Dhurandhar Part One: When Cinema Becomes the Propaganda Department

A long Easter weekend. Four days of silence, rest, and finally some time to watch the films that everyone has been arguing about. Good Friday rolling into Easter Sunday, and abroad — unlike India — Sunday leave spilling into Monday as compensatory time off. That is a workplace culture India should seriously consider importing. It gives the mind room to breathe, to observe, to think. And thinking is exactly what Dhurandhar Part One demanded — not applause, not outrage, but thinking.

What the Film Is, and What It Pretends to Be

Dhurandhar is a 2025 Hindi-language spy action thriller written and directed by Aditya Dhar, produced under Jio Studios and B62 Studios. The film follows an undercover Indian intelligence agent who infiltrates Karachi’s criminal syndicates and political power structures in an effort to dismantle a terror network targeting India. Its storyline draws loose inspiration from multiple real-life geopolitical events including the 1999 IC-814 hijacking, the 2001 Indian Parliament attack, and the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

On the surface: a patriotic spy thriller. In practice: a three-and-a-half hour political argument dressed in cinematography.

The film begins with a disclaimer stating it represents fiction. However, it repeatedly tells the audience it is inspired by real events. The narrative is woven around real-life incidents, using real footage of the Mumbai attacks and actual audio recordings of conversations between terrorists and their handlers. That is the central sleight of hand. You cannot simultaneously hide behind “fiction” in your legal disclaimer and then emotionally bludgeon audiences with real footage and real audio recordings. Pick one. Dhurandhar refuses to.

R. Madhavan: The Man, the Character, and the Contradiction

Ranganathan Madhavan was born on 1 June 1970 in Jamshedpur. He is an Indian actor, screenwriter, film producer, and film director who predominantly works in Tamil and Hindi cinema. He has appeared in over 70 films, won one National Film Award, and was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India in 2026. Since September 2023, Madhavan is the President of FTII, Pune.

This is a man of genuine talent and real accomplishment. His direction of Rocketry: The Nambi Effect was exceptional — a film about a real scientist, based on documented injustice, told with integrity. Nobody accused that film of being propaganda because it earned its emotional weight through verifiable facts.

In Dhurandhar, Madhavan plays IB Chief Ajay Sanyal, a character based on real-life National Security Advisor Ajit Doval. He plays the role well — cerebral, restrained, purposeful. The performance is not the problem. The script he is serving is.

Now, about where Madhavan lives. He owns premium homes in Juhu in Mumbai, Raimedu in Chennai, and a luxury apartment in Dubai Marina. He confirmed that his family set up a base in Dubai to accommodate his son Vedaant’s swimming ambitions. Vedaant is a national swimming champion, and the family relocated so he could access better training facilities. That is a legitimate parental choice and should not be weaponised unfairly.

However, the optics are worth noting. Many fans point out that Madhavan visits India only once every few months to shoot films, most of them patriotic, and then speaks at length about nationalism during promotions. What upsets them is returning only when it suits film schedules, often for nationalist films, and then leaving again to live a comfortable life elsewhere. This critique is not about Dubai. It is about the credibility gap between the sermon and the lifestyle. If you are the public face of Indian intelligence pride, living abroad and flying in to deliver dialogues about motherland sacrifice creates an authenticity problem you cannot act your way out of.

The Selective Memory of Terror

Here is where the propaganda machinery works hardest and where a thinking nationalist must push back hard.

The film constructs a narrative where India was helpless, humiliated, and paralysed against terror — with the clear implication that this paralysis was the fault of previous governments. The IC-814 Kandahar capitulation is shown as national shame. The 2001 Parliament attack is shown as a turning point demanding covert action. The 26/11 carnage is used to highlight what the film presents as the UPA government’s inadequate response.

The film portrays the inadequacy of the Manmohan Singh government’s response to 26/11, noting that the Congress-led UPA government settled for diplomatic action and a freeze in ties with Pakistan rather than military reprisals. Yet the film is also critical of the Vajpayee government’s handling of the 1999 IC-814 Kandahar hijack and the December 2001 attack on Parliament.

Fair enough, you might say. It criticises both. But watch how the weight is distributed. The BJP-era failures are treated as unfortunate historical context. The Congress-era failures are framed as the reason India bled. That is not balance. That is a carefully calibrated asymmetry.

The film gives the impression that all Pakistan-backed terrorist attacks have taken place during the Congress regime. It hides the fact that incidents such as the Kandahar hijack of IC-814 in 1999, the Parliament attack in 2001, the Pulwama attack in 2019, and the more recent Pahalgam attack in 2025 took place during the BJP regime.

This is the crack that destroys the entire architecture of the narrative. The Kandahar humiliation — where terrorists were escorted to freedom with a government minister as their chaperone — happened under Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the NDA. The Parliament attack of 2001 happened under the same government. Pulwama, where forty CRPF soldiers were killed, happened in February 2019 under the current dispensation. The Pahalgam tourist killings happened in 2025 — again, under the same government. And R. Madhavan’s character — supposedly based on the current NSA Ajit Doval — holds the same post through all of this.

The film’s dramatic logic of “some government will come that will act” conveniently forgets that the government in power for the past decade has presided over Pulwama and Pahalgam. If the previous government’s tolerance of terror was criminal, what do we call the continuation of the same under the current one? The film has no answer. It doesn’t want to ask the question.

The Demonetisation Rehabilitation

Part One sets the stage. Part Two — Dhurandhar: The Revenge, already released — goes further into territory that should embarrass every honest viewer.

The fake currency angle in Part One is introduced as the economic warfare front: Pakistan printing near-perfect Indian currency and flooding it through UP-based networks to destabilise the economy and buy elections. The film shows the currency design being compromised from within — a minister in a previous government allegedly allowing the currency printing specifications to reach Pakistani intelligence, which then used the same printing company to produce counterfeits.

The real story, buried in CBI files, points to P. Chidambaram’s 2004 monopoly deal with De La Rue, the British printing firm, and Arvind Mayaram’s 2013 signature that allegedly extended the contract with a vendor that had been flagged. Complaints date back years, yet the CBI FIR came only in January 2023, with no chargesheet filed as of 2025.

This is a real allegation deserving proper judicial scrutiny. No defence of Congress here. If Chidambaram’s procurement decisions created vulnerability to FICN flooding, that is a serious national security failure and the courts must be allowed to establish the full truth. Call it out. Every traitor in every party, irrespective of affiliation, must face accountability.

But then Part Two takes this legitimate concern and weaponises it retroactively to rehabilitate demonetisation — one of the most economically devastating policy decisions in post-independence India.

The movie presents the demonetisation experiment as a masterstroke by Modi to prevent counterfeit currency from Pakistan entering India. Interestingly, the Government of India officially never invoked the fake currency problem to justify the much-maligned demonetisation experiment. The movie suggests with full fictional conviction that demonetisation rescued India’s economy from a flooding of counterfeit notes by Pakistan-based terror groups — even as apologists of notebandi had previously only described it as a well-intentioned gamble that failed.

Contrary to the movie, the cash was not destroyed. According to Reserve Bank of India data, about 99% of demonetised cash returned to banks. The film did not show that demonetisation cost around Rs. 1.28 lakh crore in the first three months. The unorganised sector, small businesses, daily wage workers, and the rural economy suffered immensely. About 100 people died due to demonetisation.

One hundred Indians died. Millions of daily wage workers lost weeks of income. Farmers couldn’t pay for inputs during the rabi sowing season. And this film asks us to see all of that suffering as a justified covert operation against Pakistan. That is not nationalism. That is an insult to every Indian who stood in those ATM queues.

What the Film Gets Right — Because Honesty Requires Saying This

Pakistan’s ISI-underworld nexus is real. The Khanani brothers’ money laundering and counterfeit network is documented. Rehman Dakait was a real figure in Karachi’s Lyari. The 26/11 audio recordings are real. India’s intelligence failures leading up to 26/11 are real and documented. The political protection enjoyed by criminal elements in UP — across party lines — is real. The De La Rue procurement controversy deserves full legal examination.

Dhurandhar raises real questions. The problem is that it answers only the questions that serve a particular political convenience and buries the ones that do not.

Some critics have pointed out that it was Indira Gandhi who established RAW to counter Pakistan. Further, during the Congress regime between 2004 and 2014, Rehman Dakait, SP Chaudhary Aslam, Arshad Pappu, and Uzair Baloch were killed or arrested. In the story, even the Indian agents were sent into Pakistan during the Congress regime. The film’s own internal logic contradicts its political conclusion.

The Larger Pattern

Dhurandhar is not an isolated film. It sits in a pattern alongside Kerala Story, Article 370, and similar productions that blend real events with fictional framing, real footage with invented dialogue, documented history with politically convenient gaps.

Himanta Biswa Sarma, the Chief Minister of Assam, stated publicly that whoever watches Dhurandhar would vote for BJP. That statement, from a sitting Chief Minister, is the most honest thing said about this film. It confirms what the film’s disclaimer denies.

Art has always engaged with politics. That is not the issue. The issue is the pretence of objectivity while serving a specific electoral narrative. The issue is mixing real atrocity footage with invented government responses, real victims with fictional vindication, documented intelligence work with retrofitted political credit.

The policy misstep of demonetisation is re-coded in the sequel as a stroke of genius, an attempt at reframing a controversial event as tactical brilliance. What in November 2016 had arrived as a sudden and disorienting announcement is retrospectively presented as a calculated strike aimed at choking counterfeit currency and terror financing.

This is how propaganda functions most effectively — not through outright lies, but through the selective arrangement of truths. Take a real threat. Attach it to a failed policy. Release it as entertainment. Watch citizens re-remember history in the version that was written for them.

A Word to the Nationalist Who Is Not a Bhakt

India deserves better than this — from both sides of the political aisle. Congress leaders who protected gangsters in UP for vote bank purposes are traitors to the national interest. BJP leaders who use cinema to whitewash policy failures are disrespecting the intelligence of the citizens they serve. The intelligence officers who risked their lives in Pakistan deserve their story told without being turned into campaign material. The 26/11 victims deserve their tragedy remembered without being attached to a demonetisation rehabilitation project.

A genuine nationalist does not need propaganda because the truth, told honestly, is already enough to make you love this country and demand better from everyone who claims to lead it.

Dhurandhar is a well-made film. It is also a political document. Both things are true. A clear-eyed Indian should enjoy the craft and reject the agenda — and refuse to let anyone tell them those two responses cannot coexist.

Cinema should make you ask harder questions. Not hand you the answers someone else needs you to have.

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