The article argues that Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar franchise advances an exclusivist, Hindutva-inflected nationalism by depicting the conflict with Pakistan as an ideological struggle against Islam and by casting Muslim Pakistani characters as bloodthirsty savages.

It situates the film within a broader post-2014 Hindi-cinema trend that reinforces state narratives of a “new India” ready to strike across borders, while stereotyping Sikhs as potential Khalistani sympathisers.

The author concludes that such cinema normalises violence, preys on jingoistic sentiment and narrows the public understanding of the nation by leaving little room for plural or dissenting views.

“Art is inherently political. Even trying to make a film that has nothing to do with politics is, in and of itself, a political act.”— Barry Jenkins

Before its release, Aditya Dhar’s directorial movie ‘Dhurandhar 1’ & ‘Dhurandhar 2: The Revenge’ has created a lot of buzz among movie lovers. Numerous speculations surrounded the movie; the key speculation was that the life of Posthumously Ashoka Chakra awardee Indian Army officer Major Mohit Sharma inspired the movie. All these speculations were busted upon its release, but it was clear from the very beginning that the film would revolve around India’s Intelligence agencies operations in Pakistan. In Aditya Dhar’s cinematic universe, right from his first directorial debut film, ‘Uri Surgical Strikes’ (2018), nationalism remains the dominant theme. But the question arises, what kind of nationalism does his filmography advance? When cinema acts as an important medium of educating the masses, shaping public opinion, and constructing identities, it is pertinent to decode the subtext of popular culture.

Indian Nationalism, Hindi Cinema and the Muslim Question

India is among the countries across Asia, Africa and Latin America that achieved independence from the colonial European powers in the mid– twentieth century.  Nationalism in these countries has a different trajectory and has an anti-colonial character. For India, the scars of partition followed by the communal riots, successive wars with Pakistan. The rise of majoritarianism (Hindutva), has its roots in the pre- independence, Indian sub-continent, have shaped the nationalism discourse.

The dominant narrative of Nationalism has hegemonised the public and political sphere and diluted the debates surrounding the sociological meaning of the “nation”. In more than 100 years of Indian Cinema, nationalism has remained an important theme in the pre- and post-Independence Hindi cinema. Even the first Hindi movie from the pre-Independence era, which got all-time blockbuster status, i.e., Kismet (1943) just because of the one anti-colonial song. However, with the changing socio-political, economic and cultural milieu of the........

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