Dhurandhar, The Revenge and the Perils of ‘Nationalist’ Violence, When Cinema Becomes a Tool for Constructing a New Citizen
With the release of Dhurandhar: The Revenge, it is as if director Aditya Dhar wanted to prove his critics right, and not wrong. The first part of the franchise had already drawn a huge backlash from critics who labelled it propaganda. Now, even ardent fans of the film find it difficult to deny that the message is no longer subtle. This is propaganda, but not in favour of the state in the way that many Hollywood films are. This is propaganda in favour of a particular ruling party, effectively collapsing the distinction between the state and the party. The label “propaganda” is hardly novel in a Bollywood climate saturated with propagandist productions. What is more critical, from a political perspective, is that films such as Dhurandhar are enabling the construction of a new kind of Indian citizen—one in which a narrowly defined nationalism is treated as the primary virtue and is indissolubly associated with violence. This carries profound implications for both culture and democracy.
The film’s politics are laid bare early on. When the chief antagonist, a barbaric ISI figure named Major Iqbal (Arjun Rampal), who seeks to commit unspeakable horrors on Indians, is told by his father, “You said your people would win again this time, didn’t you?” against the backdrop of the 2014 visual of Prime Minister Narendra Modi taking his oath of office, the message is unmistakable. The film emphatically labels the main opposition in the world’s largest democracy—the Congress party—as an ally of the terror-sponsoring Pakistani state. This is not subtle political commentary; it is a direct assault on the legitimacy of the opposition.
The film also seeks to rewrite history in ways that are profoundly misleading. When it portrays demonetisation as a masterstroke against Pakistani production of Indian fake currency, it ignores the actual consequences of that policy. Demonetisation led to the deaths of numerous people, did not eliminate terrorism or black money (99.3 per cent of the currency was returned to the banks), devastated the vast informal sector, and brought down India’s GDP growth rate from 8.3 per cent in 2016 to 3.9 per cent in 2019. For a film that is lauded for showing “real events,” many of the terrorists and gangsters depicted were, in reality, killed before 2014, not after. The film rewrites history to serve an explicitly militarist-nationalist agenda.
As histories are being blatantly rewritten, the film ends with an actual Army motto, Balidan Param Dharm (sacrifice is the highest duty). Here, every male citizen is encouraged to perform what sociologist Klaus Theweleit, who studied male fantasies and Nazism, would call “solidarity masculinity.” The film is unabashed in its celebration of this masculine ideal. A lead character, Ajay Sanyal (R. Madhavan, playing Ajit Doval), tells the protagonist, Lakshmi/Hamza (Ranveer Singh): “We are men… we are meant to fight. For our cause. For our dreams. For our rights. For our family.” Unsurprisingly, the female lead, Yalina (Sara Arjun), gets around 15 minutes of screen time in the four-hour film as her husband sets out exacting revenge for all the nation’s wounds. The film’s world is one where men act, women wait, and violence is the highest calling.
The reduction of nationalism to performative violence is the film’s central sorcery. Being an actual soldier and being a metaphorical soldier for the nation are intertwined. Consider the character of Jaskirat, a young man whose father and grandfather were in the Army and who wanted to join the military himself. His dreams are shattered when his father and sister are killed, and another sister is kidnapped. In the face of a failed government (conveniently located in Punjab) that protects the politically influential rapists and murderers, Jaskirat is “forced” to kill the 12 perpetrators and find his sister. If the visible face of the state gives him capital punishment, the invisible face of the state rescues him from death row and turns him into the nation’s soldier. Anger against those who destroyed his family and the government that failed to protect him is now channelled into an external enemy state—or internal enemies who aid the external enemy. As Jaskirat declares, after a few years as Hamza, the spy in Pakistan, he has abandoned his longing to return to his family; his only obsession is to complete the task of eliminating the nation’s enemies.
This is the ideological work that Dhurandhar performs. It reduces nationalism from the Constitution’s goals of establishing a democratic republic that ensures justice, liberty, equality, and fraternity for all, to something that is merely about protecting the nation from enemies through the performance of violence. Every other socio-economic goal becomes inconsequential. In this new nationalism, the complexities of poverty, inequality, education, and healthcare are rendered invisible; only the external and internal enemy matters.
The film’s list of “internal enemies”—those who aid the external enemy—is also revealing. It includes the usual suspects: Khalistanis, Naxalites, Kashmiri militants, the Popular Front of Kerala, Uttar Pradesh slaughterhouses, NGOs, socialists, and universities. Here, even legitimate democratic dissidents are termed terror allies. The film creates a Manichaean universe where there is no space for legitimate political opposition, no space for dissent, no space for any ideology other than a violently assertive nationalism.
While the film places the Uttar Pradesh don Atiq Ahmad as the linchpin of the Pakistani terror network and shows Dawood Ibrahim saying that there is fear in “our people” since the chaiwala has come, it cannot mention that Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, who was once charged under terror laws for harbouring Dawood-gang terrorists, was a five-term ruling party MP until 2024. The film’s selective memory is as important as its constructed narrative.
Violence becomes the sine qua non of nationalist justice here. If the “Angry Young Man” trope of 1970s Hindi cinema was a rebellious anti-hero taking on the establishment against poverty and inequality, resolutely on the side of the poor, the angry young man of the present is a hero of the establishment, especially the popcorn-chomping classes. They vicariously enjoy the violent nationalist justice delivered by him, which includes forcing a terrorist who called Hindus cowards to utter “Bharat Mata ki Jai.” The revenge is complete, the nation is avenged, and the audience leaves the theatre feeling that they too have participated in the act.
The implications of this for democracy are grave. A cinema that collapses the state into the party, that rewrites history to serve partisan ends, that reduces nationalism to a celebration of violence, and that delegitimizes all dissent as treason, is not merely entertainment. It is a political project. It seeks to create citizens who understand their primary duty not as participating in democratic deliberation, not as holding the state accountable, not as working for social justice, but as supporting an aggressive, militarist nationalism. When such a project succeeds, the space for democracy shrinks. The public sphere becomes a battlefield where only one side is allowed to speak. And the citizen becomes a soldier in a war that has no end.
The critics of the first Dhurandhar were dismissed as out of touch with the public mood. The success of the second part will likely be cited as proof that the people have embraced this new nationalist cinema. But the question is not whether the film is popular; the question is what kind of citizen it is creating. And that question, asked of Dhurandhar, is also a question that must be asked of Indian democracy itself. What kind of nation are we building when our most popular entertainments teach us that violence is the highest virtue and that the only legitimate patriotism is one that celebrates it?
Questions and Answers
Q1: How does the article describe the political messaging in Dhurandhar: The Revenge?
A1: The article describes the film as propaganda that collapses the distinction between the state and the ruling party. It labels the Congress party as an ally of the terror-sponsoring Pakistani state and seeks to rewrite history, portraying demonetisation as a masterstroke against Pakistan while ignoring its devastating economic consequences.
Q2: What is “solidarity masculinity,” and how does the film embody it?
A2: “Solidarity masculinity” is a term from sociologist Klaus Theweleit, describing the construction of a masculine ideal based on violent solidarity with the nation. The film embodies this through characters like Ajay Sanyal, who declares, “We are men… we are meant to fight.” Women are marginalized, and violence against enemies becomes the highest calling.
Q3: How does the film reduce nationalism from its constitutional definition?
A3: The film reduces nationalism from the Constitution’s goals of establishing a democratic republic that ensures “justice, liberty, equality, and fraternity” to something merely about protecting the nation from enemies through the performance of violence. All other socio-economic goals become inconsequential.
Q4: Who are the “internal enemies” depicted in the film, and what is the significance of this list?
A4: The film’s internal enemies include Khalistanis, Naxalites, Kashmiri militants, the Popular Front of Kerala, Uttar Pradesh slaughterhouses, NGOs, socialists, and universities. The significance is that even legitimate democratic dissidents are labelled terror allies, creating a universe with no space for any ideology other than violently assertive nationalism.
Q5: How does the “Angry Young Man” trope of 1970s Hindi cinema differ from the protagonist in Dhurandhar?
A5: The 1970s “Angry Young Man” was a rebellious anti-hero taking on the establishment against poverty and inequality, on the side of the poor. The protagonist of Dhurandhar is a hero of the establishment, serving the ruling party and the “popcorn-chomping classes” who vicariously enjoy violent nationalist justice. The target of anger has shifted from the system to the nation’s “enemies.”
