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Cinema has never been just entertainment. It always tells people who they are, who they should fear, and what is worth celebrating. It shapes memory as much as it reflects reality.

The release of Dhurandhar: The Revenge last month across India is worth pausing over. Not simply because it is a sequel to a blockbuster, but because of what it represents. The film does not just entertain; it revisits recent political history and presents it in the form of a spy thriller.

Take demonetisation in 2016. Many still remember standing in long queues outside ATMs, sometimes for hours, as cash ran out and daily life came to a halt, especially for those working in the informal economy. In the film, this moment is reframed as a calculated and successful national strategy. What was, in reality, a deeply contested policy becomes an unquestioned act of decisive leadership.

More troublingly, the film appears to incorporate real events and institutional references, assigning them meanings that no official process has ever confirmed. Fiction begins to look like fact, and the audience is given no tools to distinguish between the two.

Propaganda is not new, but the scale is

Indian cinema has always had political undertones. Mother India (1957) presented suffering and sacrifice as national virtues, aligning with a Nehruvian vision of agrarian India. Upkaar (1967) celebrated a form of patriotism consistent with the Green Revolution era. Aandhi (1975) was widely interpreted as drawing on the public image of Indira Gandhi,........

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