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.

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.