Secondary Enemy, Primary Denial: Why Dhurandhar Struck a Nerve
The backlash to Dhurandhar is revealing not because it is loud, but because it is directionally consistent. The film does not caricature Indian Muslims. It does not turn faith into a proxy for guilt. It does not indulge in the cheap shorthand that has rightly drawn criticism in the past. Yet it has provoked a furious response from a familiar ecosystem of publications, commentators, and cultural influencers. That contradiction tells us far more about the critics than about the film.
Dhurandhar does something that is deceptively simple. It treats Pakistan as a hostile state actor without apology, hedging, or moral throat clearing. It refuses to dress up aggression as misunderstanding or terrorism as an abstract tragedy with no sponsor. In doing so, it removes the escape routes that many in India’s opinion-making class rely on to derail uncomfortable conversations. With representation concerns neutralised, only one objection remains. The film names Pakistan plainly.
That naming is the real red line.
For years, a curious asymmetry has defined India’s public discourse. Criticism of Indian institutions is framed as courage. Criticism of Pakistan is framed as escalation. Indian state actions are subjected to forensic skepticism. Pakistani actions are explained away through context, history, poverty, or geopolitics. Terror attacks are condemned, but their origin is softened into ambiguity. The result is not balance. It is denial dressed up as nuance.
This denial does not operate loudly. It is not usually expressed as open praise for Pakistan. Instead, it appears as a reflex. Question the motive of the storyteller. Warn of social consequences. Invoke peace without naming the aggressor. Demand impossibly high standards of proof from Indian agencies while accepting ambiguity elsewhere. Over time, these reflexes harden into doctrine.
That is why Dhurandhar unsettled so many. It bypassed the rituals. It did not ask for permission to state the obvious. It did not perform the mandatory disclaimers. It did not confuse internal pluralism with external threat assessment. It refused to pretend that acknowledging Pakistan’s hostility somehow diminishes India’s democratic character.
The reactions from sections of the media ecosystem followed a predictable arc. Instead of engaging with the film’s substance, they questioned intent. Instead of addressing Pakistan’s documented role in destabilisation, they worried about narrative tone. Instead of asking whether the portrayal was accurate, they asked whether it was responsible. Responsibility, in this context, always seems to mean restraint only in one direction.
Celebrity interventions played a familiar role. Cultural figures with enormous reach converted personal discomfort into public moralising. Statements were made hastily, then diluted or walked back once public scrutiny turned inconvenient. This pattern is not new. It reflects how cultural capital is often deployed as a buffer for ideological unease rather than as a tool for honest engagement.
The most uncomfortable line attributed to the film, that Pakistan is a secondary enemy and the primary one resides within, has been deliberately misread. It is not a call to suppress dissent. It is not a demand for conformity. It is a warning about denial. Democracies are not weakened by disagreement. They are weakened when influential elites refuse to acknowledge persistent external hostility because it complicates their worldview.
Internal denial manifests in subtle but consequential ways. It shapes what stories are told and which are discouraged. It influences how young journalists are trained to frame conflict. It conditions audiences to associate national security narratives with moral suspicion. Over time, it creates an intellectual environment where calling out an adversarial state is treated as a moral failure, while questioning one’s own country becomes the default marker of sophistication.
None of this requires accusing individuals of bad faith or foreign allegiance. Ideological alignment does not need coordination. It emerges from shared incentives. Within certain circles, professional credibility is earned by critiquing India more harshly than its adversaries. Global validation flows more easily when Indian nationalism is problematised and Pakistani actions are contextualised. The ecosystem rewards this posture, and so it reproduces itself.
The danger lies not in criticism of the Indian state, which is essential in any democracy, but in the inability to hold two truths at once. India can have internal flaws and face an external enemy. Pluralism at home does not require blindness abroad. Peace advocacy does not demand narrative disarmament. A mature democracy should be capable of condemning its own excesses while naming those who seek to harm it.
Dhurandhar did not invent a new argument. It simply refused to participate in an old evasion. That refusal is why it struck a nerve. When familiar tools fail, outrage fills the gap. When disclaimers do not appear, accusations replace analysis. When the script does not cooperate, the storyteller is put on trial.
The irony is that this very reaction proves the film’s underlying point. Pakistan’s hostility is not controversial because it is untrue. It is controversial because acknowledging it disrupts a carefully maintained narrative comfort zone. For those invested in that zone, denial becomes a form of identity.
India does not need unanimity. It does not need enforced patriotism. What it needs is intellectual honesty. The willingness to say that an external adversary exists, acts deliberately, and should be portrayed as such without apology. The courage to separate domestic pluralism from foreign policy reality. The discipline to recognise that restraint in storytelling is a choice, not a virtue.
Pakistan may indeed be the external enemy. But the more consequential challenge is internal denial, the quiet refusal to name what is plainly visible. That denial does not announce itself. It hides behind nuance, balance, and moral anxiety. And that is precisely why it is more dangerous than open hostility.
