Aditya Dhar's Dhurandhar 2 politics explained: Anti-terror, not anti-Pakistan

Aditya Dhar doesn't make it easy to watch Dhurandhar: The Revenge. He lets you experience the discomfort, the silence that haunts and the screams that linger longer than you want. But at the centre of it all is India's clear policy: anti-terror, not anti-Pakistan. Consider this your spoiler warning.

In Short

• Dhurandhar: The Revenge echoes India's anti-terror stance strongly
• Film links terrorism to Pakistan, not the Pakistani people
• Narrative ties internal conflicts to Pakistan-backed terror groups

Aditya Dhar's Dhurandhar: The Revenge has caught the mood of the nation. It is everywhere: on the streets, in drawing rooms, across social media, in newsrooms, and deep within industry chatter. But why? Is it the sheer scale, the story, the performances, the casting, or the direction? Yes, all of that. But perhaps also something that sits beyond the craft: a messaging that aligns closely with the Indian government's anti-terror doctrine.

Dhar, who has also written the film, dials up the nationalist emotion in this second chapter. If the first Dhurandhar was a playground, The Revenge is the game in motion. It absorbs the government messaging into its bloodstream. The result is cinema that is loud, sharp, unapologetic, and totally unafraid. It is perhaps why many are calling this a new cinematic order.

Dhar has long shown a penchant for painting a certain idea of a "new India". The one that enters enemy territory without hesitation and strikes without apology. He did it in Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019), and he does it again here. But this time, the messaging is more layered. The film, led by Ranveer Singh's Hamza Ali Mazari, keeps underlining India's official position in recent years: India is not against Pakistan, it is against terrorism being birthed, nurtured and polished on its soil.

The same stance of the government became especially pronounced during Operation Sindoor, India's anti-terrorism operation following the Pahalgam terror attack last year. India's Armed Forces, in both tone and language, emphasised, quite clearly, that their fight was not with the Pakistani people or the nation-state in abstract, but with terror networks operating from across the border. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, too, has reiterated the same in his multiple addresses. Dhar takes that calibrated messaging and pushes it into the realm of popular cinema.

Spoiler warning

In one of the film's most emotionally intense moments, Hamza articulates this position clearly to his wife, Yalina (Sara Arjun). He says, in no uncertain terms, that India's fight is with Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, not Pakistan itself. He lists all the terror attacks India has endured as a reminder of decades of violence, and a direct attribution of that violence to systems that nurture and shelter terror groups across the border.

The film also takes this argument further. It links various internal conflicts to Pakistan's terror support structure: Khalistani extremism, militancy in Jammu and Kashmir, insurgencies in the Northeast, and Naxal-Maoist movements. The film builds itself around a familiar, politically loaded framework: a strategic framing that separates the "enemy" from the nation.

This is where Dhar's cinema becomes interesting. It is neither neutral, nor pretending to be. The director borrows, amplifies, and simplifies a nation's narrative into mainstream storytelling, and there's no room for ambiguity in how he does that.

No hiding from politics

The political references are explicit. Demonetisation is reimagined as a covert counter-terror operation, real-life figures have been recast within this framework, and there are moments that border on ideological assertion. To some, it may feel like the film is leaning towards a certain political line, even whitewashing it entirely. But what is undeniable is the conviction. Dhar believes in what he is showing, and he shows it without flinching.

Technically, too, he ensures that the viewer cannot look away. His camera lingers just a few seconds longer than expected on wounds, on loss, and on the aftermath of violence. The close-ups are intrusive, confrontational. The violence is not designed for style. It is made to feel heavy, lingering, almost cathartic. As if to say: if terrorism is not clean, why should its depiction be?

Dhar also disrupts the familiar grammar of the Bollywood spy-thriller. The questions he seems to ask are blunt: why not call a spade a spade? Why not hit where it hurts the most? Why not force the audience to sit through the discomfort, the screams, the silences that follow brutality?

The film suggests that India is no longer shocked by terrorism. Not by the attacks, not by the denials that follow from Pakistan. What remains, then, is the need to process it, to channel it.

When Hamza makes his list and begins his methodical retaliation, it taps into something visceral. It looks like an emotional settling of scores that exists as much within the audience as it does on screen. Yes, the film leans heavily into its politics, and risks being read as an extension of a certain narrative. But it is also fearless in its articulation.

Agree with it or question it, Dhurandhar: The Revenge does not leave you with the comfort of distance. It closes in, takes a position, and stays there.

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