Decoding DhuranDHAR Delirium Syndrome: Bollywood finally demonstrates the brilliant art of mythmaking

There’s a Cold War joke in which two enemy agents – a KGB agent and a CIA agent – find themselves in the same bar. The Americans told their Russian counterparts: “I have to hand it to you — your propaganda is very impressive.“The Soviet Union smiled and replied: “This is nothing compared to American propaganda. The American replied with a confused look on his face: “But we don’t have propaganda.” The Soviet blinked and said, “Exactly.” “There is a saying that goes like this: “The greatest trick the devil can use is to convince the world that he does not exist.”The same goes for American propaganda, which is why most people know the above line from The Usual Suspects rather than The Generous Gambler by French poet Charles Baudelaire. Like the devil, the greatest trick of American propaganda is to convince the patriarchs who consume it or produce it that it does not exist. It wraps this illusion in morality, economics, neoliberalism, and the devil’s favorite trick: free will.The Nazis had Riefenstahl. Americans have Michael Bay movies.Communists have agitation; Americans have a “free press.”What’s interesting about the term “agitprop” is that it’s a fusion of agitation and propaganda, and was named after an actual Soviet department in the 1920s.Recently it was discovered that the word “agitprop” was used to describe the sequel to Dhurandhar, Adityadar‘s masterpiece. This is one of the many words used to describe Durand Dal’s dualism, along with “majoritarian”, “Islamophobia” and all synonyms for intolerance, and a few more polysyllabic shockers that even India’s most voluble politician has called “an infuriating distortion, distortion and utter nonsense masquerading as a film review”.The most common moniker on Dahl’s bookshelf is “propaganda,” a term that can be interpreted and tortured to describe almost every film, if you torture logic enough.read: How Hollywood Mastered the Art of Propaganda Rang De Basanti can be seen as anarcho-pacifist propaganda wrapped in a fig leaf of patriotism.Chak De India can be interpreted as “transphobic” anti-collaborative federalism in which the opponent’s religious beliefs are flipped to create a victim complex. “Three Idiots” is clearly anti-engineering propaganda.Bhaag Milkha Bhaag shames fat people for not being able to run.Jokes aside, whether or not you consider Durand Dahl dualist propaganda depends entirely on your availability heuristics, worldview, and what you believe constitutes propaganda, which is frankly beyond the scope of this article.What this pair does brilliantly is show that Bollywood – which we find largely borrowed, inspired or copied from films around the world in the wake of the dot-com boom – seems capable of creating myths about civilization.Every country needs a fundamental myth around which to agree, a story that brings its inhabitants together. After independence from Britain, the United States had a “Manifest Destiny,” an expansionist belief that their mission was to spread the American way of life throughout the North American continent. This belief is supported by great American novels like The Last of the Mohicans and gun-toting cowboy movies about the American frontier, which cleverly conceal the genocide of indigenous peoples.

For India – post-independence and pre-independence – from Buddha to Gandhi, the fundamental myth has been ‘ahimsa’, non-violence, which is seen as the basic operating system of our country, even as an accepted truth. Of course, this particular myth ignores two foundational texts of Indian civilization: the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.A vicious lie downstream of this myth is that India “never” invaded any country, something actor Priyanka Chopra repeated on the Joe Rogan podcast while displaying willful ignorance about the seafaring invasions of the Cholas and other dynasties. People don’t blame her; Hollywood and Bollywood actors are not supposed to be experts on history, but this view just shows the general consensus that exists among people.When India finally won its independence from the war-torn, crumbling British Empire, the myth became firmly embedded in our national DNA and even shaped our initial foreign policy.Geopolitics expert Brahma Chellaney debate A 2019 TOI article read: “Had India after 1947 been proactive and forward-looking in ensuring border security, it could have avoided the Kashmir and Himalayan border problems. Until October 1949, China was in deep turmoil, giving India ample time and space to control its Himalayan borders. But India’s pernicious founding myth has given rise to a pacifist state that believes in achieving peace simply by seeking it, rather than building the capacity to defend it.“Of course, hindsight is 20/20, and it’s easy to look back at people in the arena and make judgments from the comfort of our keyboards. But we learned the hard way that peace comes from having a bigger stick than the other side, or at least nuclear weapons, and governments of all ideological hues in India are working together to pursue this goal.The basic myth of ahimsa persists in mainstream cinema and has remained popular well into the past decade. Some commonly held beliefs are simply that Indians and Pakistanis are the same and want to bond over biryani and Fawad Khan’s chiseled jawline. In the early 1990s, this notion was so firmly established that Farah Khan’s debut feature featured an antagonist who saw Pakistan as the enemy and a Neville Chamberlain-like protagonist who just wanted peace.

The Indian public believed this notion to a certain extent, until the Overton window changed after one terrorist attack after another. But Bollywood’s worldview hasn’t changed, and it continues to offer movies from various espionage worlds where Indian and Pakistani agents regularly dance and then thwart anonymous and non-religious threats against both countries.On the other hand, films that depart from this worldview are so poorly executed that they seem like exploitation films trying to make a quick buck off the current political mood.This is why Durand-Dahl Dualism can stand on its own because it is a rare instance of myth-making that is entirely inspired by the availability of its audience.Dahl’s dualism rejects the mass, formulaic approach of Bollywood war movies or spy thrillers, eschewing escapist item-number fantasies or surreal orgies with a level of detail that would make Frederick Forsyth happy. The film uses enough real-life examples to deliver a Quentin Tarantino-esque revenge fantasy, like we’d see in Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained, or Kill Bill.The music is sublime, a mix of old and new pop, from far-flung genres. Golden era Bollywood classics collide with qawwali music, while Punjabi pop, Arabic rap, Indian hip-hop and Western rock mix, with a background score composed by Hans Zimmer.There are so many scenes – subtle and not-so-subtle – that go to great lengths to further the illusion of revenge that Hollywood has used to sublime effect for years. All in all, it’s a capable mythmaker. Your availability heuristics will determine whether it’s a myth created for a specific spymaster, regime, religion, country, or civilization.This is not the first Indian film to do this. Both Baahubali and RRR are sublime works of art wrapped in civilizational pride on grandiose filmmaking, but the difference is that they are either set in fantasy lands or in history. Durandhar, on the other hand, is set in the present day – the near future – which is real life for many who watch the film.Durandal is the antidote to civilization’s wounds, or as Arjun Rampal, a resident of Mumbai who witnessed the atrocities of 26/11 puts it: “This is my revenge.”Which brings us to our final question: why is there so much hysterical outrage about this movie? Recently, when an Indian national pleaded guilty in a US court to conspiring to assassinate an American citizen and the real Khalistani, social media was flooded with people mocking Aditya Dar. The simple answer is that Durandal Delirium Syndrome is the sigh of a former oppressor facing the destruction of civilization. The democratization of the arts is a bit too much for a class that has long-term control over the channels of communication and can decide what is and is not a high-brow worldview. Dhurandhar makes a radical break with the past. Bollywood still has a long way to go to compete with Hollywood in terms of mythmaking like Top Gun or American Sniper, but it’s definitely a start.In the title song of Dhurandhar, there is a line: “You are not ready yet.” In the sequel, there is a follow-up: “You are not ready yet.” Older people may not be, but it is clear that the audience and many residents of the new India are ready.