the unfortunate closure of the Indian mind.

It was published – 24 March 2026 10:54 IST