Dhurandhar bases its story in Pakistan to dissect terror attacks in India, which makes it unique. The film traces the trail of the 26/11 carnage from Lyari to Mumbai.
Love it or hate it, if you have watched Dhurandhar you’ve noticed it comes across as a different Hindi film. You realise it is a violent drama, a spy thriller and a film that highlights cross-border terrorism within the mainstream space, yet you might just struggle over what exactly makes Dhurandhar a different viewing experience within its genre of pop patriotism.
The answer actually is simple: Dhurandhar is the first Hindi film that looks at India’s terror problem from the other side of the border.
View from the other side
It’s a film based in Pakistan about terror attacks in India, which makes it unique. Never mind writer-director Aditya Dhar went scouting in Thailand for locations, his fictional universe in Dhurandhar unfolds a fascinating picture of Lyari, Karachi, while laying bare the nefarious planning, execution, and supply of manpower and illegal arms associated with a real-life tragedy like 26/11 in India. There have been many Bollywood films about the Mumbai attacks of November 2008 but all such efforts so far have looked at carnage and courage with India as a backdrop.
Aamir Khan’s Sarfarosh an early film to name Pakistan
While most commercial Bollywood films dealing with terrorism before Dhurandhar attempted to understand the menace from an Indian perspective, one of the first prominent films to look Pakistan in the eye was Sarfarosh in 1999. The John Matthew Matthan directorial shook off the pretence of referring to the source of terror as “pardesi mulk” or “dushman desh” or “sarhad paar”, and squarely named Pakistan as a significant source of terror activity in India. That was the start, and the film did a credible job of showing how weapons are illegally smuggled from across the border and delivered to destructive forces in the country. The plot broadly dealt with a top team of special operatives, led by Aamir Khan’s ACP Ajay Singh Rathod, tracking and busting the trail.
Sarfarosh was a start, a film that set off the trend of Bollywood screenplays with terrorism as a subject, packaging to keep the drama real. John Matthew Matthan’s screenwriting did away with larger-than-life vibes – especially while imagining Aamir’s Ajay Singh Rathod, a usually shy guy who seamlessly transforms into a fiery cop, and Naseeruddin Shah’s wolf-in-sheepskin act as ghazal maestro Gulfam Hassan, who turns out to be an ISI agent and conduit for weapon traffickers.
It is important to talk of Sarfarosh to understand where Dhurandhar is coming from. The Ranveer Singh-starrer, put simply, takes to the next level what Sarfarosh openly started in Bollywood all those years ago – a conversation around Pakistan’s involvement in terror carnage striking India. Only, Aditya Dhar takes his lens to the source of such activity and doesn’t desist from depicting gore as never before.
Kandahar to Lyari: Genesis of the war on terror
Aditya Dhar makes it clear right at the outset that Dhurandhar intends to understand India’s terror problem from the viewpoint of its foreign origin. The film starts with a shot of IC 814, the Indian Airlines flight that was hijacked by members of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen in December 1999. The aircraft, originally flying from Kathmandu to Delhi, was forced to land in Kandahar, Afghanistan, after detours. Many reports have claimed there might have been the involvement of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
Among India’s negotiators during the real-life saga was Ajit Doval, who is said to have inspired R. Madhavan’s character Ajay Sanyal in Dhurandhar. In a pivotal scene at the end of the film, Sanyal lays out the genesis of Operation Dhurandhar: “Jab bhi Pakistani ISI kisi terrorist organisation se India pe hamla karwati hai, kaam aati hai unke underworld. Isi liye in gangs ko infiltrate karne se ISI ki involvement ki intel humein first hand milti rahegi (whenever the Pakistani ISI uses any terrorist organisation to attack India, their underworld is of use. So, infiltrating these gangs will let us obtain intel on ISI involvement first hand).”
The line explains most of what happens throughout the film, justifying the course of action that Ranveer Singh’s Hamza Ali Mazari resorts to once he lands in Lyari.
Lyari’s gang war sets tone for Dhurandhar
For most of its runtime, Dhurandhar unfolds as a gang war saga set in Lyari, with a focus on the unholy nexus between politicians, gangsters and businessmen. The drama and action, at times ranging from parkour to gore, come alive in the crowded locality with dusty bylanes and an assortment of shops, juicewallahs, sweetmeat sellers, and an unending cluster of kuccha-pucca houses. Real places like Kakri Ground find mention, as does a Lyari’s tradition of football in a scene where Ranveer tries a quick Ronaldo flip with the ball. Erstwhile Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto finds mention in the news on radio and her face features next to fictitious politicians on screen.
Cricket and pop culture references thrive in the lairs of Lyari, too, blending with the violence. Whiffs of Usha Uthup’s Rambha ho! from the 1981 film Armaan waft through the air and a poster of Imran Khan, a global superstar cricketer back then, appears on an auto. These are instantly identifiable and define the milieu where Hamza quietly arrives and settles down.
Lyari would seem like the old section of any metropolitan city except, the film tells you, it isn’t just that. Beneath its dingy old-world madness bustles an illegal weapon factory that caters to, among others, what a Pakistani character in the film refers to as “Azaad Kashmir”. Lyari is also shown to be the root of a counterfeit trail for Indian currency in the film, from Karachi to Uttar Pradesh, via Nepal and other borders.
Rehman Dakait and ISI
This world of chaos is one Rehman Dakait will rule. The idea is simple: Hamza impresses Rehman Dakait, Sher-e-Baloch to his people, in the gang war against the Pathans, and helps him wrest power in Lyari. This way, he wins the Baloch leader’s trust. As the operative line in the film goes: Whoever rules Lyari, rules Karachi; and whoever rules Karachi rules Pakistan. So, when Rehman, played with characteristic elan by Akshaye Khanna, comes to power, Hamza is automatically escalated to the proximity of the power points that use Lyari’s gangsters to wreak havoc in India.
“ISI ke khidmad mein hum hamesha tayyar khade hain (we are always ready to serve the ISI),” Rehman tells Arjun Rampal’s Major Iqbal, an intelligence bigwig who comes seeking Dakait’s help for a 26/11-type action the next year around Independence Day in Amritsar.
Bleed India motto and 26/11 massacre
Arjun Rampal’s Iqbal gets to carry out what is arguably the film’s most gory scene – the one that opened the trailer – where he brutally skins a captured Indian spy. The scene, in its wake, highlights the Pakistani military doctrine, “Bleed India with a Thousand Cuts.” Iqbal mouths the line in the scene with relish. Dhurandhar suggests it all perhaps started with the motto.
