IF CINEMATIC NARRATIVES have long been intertwined with nationalism and jingoism, contemporary Indian cinema has surpassed earlier precedents. The much-hyped Dhurandhar – the latest Bollywood blockbuster to ignite nationalist sentiment – represents the culmination of a decades-long project to cast Hindu nationalism as the antidote to an unreliable, “terrorist” and inherently evil Pakistan. It is unlikely to be the last such effort – Dhurandhar: The Revenge, a sequel releasing this week, promises more of the same – but it unmistakably crossed the proverbial Rubicon when it comes to cinematic propaganda in India.
Dhurandhar celebrates an incursion of Indian intelligence operatives into Pakistani territory. Specifically, this happens in Lyari – a large, turbulent settlement in Karachi, marked for its large Baloch population as well as its cultural diversity and inclusive atmosphere – where an agent from the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s external intelligence agency, is ostensibly able to blend seamlessly into the milieu. The Indian operative infiltrates a gang led by Rehman Dakait, a character loosely based on a real-life Lyari gangster of the same name, aiming to destroy the terror infrastructure within Karachi’s underworld. In the process, he falls in love, gets married and ultimately destroys the gang, which is also linked to the notorious 2008 Islamist attacks on Mumbai. The film does not conclusively establish whether this lovestruck Indian spy manages to halt the terror attacks – perhaps leaving that for the forthcoming sequel.
The rise of gangs in Lyari during the 2000s was not merely a criminal phenomenon but closely tied to Karachi’s political and security dynamics. Groups such as the network led by Uzair Baloch, a prominent Lyari gang leader, emerged from local turf battles and extortion rackets but gradually became entangled with political patronage. At various points, analysts and journalists argued that elements within Pakistan’s state and intelligence structures tolerated – or even used – such groups as informal proxies in Karachi’s complex struggles for territorial and political control. The blurred boundaries between crime, politics and the state helped fuel the cycles of violence that marked the city until major security operations after 2013. At the height of the unrest in Karachi, Pakistani authorities often blamed violence in Lyari on the proverbial “Indian hand.” Dhurandhar appears to reinforce that narrative, suggesting that Indian intelligence stoked the ethnic, communal and class-based conflicts that engulfed Karachi.
In this sense, Aditya Dhar, the film’s director, has inadvertently done Pakistan’s establishment a great favour, even if he seemingly aimed to serve the Indian establishment by producing a blockbuster that furthers its preferred narrative while borrowing liberally from real events. The directorial strategy of weaving in actual press clippings, as well as real footage of Karachi, the attacks on Mumbai and the 2001 militant attack on the Indian parliament – even as the film includes a customary disclaimer that its story is fictional – is both clever and insidious: clever as it lends credibility to the narrative and persuades the viewer of its verity; insidious because it plainly recycles and exploits every negative trope in the Indian mind related to Pakistan, Pakistanis and their supposed brethren – India’s huge Muslim minority, which can neither be wished away nor, in the Hindu nationalist imagination, be accepted as equal and full citizens of India.