Language may fail a spy: Why Dhurandhar: The Revenge needed a linguist as much as it needed style

There is much to admire in Aditya Dhar’s espionage universe. Both Dhurandhar instalments are tightly paced, visually confident and populated with compelling performances. The sequel, Dhurandhar: The Revenge, is in many ways a more assured film than its predecessor. And yet, for a project that leans so heavily on cross-border intrigue, one foundational element repeatedly undermines its credibility: language.

Note that this is not a minor quibble about purism; language is tradecraft in a spy drama. Accent, intonation, diction and register function as operational tools, not surface embellishments. Get them wrong, and the illusion collapses.

Urdu errors that break immersion

The first jolt arrives in the first film itself, with a televised newsreader using the form “ilzāmātoñ”. The error that persists into the sequel is “jazbātoñ”. In both cases, a plural noun was further pluralised. These are basic inflectional mistakes that even an average illiterate Urdu speaker of Karachi would flag.

More serious is a semantic lapse in a torture-chamber scene, where a Pakistani Muslim officer refers to Muslims as “jihadis”. Within Urdu and Arabic usage, jihadi is a pejorative label, typically deployed by critics to describe Islamist militants. A self-referential term would be mujāhid (plural: mujāhidīn), both of which the film does use elsewhere. That makes the inconsistency more glaring: the script knows the correct lexicon but fails to apply it in a crucial moment.

Then comes talaffuz—pronunciation. Arjun Rampal struggles to distinguish between the aspirated “kh” (ख/کھ) used in Indic-origin words and the fricative “kẖ” (ख़/خ) found in Arabic–Persian borrowings. Hardly subtle, this is phonemic in Urdu. Collapsing the two produces a flattened, unidiomatic speech pattern that immediately marks the speaker as an outsider.

Sanjay Dutt, ill at ease even with Hindi throughout his career, is similarly ill at ease with Urdu. This is a casting and coaching failure. If a role demands linguistic authenticity, the production must invest in it.

The missed opportunity is most evident with Ranveer Singh. As his work in Bajirao Mastani and Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani shows, he is a gifted mimic capable of internalising regional accents. Here, however, his Urdu floats in a vacuum—neither Sindhi nor Balochi, neither Lakhnavi nor Punjabi. It lacks geographic anchoring, the very thing that gives spy identities their plausibility.

Even English is not spared. R. Madhavan pronounces “HM” as “hetch-em”. While that variant exists, it is regionally marked. The character—modelled loosely on Ajit Doval but named Ajay Sanyal in the film—is either Uttarakhandi or Bengali. Neither speech community would typically produce “hetch” for “H”; north Indian English prefers “etch”, while Bengali English leans towards “eitch”. Here, the issue is internal coherence rather than pedantic exactitude.

Sanskrit ‘sacrificed’

If the Urdu slips are audible, the film’s final Sanskrit caption is a visual eyesore:

“बलिदान परमों धर्मः”

The correct construction is:

“बलिदानं परमो धर्मः”

Balidānam is a neuter noun; in the nominative singular, it takes the -am ending. “परमों” is simply not Sanskrit; the anusvāra here is erroneous. “धर्मः” remains masculine, and the predicative adjective “परमो” agrees with it. The sentence, in effect, equates a neuter concept (sacrifice) with a masculine category (the highest dharma), a standard and perfectly acceptable construction in Sanskrit.

That such a line passes into a big-budget film suggests the absence of even minimal philological vetting.

It’s the generation that lacks

These lapses perhaps reflect a broader linguistic decline. After the failure of the 2006 remake of Umrao Jaan, Amitabh Bachchan remarked that a generation familiar with the refined culture of old Lucknow and Faizabad—its language, etiquette and social codes—had faded. The 1981 original by Muzaffar Ali drew from that living memory; its remake could not.

More recently, Jaideep Ahlawat observed in an interview that many Hindi-speaking youth today struggle to read their own language in Devanagari. If that is the baseline, expecting fluency in Urdu—if not written in Nastaliq, rich in Perso-Arabic vocabulary nevertheless—may seem unrealistic.

But this is precisely where the industry must intervene. Hindi cinema once routinely employed Urdu scholars to coach actors and singers. That practice dwindling was a benighted choice the industry made in the 1990s. India still has universities, departments of linguistics, and independent scholars who can provide dialect coaching, phonetic training and script supervision.

For a film about spies operating in Pakistan, this is not optional. As any intelligence professional would attest, a field operative who cannot reproduce local talaffuz (pronunciation), lahja (accent), tarz (intonation) and makhraj (diction) would be compromised within minutes.

There is also a simpler alternative: if a production cannot handle a language with competence, avoid using it. Many English-language films set in ancient Greece or Rome do not attempt Greek or Latin; they prioritise accessibility and consistency over flawed authenticity.

Direction: Style, momentum and minor excesses

Set aside the linguistic issues, and Dhar’s direction remains assured. The sequel is brisk, rarely indulgent, and sustains narrative tension with commendable discipline. The transition from the Indian to the Pakistani setting is visually striking, though the initial half-hour in Pakistan veers towards stylisation at the cost of realism. Performances and staging settle into a more credible rhythm thereafter, turning the film into a consistently engaging watch.

One aesthetic decision does jar: the red on-screen captions—again with poor transliteration—which were effective in the trailer, feel distracting within the film’s diegesis. Their removal would have improved tonal cohesion.

The film’s fictional liberties are largely confined to the arc involving Dawood Ibrahim, whose current condition and strategic importance remain opaque in reality.

Perfect cast, class acts

If speech falters, physical casting often excels. Salim Sidiqui’s Atif Ahmed—clearly modelled on Atiq Ahmed—is striking in both appearance and demeanour. Mashhoor Amrohi’s Nawab Shafiq, based on Nawaz Sharif, is similarly well-conceived.

Madhavan as a Doval lookalike, Rampal as Ilyas Kashmiri’s doppelganger, Dutt’s get-up as Chaudhry Aslam Khan, Rakesh Bedi as Nabil Gabol (by Gabol’s own admission), etc were noticed in the first part already.

The central spy figure, Jaskirat Singh Rangi alias Hamza Ali Mazari, is fictional but plausibly constructed, drawing on the broad contours of real intelligence operations. It is important to clarify that the character is not based on Mohit Sharma (d. 2009), despite widespread media speculation.

Journalist Aditya Raj Kaul, who contributed to the film’s research, has publicly stated that Indian Army personnel are not deployed as deep-cover moles in Pakistan. This directly undermines both the identification of a “real Dhurandhar” and the associated claims that the timeline of events depicted in the film is historically inaccurate.

The confusion is particularly striking given that Sharma was a recipient of the Ashoka Chakra (posthumous), India’s highest peacetime gallantry award, conferred for exceptional bravery away from conventional battlefield combat. The attempt to recast such a figure as the template for a covert intelligence operative reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of both military roles and the award itself.

If the film occasionally falters at the level of language, it more than compensates through performance. Across the board, the cast demonstrates a high degree of control and immersion, with Ranveer Singh anchoring the narrative with particular finesse.

One of the most telling moments comes early in the film, when Jaskirat poses for a family photograph. His body stiffens, the smile sits uneasily on his face, and his fists remain subtly clenched. It is a finely observed detail—the awkward, slightly overcomposed demeanour typical of a lower-middle-class man unaccustomed to the performative ritual of being photographed. The effect is disarmingly authentic.

The closing stretch offers an equally powerful, if more restrained, demonstration of craft. The protagonist returns home but stops short of announcing himself to his mother and sister. Confronted with the quiet realisation that life has moved on in his absence, he withdraws without a word. The scene is devoid of melodrama, relying instead on stillness and emotional compression. The pathos it generates is profound, and the audience response in theatres reflects that impact.

Real-world backdrop

One of the film’s strengths is its grounding in verifiable patterns of crime, politics and counter-terrorism. Several elements it depicts have clear real-world analogues.

1. Rogue politics and crime in Punjab

The suggestion of political–criminal overlap in Indian Punjab is not without basis. While Punjab’s law-and-order profile is generally better than that of some northern states, it has faced a severe drug crisis. Government and parliamentary data over the past decade have repeatedly flagged a high prevalence of opioid use.

In 2018, a major national survey estimated that lakhs of individuals in Punjab were dependent on opioids, creating fertile ground for cross-border smuggling networks linked to Pakistan-based handlers.

2. Use of low-level operatives across the border

The film’s claim that India has, at times, used petty or condemned criminals as cross-border assets echoes longstanding allegations around human intelligence (HUMINT) practices in South Asia. While official confirmation is rare, investigative reports and memoirs have described the recruitment of individuals from border states—especially Punjab and Rajasthan—for low-level espionage tasks, often with deniability built in.

3. Underworld and political nexus in India

The depiction of a politician–underworld nexus in Uttar Pradesh during the eras of the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party is grounded in a substantial body of reportage. Figures like Atiq Ahmed exemplified the blurring of lines between electoral politics and organised crime. Crime statistics from the 2000s and early 2010s show a high incidence of violent offences, including kidnapping for ransom, a crime that became synonymous with the state during that period.

The subsequent tenure of Yogi Adityanath has been marked by a controversial policy of police “encounters”. Official data released by the Uttar Pradesh Police has claimed thousands of encounters and a sharp reduction in certain categories of crime. However, critics have raised concerns about due process and extrajudicial killings.

4. Pakistan-backed terrorism and demonetisation

India has consistently accused Pakistan of supporting cross-border terrorism, particularly in Jammu and Kashmir. Government data presented in Parliament over the years has documented hundreds of infiltration attempts annually, with fluctuating success rates depending on border management and intelligence inputs.

The film’s reference to the impact of demonetisation on terror financing reflects a real debate. Following the 2016 currency withdrawal, Indian agencies reported short-term disruptions in counterfeit currency networks and certain funding channels. However, most security analysts agree that militant organisations adapted over time, shifting to alternative methods, including digital transfers and smuggling of high-quality fake notes.

D-Company question

The film touches on the enduring mystique of Dawood Ibrahim and his network. It is widely reported that after fleeing India in the 1990s, he operated out of Dubai before establishing a base in Karachi. However, portraying him as superior to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the country’s informal power hierarchy stretches plausibility. The ISI remains a central node in Pakistan’s security architecture, and any non-state actor’s autonomy would be contingent on its tolerance.

Equally uncertain are claims about the current health of Ibrahim and the extent, if any, of Indian involvement in it. Public information is fragmentary, and much of it is speculative.

Make precision Bollywood’s policy

The only issue with Dhurandhar is its linguistic shortcoming. The authenticity of parlance cannot be retrofitted; it must be embedded in pre-production. That means:

• Script vetting by linguists for grammar, register and idiom.
• Dialect coaching tailored to specific regions (Sindh, Balochistan, Punjab, Lucknow).
• Phonetic training to ensure actors internalise sound systems, not thoughtlessly memorise lines.
• Consistency checks across departments—dialogue, subtitles, on-screen text.

These are standard practices in many global industries. Their absence in a film of this scale is conspicuous.

Dhurandhar: The Revenge succeeds as a piece of commercial cinema—engaging, well-cast and narratively efficient. It falters where it should have been most meticulous: language. In a genre where a misplaced vowel can expose a spy, such lapses are structural.

The remedy is neither complicated nor prohibitively expensive. It requires the industry to recognise that authenticity is not an aesthetic luxury but a narrative necessity. Until then, films about covert operations will continue to be undone by the most overt of flaws: misspoken words.