Propaganda, misrepresentation and the question of who owns the story dominate social media<\/p>\n
How many times are we going to watch this same story play out? Bollywood takes a slice of Pakistan\u2019s history, strips away the political context, sprinkles in some glossy action, and wraps it up in familiar patriotic overtones. With the release of Dhurandhar<\/em> on December 5\u2014very loosely based on Karachi\u2019s Lyari gang war\u2014audiences on both sides of the border found themselves trapped in yet another round of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu.<\/p>\n The film, stacked with high-profile actors, has sparked mixed reactions. But for once, the divide is not between India and Pakistan\u2014people within each country are split among themselves. Pakistanis quickly clocked the propaganda, but many were also frustrated with their own entertainment industry for refusing to tell the stories that actually belong to them.<\/p>\n Content creator Bilal Hassan, better known as @mystapaki, summed up the conflicted reaction perfectly. \u201cIt is very, very well-made. Action sequences fantastic, Akshaye Khanna\u2019s acting was\u2026 I wanted to be upset at it, but I couldn\u2019t be upset at it,\u201d he said. But when the anti-Pakistan dialogue crept in toward the end, he didn\u2019t hold back: \u201cIf that isn\u2019t propaganda, I don\u2019t know what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n For Hassan, the issue isn\u2019t the politics, it is ownership. \u201cI grew up seeing the Lyari gang wars. Chaudhry Aslam\u2019s house was in front of my school. When there was a bomb blast on top of his house, my school\u2019s windows broke. That\u2019s how close to home this story was for me.\u201d And that\u2019s precisely why watching someone else tell it\u2014again\u2014stung. \u201cWe won\u2019t tell this story. Why? Because our politicians will get dirty. Our government will get dirty. So instead, we choose to just greenlight shitty scripts like Love Guru.\u201d<\/p>\n Indian audiences were not blind to the messaging either. Actor Hrithik Roshan praised the storytelling but disagreed with its politics, stressing the \u201cresponsibilities filmmakers should bear as citizens of the world\u201d when handling sensitive histories. Film critics and social media users echoed the sentiment. \u201cWhen propaganda starts looking like a spy blockbuster with catchy songs, people forget to question it,\u201d wrote one X user.<\/p>\n Viewers were also frustrated by the caricatured depiction of Karachi: bomb blasts, relentless violence, and a Lyari that looks more like an action-movie set than a real neighbourhood with a complicated history and decades of resilience. BBC Asian Network journalist Haroon Rashid posted a video titled \u201cThe Karachi you see in Dhurandhar v\/s the Karachi I saw last week,\u201d contrasting the film\u2019s chaos with the city\u2019s food, music, and everyday warmth.<\/p>\n Some Pakistanis reflected on their own role in consuming this content. \u201cWe forget things very easily. For us, entertainment is important no matter how much India bans and boycotts us\u2026 But we are always promoting their stuff full of propaganda against us,\u201d wrote one user. Then there were the smaller inaccuracies that didn\u2019t escape notice: \u201cSomeone needs to tell them that no one, absolutely no one wears shalwar kameez with half sleeves in Pakistan,\u201d joked another.<\/p>\n And once again, social media spiralled into the same cyclical debate\u2014propaganda, misrepresentation, why Pakistanis still watch these films, why Bollywood keeps making them. It\u2019s the same conversation that resurfaces every time, almost like a script of its own. But there\u2019s a point people like @mystapaki keep returning to: Pakistan isn\u2019t telling its own stories, and the vacuum leaves room for others to narrate our history on our behalf\u2014messily, inaccurately, and often with a political agenda.<\/p>\n The fatigue is certainly real. Audiences seem tired not just of Bollywood\u2019s formulaic portrayals, but of the predictable online storm that follows each release.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Propaganda, misrepresentation and the question of who owns the story dominate social media How many times are we going to watch this same story play out? Bollywood takes a slice of Pakistan\u2019s history, strips away the political context, sprinkles in some glossy action, and wraps it up in familiar patriotic overtones. 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