Viewers, including in India, criticise film for portraying Karachi’s Lyari as war zone
Bollywood’s latest anti-Pakistan propaganda film Dhurandhar has triggered strong backlash after its trailer release, with much of the criticism coming from Indian social media users.
The trailer portrays Karachi’s Lyari as a war zone, showing Ranveer Singh as a RAW agent entering ‘hostile’ Pakistani territory, while Arjun Rampal appears as a Pakistani intelligence officer. Rampal’s character, Major Iqbal, also known as the ‘Angel of Death’ is shown to be obsessed with “making India bleed.”
Actor R. Madhavan plays Ajay Sanyal, a character inspired by India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval. In the story, Sanyal is convinced that Pakistan, particularly the Lyari district, needs to be infiltrated to tackle terrorism, with Lyari portrayed as the “heart of terrorism in the country.”
The film also uses Pakistani political imagery, including a Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) rally, photos of Shaheed Benazir Bhutto, and party flags, drawing further scrutiny.
Observers in Pakistan note that India’s anti-Pakistan narrative appears to be intensifying, particularly with Bollywood casting Sanjay Dutt as the late SSP Chaudhry Aslam and Akshaye Khanna as Rehman Dakait, choices widely mocked online.
Set for release in early December, Dhurandhar has already become a source of embarrassment for Bollywood, as viewers, including many in India, criticise its distortions, sensationalism, and unrealistic portrayal of Pakistan.
Bollywood seems to be following the trend of Indian nationalism, where every aspect of Pakistans history has to be touched in some way by India. The Lyari gang wars were a strictly internal, domestic dispute that sprang in the slums of Lyari between rival gangs with rival political opposition.
Rehman Dakait, Arshad Pappu, Chaudhry Aslam and Uzair Baloch were real individuals who shaped the history of Karachi, who were a personafication of the intricate ethnic and political lines that dominate Karachi. They represent a darker, more tumultour time of this city’s history when dead bodies lay scattered and blood flowed in rivers. The pain of the Lyari gang wars is not for India to appropiate.
No credit of this city’s history should be handed over to Indian simply because they put the banner “based on true events” at the start of every movie. The Indian film industry has exhausted every aspect of their own history they could touch, and then the more recent history that they cannot touch. So whats left for them is to take our internal struggle, imagine their role in it, and posit themselves as our masters.
