A New Dawn in Bollywood: Dhurandhar Leads the Narrative Revolution

#Dhurandhar! That film has done what no one dared to dream, forced the mighty chieftains of Bollywood to surrender. Yes, surrender! The self-proclaimed conscience-keepers of our nation have thrown in the towel, leaving Bollywood a mere shadow of its old moralizing self.

Has Dhurandhar changed India? Well, in one stroke, it has done precisely that. It is, without a doubt, an inflection point. The bigwigs - Karan Johar, Yash Chopra Films — are sitting silently in their air-conditioned offices, watching the tide rise against them. Why? Because the age of spy thrillers, of Pathaan and Tiger Zinda Hai, is over. They won’t make them again, at least not without an audience willing to swallow the old formula. And so, the careers of Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan, long considered untouchable, are effectively over. Aamir Khan? His decline was already underway, God bless him; the country’s mood has moved on.

Now, the country has changed its mind, and with it, the critics. Take Anupama Chopra, the doyenne of Bollywood critique, chairperson of the Film Critics Guild, running her YouTube empire. She has spent decades shaping Bollywood’s moral compass. Yet now she finds herself aghast at Dhurandhar — too violent! Too political! One wonders where she had been while Tiger Zinda Hai or Brahmastra were being screened, the violence neatly diluted with beach dances and bikini sequences. In Dhurandhar, violence is raw, realistic, anchored in history - fictionalised, yes, but grounded in real events. Rehman Dacait, Uzair Baloch, Chaudhry Aslam, Major Iqbal — they were not figments.

Until recently, Bollywood feared only the South. Southern cinema was making rooted, successful films like Baahubali, RRR, Pushpa, Kantara, and the north watched anxiously. These films touched the soul of India, yet steered clear of liberal sensitivities, carefully avoiding the political provocations that would anger the self-appointed moral guardians.

Alas, Bollywood has always run on dirty money. The 80s, 90s, even today - film finance has long been intertwined with shady connections abroad. Karachi, Dubai, the underworld - these are the veins through which Bollywood’s lifeblood flows. The old masters instructed their proxies: oppose films that challenge the status quo. And so the journalists played their part, fueled by the same interests that have long dictated what India should or shouldn’t see.

But Dhurandhar broke all barriers. This is not a fringe, low-budget experiment; it is pure Bollywood, polished, well-directed, with a strong script and screenplay, yet utterly devoid of the usual masala. Aditya Dhar had tried before — Uri, Article 370, Baramulla — but they remained niche. Dhurandhar, however, has turned everything on its head.

Bollywood’s old stereotypes — Hindus as superstitious liars, Banias as bloodsuckers, Thakurs as rapists and murderers, Muslims as paragons of compassion — have been demolished. The truth of Partition, the reality of Bengal, the Moplah massacres — truths long buried—have been brought to light. Propaganda cannot survive truth, and Dhurandhar has ruthlessly exposed the façade.

The nationalist narrative, some may whisper "Hindutva", has arrived. Cry if you must, but playing the victim is futile. For decades, Bollywood showed Hindus badly. Now the real face is seen, and yes, it hurts those accustomed to false comforts — the Pakistani and Indian Muslims who preferred the world sugar-coated. But the truth is out: terrorism is synonymous with religion. Facts are facts. Look at the statistics. The world is not what these liberal narrators claimed it to be.

And so, the day has come when books like The Satanic Verses cannot be banned in India. The "Panch Makkar" - Marxists, Mullahs, Missionaries, Macaulay, Media - their  time is over. Accept it, adapt, or fade.

Jai Hind. Jai Bharat. Vande Mataram.