{"id":5562,"date":"2025-12-16T05:38:47","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T05:38:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/?p=5562"},"modified":"2025-12-16T05:38:47","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T05:38:47","slug":"why-a-bollywood-spy-film-sparked-a-political-storm-in-india-and-pakistan-explainer-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/?p=5562","title":{"rendered":"Why a Bollywood spy film sparked a political storm in India and Pakistan | Explainer News"},"content":{"rendered":"


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New Delhi, India \u2013<\/strong> A newly released Bollywood spy thriller is winning praise and raising eyebrows in equal measure in India and Pakistan, over its retelling of bitter tensions between the South Asian neighbours.<\/p>\n

Sunk in a sepia tone, Dhurandhar, which was released in cinemas last week, is a 3.5-hour-long cross-border political spy drama that takes cinemagoers on a violent and bloody journey through a world of gangsters and intelligence agents set against the backdrop of India-Pakistan tensions. It comes just months after hostilities broke out between the two countries in May, following a rebel attack on a popular tourist spot in Pahalgam, in Indian-administered Kashmir, which India blamed Pakistan for. Islamabad has denied role in the attack.<\/p>\n

Since the partition of India to create Pakistan in 1947, the nuclear-armed neighbours have fought four wars, three of them over the disputed region of Kashmir.<\/span><\/p>\n

The film stars the popular actor Ranveer Singh, who plays an Indian spy who infiltrates networks of \u201cgangsters and terrorists\u201d in Karachi, Pakistan. Critics of the film argue that its storyline is laced with ultra-nationalist political tropes and that it misrepresents history, an emerging trend in Bollywood, they say.<\/p>\n

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A still from the trailer of Dhurandhar [Jio Studios\/Al Jazeera]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What is the latest Bollywood blockbuster about?<\/h2>\n

Directed by Aditya Dhar, the film dramatises a covert chapter from the annals of Indian intelligence. The narrative centres on a high-stakes, cross-border mission carried out by India\u2019s Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), and focuses on one operative who conducts operations on enemy soil to neutralise threats to Indian national security.<\/p>\n

The film features a heavyweight ensemble cast led by Singh, who plays the gritty field agent tasked with dismantling a \u201cterror\u201d network from the inside. He is pitted against a formidable antagonist played by Sanjay Dutt, representing the Pakistani establishment, and gangsters such as one portrayed by Akshaye Khanna, while actors including R Madhavan portray key intelligence officers and strategists who orchestrate complex geopolitical manoeuvering from New Delhi.<\/p>\n

Structurally, the screenplay follows a classic cat-and-mouse trajectory.<\/p>\n

Beneath its high-octane set pieces, the film has sparked an angry debate among critics and audiences over the interpretation of historical events and some key figures.<\/p>\n

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A scene shown in the trailer of the new Bollywood film, Dhurandhar [Jio Studios\/Al Jazeera]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Why is the film so controversial in Pakistan?<\/h2>\n

Despite the longstanding geopolitical tensions between the two countries, India\u2019s Bollywood films remain popular in Pakistan.<\/p>\n

Depicting Pakistan as the ultimate enemy of India has been a popular theme retold for years, in different ways, especially in Bollywood\u2019s spy thrillers, however. In this case, the portrayal of\u00a0Pakistan\u2019s major coastal city, Karachi, and particularly one of its oldest and most densely populated neighbourhoods, Lyari, has drawn strong criticism.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe representation in the film is completely based on fantasy. It doesn\u2019t look like Karachi. \u2029It does not represent the city accurately at all,\u201d Nida Kirmani, an associate professor of sociology at Lahore University of Management Sciences, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

Kirmani, who has produced a documentary<\/a> on the impact of gang violence in Lyari of her own, said that like other megacities in the world, \u201cKarachi had periods of violence that have been particularly intense.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, \u201creducing the city to violence is one of the major problems in the film, along with the fact the film gets everything about Karachi \u2013 from its infrastructure, culture, and language \u2013 wrong\u201d, she added.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, a member of the Pakistan People\u2019s Party (PPP) has taken legal action in a Karachi court alleging the unauthorised use of images of the late former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in 2007, and protesting against the film\u2019s portrayal of the party\u2019s leaders as supporters of \u201cterrorists\u201d.<\/p>\n

Critics, including Kirmani, say the film also bizarrely casts gangs from Lyari into geopolitical tensions with India, when they have only ever operated locally.<\/p>\n

Kirmani said the makers of the movie have cherry-picked historical figures and used them completely out of context, \u201ctrying to frame them within this very Indian nationalistic narrative\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mayank Shekhar, a film critic based in Mumbai, pointed out that the film \u201chas been performed, written, directed by those who haven\u2019t ever stepped foot in Karachi, and perhaps never will\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, never mind this dust bowl for a city that, by and large, seems wholly bereft of a single modern building, and looks mostly bombed-out, between multiple ghettos,\u201d Shekhar said.<\/p>\n

He added that this is also in line with how Hollywood \u201cshows the brown Third World in action with a certain sepia tone, like with Extraction, set in Dhaka, Bangladesh\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Bollywood actor Ranveer Singh (centre) performs during the music launch of his upcoming Indian Hindi-language film Dhurandhar in Mumbai on December 1, 2025 [Sujit Jaiswal\/AFP]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

How has the film been received in India?<\/h2>\n

Dhurandhar has been a huge commercial success in India and among the Indian diaspora. However, it has not escaped criticism entirely.<\/p>\n

The family of a decorated Indian Army officer, Major Mohit Sharma, filed a petition in Delhi High Court to stop the release of the film, which, they claim, has exploited his life and work without their consent.<\/p>\n

The makers of the film deny this and claim it is entirely a work of fiction.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, the film\u2019s storyline is accompanied by real-time intercepted audio recordings of attacks on Indian soil and news footage, film critics and analysts say.<\/p>\n

\"People
People linger outside a movie theatre that is screening The Kashmir Files, in Kolkata, India, on March 17, 2022 [Debarchan Chatterjee\/NurPhoto via Getty Images]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Is this an emerging pattern in Bollywood films?<\/h2>\n

Shekhar told Al Jazeera that focusing on a deliberately loud, seemingly over-the-top, hyper-masculine hero\u2019s journey is not a new genre in Bollywood. \u201cThere\u2019s a tendency to intellectualise the trend, as we did with the \u2018angry young man\u2019 movies of the 1970s,\u201d he said, referring to the formative years of Bollywood.<\/p>\n

In recent years, mainstream production houses in India have, however, favoured storylines that portray minorities in negative light and align with the policies of the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.<\/p>\n

Kirmani told Al Jazeera that this frequently means \u201creducing Muslims across India\u2019s borders and within as \u2018terrorists\u2019, which further marginalises Muslims in India culturally\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, people gravitate towards these kinds of hypernationalistic narratives, and the director is cashing in on this,\u201d she told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

Modi himself lavished praise on a recent film called Article 370, for what he said was its \u201ccorrect information\u201d about the removal of the constitutional provision that granted special autonomous status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir in 2019. Critics, however, called the film \u201cpropaganda\u201d and said the film had distorted facts.<\/p>\n

Another Bollywood film Kerala Story released in 2023 was accused of falsifying facts. Prime Minister Modi praised the film, but critics said it tried to vilify Muslims and demonise the southern Kerala state known for its progressive politics.<\/p>\n

In the case of Dhurandhar, some critics have faced online harassment.<\/p>\n

One review by The Hollywood Reporter\u2019s India YouTube channel, by critic Anupama Chopra, was taken down after outrage from fans of the film.<\/p>\n

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Went looking for Anupama Chopra\u2019s Dhurandhar review? It\u2019s gone. The Hollywood Reporter India quietly made the video private.<\/p>\n

For context, The Hollywood Reporter India was launched by RPSG Lifestyle Media, part of the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group, which also owns Saregama \u2013\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2014 newslaundry (@newslaundry) December 9, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

India\u2019s Film Critics Guild has condemned \u201ccoordinated abuse, personal attacks on individual critics, and organised attempts to discredit their professional integrity\u201d, in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore concerningly, there have been attempts to tamper with existing reviews, influence editorial positions, and persuade publications to alter or dilute their stance,\u201d the group noted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n