Ambani Wedding: Billionaires, BJP and Bollywood
Last few months have seen a grotesque display of obscene wealth in India, a country with well-documented levels of extreme poverty, hunger and unemployment. Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani has splurged hundreds of millions of dollars on his son's wedding attended by top politicians including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Hollywood and Bollywood celebrities and Ambani's fellow billionaires who have accumulated vast amounts of wealth in one of the world's most unequal countries. Experts blame it on Mr. Modi's policies promoting crony capitalism. Viral Acharya, former deputy governor of Reserve Bank of India, told the BBC that their ability to acquire large distressed companies, a growing appetite for mergers and acquisitions, and India's conscious industrial policy of creating "national champions via preferential allocation of projects and in some cases regulatory agencies turning a blind eye to predatory pricing".
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| Indian Prime Minister Modi at the Ambani Wedding in Mumbai. Source: ANI |
Between 2014-15 and 2022-23 on Mr. Modi's watch, the rapid rise in inequality in India has been particularly striking in terms of wealth concentration, according to World Inequality Lab. The top 1% now control over 40% of total wealth in India, up from 12.5% in 1980, and they earn 22.6% of total pre-tax income, up from 7.3% in 1980. Almost 90% of the country's billionaire wealth has been found concentrated in the hands of the upper castes. The Inequality Report concludes: "This spectacular rise of inequality (in India) makes the “Billionaire Raj” headed by India’s modern bourgeoise more unequal than the British Raj headed by the colonialist forces. It also squarely places India among the most unequal countries in the world".
Bollywood, the powerful Indian film industry, has become a key enabler of BJP's billionaire-friendly and Islamophobic policies. In a piece titled “India's theatrical politics: Bollywood, billionaires and the BJP", authors Sehr Rushmeen and Wanya Sidhu write: "By shaping narratives that subtly endorse “Hindutva” ideologies, sometimes even employing Muslim actors to deliver skewed messages, Bollywood contributes to a socio-political echo chamber in favor of Modi’s BJP...... Bollywood movies transcend mere entertainment; they convey narratives cleverly crafted to align with the BJP’s political agenda. By consistently portraying Muslims and Pakistan in a negative spotlight, these Indian blockbusters perpetuate a cycle of fear and nationalistic fervor to garner votes for the BJP while discarding the imperative of forging national unity".
Meanwhile, India's child-wasting rate of 18.7% is the highest in the world, according to the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2023 released last year. The South Asian country’s child wasting rate is higher than that of war-torn Yemen (at 14.4%) and Sudan (at 13.7%), which are ranked second and third in the world. Pakistan's child wasting rate is 8%. It represents the share of children under age five who have low weight for their height, reflecting acute undernutrition. The child wasting rate of the South Asia region is 14.8%, the highest of any world region and more than twice the child wasting rate of Africa. India is home to a quarter of the world's most undernourished people. According to the United Nations, India has nearly 195 million undernourished people. This is more than any other country, including China.
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| India Tops in Child Wasting Rate. Source: The Wire |
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| India Tops the World in Child Wasting. Source: Global Hunger Index 2023 |
India's Hindu Nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to project India as a superpower launching moon missions and hosting G20 summits. Since the GHI 2023 report runs counter to this PR exercise, New Delhi has rejected its findings. But its own National Family Health Survey 5 (NFHS 5) says that "Thirty-six percent of children under age five years are stunted; 19 percent are wasted; 32 percent are underweight; and 3 percent are overweight. Children born to mothers with no schooling and children in the lowest wealth quintile are most likely to be undernourished".
Overall, India ranks at the 111th position out of 124 countries, with neighboring Pakistan (102nd), Bangladesh (81st), Nepal (69th) and Sri Lanka (60th) faring better than India in the index. India has slipped four notches from its 107th position in 2022.
India has slipped 4 places, from 107 in 2022 to 111 in 2023, on GHI. Pakistan's ranking has also slipped 3 places, from 99 to 102. It is not a huge surprise since the country is still facing the aftermath of the disastrous floods of 2022. It is also suffering from a serious economic crisis. Meanwhile, India's Modi government is making claims to being the world's fastest growing economy. And yet, Indian children are the most malnourished in the world.
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| India Malnutrition Indicator Trends. Source GHI 2023 |
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There's a close relationship between hunger and poverty. At the $3.65 poverty line, India accounts for 40% of the slight upward revision of the global poverty rate from 23.6% to 24.1%, according to the World Bank September 2023 Global Poverty Update. It is the same update that made the following recent headline in the Indian and Pakistani media about Pakistan: "Pakistan's 40% Population Lives Below Poverty Line, Says World Bank". Fact: 45.9% of Indians and 39.4% of Pakistanis live below the $3.65 a day poverty line as of September, 2023, according to the latest World Bank global poverty update that takes into account the impact of inflation on poverty rates. But neither the Pakistani media nor India's compliant "Godi Media" reported it. Nor did they question why poverty in India is growing despite the Modi government's claim to be "the world's fastest growing economy".
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Comments
Arnaud Bertrand
@RnaudBertrand
This is actually a very significant difference between India and China.
Never would a Chinese billionaire dare have such an ostentatious wedding, because they understand how indecent it'd be and how badly it'd be perceived by pretty much everyone. And never would a senior party leader - let alone Xi - attend such an event as it'd immediately sound the death knell of their career.
There are many extremely wealthy Chinese but wealth has to be discreet: if as a billionaire you were to start vulgarly flaunting your wealth or becoming too arrogant, it's a virtual certainty you'll quickly regret it.
It's interestingly very similar to France: we too culturally despise wealthy people who show off and hold money as a value in and of itself. Maybe even more so than the Chinese actually (although, unlike in China, the wealthy hold a lot of sway over the French government).
It's actually an interesting topic of study: why is it ok in some cultures to be so ostentatious (like India and the US) and not in others (China or France)?
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1814640626287452495
by Mathew John
https://thewire.in/society/why-indians-are-the-most-racist-people-on-earth
Pitroda belongs to that incorrigible species of individuals who refuse to abide by the tried and tested dictum that it is better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you are a fool rather than open it and remove all doubt. Clearly lacking the acumen to anticipate that in this heated election season, even the most benign statements will be misconstrued by political opponents, Pitroda drew a simple racial, but certainly not racist, comparison among our people from different regions: “We could hold together a country as diverse as India – where people on East look like Chinese, people on West look like Arabs, people in North look like maybe white and people in South look like Africans. It doesn’t matter. We are all brothers and sisters.”
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The ugliest racist reaction was that of the Prime Minister of the country who demonstrated the lowest common denominator of racist thinking with his denunciation of Pitroda for equating people from the South with the African. The self-proclaimed divine being/thespian/politician expressed thunderous outrage that the “Shehzada (Rahul)” and his Congress acolytes were “disrespecting our countrymen based on the colour of their skin. Modi will definitely not tolerate it”. By implication, he was insinuating that to be compared to the dark-skinned Africans amounted to disrespect of our countrymen. For Modi, black is not beautiful. And he further exposed his crude racism by accusing the Congress of not supporting Draupadi Murmu’s candidature for President because they thought she was African – “her skin is dark so she must be defeated”. Significantly, Modi seemed okay with the other comparisons drawn by Pitroda. To be associated with the Whites, or the Chinese or the Arabs is kosher but in Modi’s reckoning, to be linked to the Africans is an insult. How appallingly racist is that?
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On the issue of racism, we have a lot to be ashamed of. In her profoundly insightful book on racism titled Caste, Isabel Wilkerson describes the hierarchies of power that sets the presumed supremacy of one group against the supposed inferiority of another, that harnesses race, class and colour to divide and subjugate people. We in India have the dubious distinction of not only providing the moniker for the book but being linked with Nazi Germany and America as the dominant locations that have bolstered the racist power structures and hierarchies that divide us today
Wilkerson points to uncanny similarities between India and America. Both have adopted social hierarchies that reinforce the differences between the highest and the lowest, keeping the dominant castes separate, apart and above those deemed lower. Both exiled their indigenous people – the Adivasis in India, the Native Americans in the United States – to remote lands and to the unseen margins of society, apart from using terror and force to keep them there.
To put it bluntly, our centuries-old, iniquitous caste system is the mothership that has provided the inspiration for Nazi Germany and racist America. This egregious concept of social hierarchy goes back millennia and is thousands of years older than European racism and division by skin colour. But caste is not our only social deformity. Our racism is a many-coloured monster that goes beyond caste, embracing discrimination based on religion, on the colour of one’s skin and even one’s facial characteristics.
https://www.ft.com/content/95526229-6fd1-447d-ac39-dc1f094b8fa7
Rajiv Radhakrishnan says that spending $600mn on the Ambani wedding is a sign that India is becoming an elite nation (“Ambani wedding frenzy signals India is among elite”, Letters, July 17). He says that next on the agenda must be for India to host an extravagant Olympics ceremony.
Another agenda for India would be to provide freedom for trafficked girls, meals for undernourished children and clean water for its citizens. A fraction of the money spent on Anant Ambani’s wedding could rescue thousands of children trapped in the slums of Kolkata or New Delhi. Investing in children from an early age could help to reverse skyrocketing income inequality in India.
Willem Thorbecke
Senior Fellow, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry, Tokyo, Japan
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/24/india-clearly-has-a-problem-finding-new-drivers-for-economic-growth.html
India “clearly has a problem” figuring out new drivers for its economic growth even as its economy expands at a fast clip, JPMorgan’s Jahangir Aziz said, following the country’s union budget.
India’s chief economic advisor V Anantha Nageswaran said Monday that the economy is expected to grow at 6.5% to 7% in financial year 2025, lower than the Reserve Bank of India’s 7.2% growth forecast.
India “clearly has a problem” figuring out new drivers for its economic growth even as its economy expands at a fast pace, JPMorgan’s Jahangir Aziz said, following the country’s union budget.
“If you look at India over the last two years post the pandemic, recorded growth has been strong. But if you look at the drivers of growth, it’s essentially these two: Public infrastructure and services export,” Aziz, chief emerging markets economist at JPM, told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” on Tuesday.
The country’s finance minister on Tuesday said capital expenditure for fiscal year 2025 will be 11.11 trillion Indian rupees ($133.9 billion) — or 3.4% of GDP — backing India’s ambitions to enhance its physical and digital infrastructure as it strives to become a developed nation by 2047.
According to estimates by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, India’s services exports will likely hit $30.3 billion in June, compared with $27.8 billion in the same month last year.
“Services export is sort of stabilizing at a high level, it isn’t growing as fast as it was a couple years back,” Aziz said, adding that the government should focus on increasing private investments and boosting consumption.
“It is going to be very difficult for India to keep sustaining the 6% to 7% growth rate just on public infrastructure and on services export … The question is, can India broaden its growth drivers to consumption, but more importantly private investment? We haven’t seen that happen in a long, long time.”
India’s chief economic advisor V Anantha Nageswaran said Monday that the economy is expected to grow at 6.5% to 7% in financial year 2025, lower than the Reserve Bank of India’s 7.2% growth forecast.
According to the International Monetary Fund’s latest World Economic Outlook, the country’s growth is predicted to decline to 6.5% in 2025.
Although India’s large youth population is steering the country toward becoming the world’s third largest consumer market by 2027, consumption is unlikely to increase if high unemployment stands in the way, warned Raghuram Rajan, professor at the University of Chicago Booth School and former governor of the Reserve Bank of India.
The country’s unemployment rate climbed to 9.2% in June, from 7% the month before, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy.
“You’ve seen consumption growth relatively tepid over the last few quarters, and unless people feel more confident that they have jobs, that they are well paying jobs, you are going to see that be a drag on growth,” Rajan said.
He questioned the employment initiatives such as pledging to train 2 million young people over five years, and providing a month’s worth of wages of about 15,000 rupees ($179) to first-time employees entering the workforce, announced in Tuesday’s budget.
“Are they of the magnitude that India requires given the enormous concerns about joblessness?”
@BhavikaKapoor5
In the last 10 years, his TV channels have been airing non-stop hate agendas, misleading debates against muslims, targeting opposition, his companies are looting the nation's assets with both hands, huge loans from Govt banks, and he has been involved in twisting government policies only in his favour.
Is he less than any anti-national terrorist?
What do you think?
https://x.com/BhavikaKapoor5/status/1819699569539576087
https://www.financialexpress.com/business/industry-shrinking-middle-class-hitting-fmcg-firms-nestle-india-3646982/
The FMCG sector is facing sluggish demand as it is becoming polarised with the middle class shrinking but simultaneously there being high demand for premium products, Nestle India chairman and managing director Suresh Narayanan said on Tuesday. He added that in bigger cities, a channel shift is also being noticed with people preferring e-commerce and quick commerce.
Speaking to a select group of reporters at the company’s Samalkha facility, Narayanan said, “there used to be a middle segment which used to be the segment most of us FMCG companies used to operate in, which is the middle class of the country. That seems to be shrinking. And there is a completely, purely price-quality-be-damned-led segment, which also seems to be doing reasonably well”. As a result, companies offering fair to reasonable value in the middle segment are finding their fortunes temporarily shrinking, he added.
Nestle’s demand pattern also reflects this. Narayanan said that the company’s chocolate business was among the worst hit due to the slowdown. Yet, its premium chocolates were among the best performers in terms of growth.
He said that earlier this situation used to last for a quarter and then bounce back, but now it has lasted for two-three quarters.
Last week, Nestle India, reported its slowest quarterly growth in eight years. The company said it was primarily due to weak demand and high raw material costs.
“The pressure points are coming from mega cities and metros,” Narayanan said. “It is almost like we operating in two Indias,” he added.
The categories that have taken the biggest hit are milks & nutrition, and chocolate and confectionery. However, its core products like Maggi, KitKat and Milkmaid continue to grow at double digits.
IIM graduate startup CEO says 2,000 richest families own 18% of India’s wealth: ‘This is insane’ | Trending - Hindustan Times
https://www.hindustantimes.com/trending/iim-graduate-startup-ceo-says-2-000-richest-families-own-18-of-india-s-wealth-this-is-insane-101736132025805.html
The founder and CEO of Bombay Shaving Company reflected on India’s wealth inequality in a LinkedIn post, calling the gap between the rich and poor “insane.” In his critique of modern work culture, Shantanu Deshpande said economic inequality forces people into jobs they dislike. He said that the majority of Indians work not for job satisfaction but for survival.
Deshpande also claimed that 2,000 families own 18% of India’s wealth while paying only 1.8% of taxes. He said that these families are guilty of promoting the idea that hard work will lead to success because it serves their end goal. HT.com could not independently verify this data.
“Most people don't like their jobs”
“One of the tragic and late realizations I've had is - most people don't like their jobs,” the CEO of Bombay Shaving Company wrote in his LinkedIn post.
“If everyone in India was given sustenance money and financial security their current jobs give them, 99% won't show up to work the next day.”
Deshpande theorised that this dislike for work permeates class and sectors - whether it is gig workers or government employees or professionals in “fun and employee friendly startups” like his very own, most people would quit if they did not have to earn a living.
“Work is a majboori to provide for spouse, children, elderly parents, dependent siblings,” he wrote.
Questioning the inequity
Shantanu Deshpande further said that for centuries, it has been considered normal to tear people away from their families from morning to night, ostensibly to provide for these very families.
More and more, however, he has found himself questioning the logic of such a work culture.
“To usurp someone away from their homes and families all day from morning to night, sometimes for days and weeks, with a hanging carrot of a paycheck - we just assume it's alright to do that cos that's what's been happening for 250+ years.
“That's how nations have been built. So we do it. But increasingly I've found myself questioning the inequity of this,” the founder and CEO wrote on LinkedIn.
Deshpande highlighted the wealth disparity that exists within India.
On the question of wealth inequality, he provided some “insane” statistics. Deshpande said that 18% of national wealth is concentrated among the country’s 2,000 richest families.
He admitted that he was not too sure about the accuracy of the numbers but said that these families definitely don’t pay even 1.8% of taxes.
“2000 families in India own 18% of our national wealth. That's just INSANE. Not sure of the numbers but they definitely do not pay even 1.8% of the taxes,” the IIM graduate founder reflected.
“These families and other 'equity builders' like me (v v miniscule version haha) are guilty of peddling a 'work hard and climb up' narrative because it's self serving of course, but also what other option is there? We don't know any other way,” he added.
By Imaan Irfan
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/72598/the-narendra-modi-cinematic-universe-bjp-bollywood-india
In the darkness of the Indian cinema, reality falls away. Enter a world in which beautiful heroines sing in chiffon saris on alpine landscapes without getting cold. In which floppy-haired heroes perform physics-defying stunts and dance atop moving trains. And in which love, of course, always conquers all.
It is hard to overestimate the vastness of Bollywood—India’s Hindi-language film industry, based in the bustling heart of Mumbai. India churns out more films annually than both the US and China, serving a population of 1.45bn people and reaching global audiences from Nigeria to Russia.
But what, precisely, is now being served up? Something noticeably different since the election of Narendra Modi as prime minister in 2014 and the concurrent rise of his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). As India’s politics has shifted rightwards, the film industry has moved with it.
Unlike the relationship between Hollywood and Donald Trump, some of Modi’s most vocal supporters include high-profile actors and filmmakers. The prime minister frequently appears alongside Bollywood’s finest and makes cameos at celebrity weddings (including Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas’s big fat Indian wedding in 2018). A growing contingent of actors-turned-BJP politicians have even made their way to parliament, including action star Sunny Deol and actresses Kangana Ranaut and Kirron Kher.
The “saffronisation” of the country—named after BJP’s official colours—is taking place on screen, too. Bollywood has a history of sumptuous period films set in India’s Mughal era, from Humayun (1945) to Mughal-e-Azam (1960) to Jodhaa Akbar(2008). But since 2014, as it has become clear that films made in the same vein are now politically and economically straitjacketed, the old portrayals of cultured Mughal rulers have been replaced by new ones of bestial, flesh-eating brutes with thick beards and dark, kohl-rimmed eyes.
The 2025 historical epic Chhaava is a case in point. It portrayed a daring Hindu king with superhuman strength (and the ability to break a CGI lion’s jaw with his bare hands) facing off against a monstrous Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb (“Wherever you see saffron, stain it red with blood”). Following the film’s release, right-wing groups called to destroy the real-world Aurangzeb’s tomb, leading to riots in Nagpur last March. In 2022’s Samrat Prithviraj, meanwhile, another lionslaying Hindu king—whose consort Princess Sanyogita is played by former Miss World winner Manushi Chhillar—turns history on its head by killing his Muslim counterpart, Muhammad Ghori.
Cinema is perfect for broadcasting Hindutva narratives to unwitting audiences
Nor is this rewriting of history reserved for period films. For a leader who refuses to engage with critical journalists, cinema is perfect for broadcasting Hindutva narratives to unwitting audiences. And so there is a subgenre of hagiographical biopics of far-right figures—including Ajey (2025), about the extremist monk-turned-BJP leader Yogi Adityanath, and another about Modi himself, which drew criticism (and a temporary ban from the Election Commission of India) for its original planned release date on the day polls opened for the 2019 general election. Its opening transparently declared: “THE INTENT OF THIS FILM IS TO INSPIRE PATRIOTISM, NATIONALISM AND REVERENCE FOR OUR GREAT NATION ESPECIALLY AMONGST THE YOUTH AND ALSO PEOPLE AT LARGE.”
By Imaan Irfan
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/72598/the-narendra-modi-cinematic-universe-bjp-bollywood-india
Even more troubling—says Shakuntala Banaji, a professor of media, culture and social change at the London School of Economics who specialises in studying authoritarian uses of media—has been the “swing into very vicious forms of propaganda”. Take The Kerala Story (2022), which billed itself as a true account of 32,000 girls from Kerala who were groomed into joining Isis—and was premised on the idea of “love jihad”, a far-right conspiracy theory that is used to target interfaith couples in India. When journalists criticised the film for exaggerating the number of radicalised women, the figure on posters was reduced to just three. Still, the BJP leveraged the film in its campaign for the Karnataka assembly election, and it won the National Film Award (selected by a panel appointed by the government).
Or The Kashmir Files, released in the same year, which portrayed the exodus of Hindu Pandits from Kashmir and Muslim militant groups in the 1990s. This featured gratuitous (and fictionalised) episodes of violence—including a scene in which a widow is forced to eat rice soaked in her husband’s blood. Videos circulated on social media of moviegoers shouting, “Shoot the traitors!” BJP leaders organised special screenings and Modi personally met its creators.
Both films were endorsed by the prime minister and granted tax-free status in several exclusively BJP-ruled states.
In the moral universe of these films, argues Banaji, “the core theme is that violence and extreme violence are completely acceptable norms for individuals and groups who happen to be Hindu to use against [Muslims]… there’s always an excuse built in, in terms of the historical imagining of those films, about why one might need to use [violence] against insidious, vicious and usually completely inhuman or subhuman Muslim groups and characters.”
“If [filmmakers] push against an exclusionary idea of India’s Hindu nation,” she says, “you begin to see that you either have to be producing within the indie sector, or you are gradually pushed out, or you are the target of a lot of hate.”
The most striking example of this is the case of India’s Muslim actors. The “Khans of Bollywood”—Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan and Salman Khan (no relation to each other)—are among the most wealthy and recognisable celebrities in the world, but they also occupy a precarious position.
Two years after Modi’s election, when Aamir Khan mentioned a “growing sense of disquiet” in the country and confessed that his Hindu wife had broached the prospect of having to move abroad, the subsequent backlash saw him being dropped from contracts, including as the face of the government’s “Incredible India” tourism campaign.
A few days later, the “king of Bollywood”, Shah Rukh Khan—worth £1.3bn and sometimes described as the biggest actor in the world—came under fire for suggesting India had become more religiously hostile (“I think we should be a little more tolerant”). BJP leaders compared his language to that of terrorists, and he was forced to retract. Separately, his son was detained without bail for a month by narcotics police, despite a lack of evidence. “If they could do this to the king,” observedSamanth Subramanian in the New Yorker, “imagine what they could do to us”.
Actors and filmmakers tread a fine line between self-preservation and complicity
Actors, like everyone else, have had to adapt to this new India. But they tread a fine line between self-preservation and complicity. Shah Rukh Khan visited a senior BJP figure to ensure the smooth release of Raees (2017), assuring him that his Pakistani costar, Mahira Khan, would not be promoting the film in India. Around the same time, Aamir Khan attended his first award ceremony in 16 years, to be honoured by Mohan Bhagwat, the head of the Hindu supremacist paramilitary group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
By Imaan Irfan
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/72598/the-narendra-modi-cinematic-universe-bjp-bollywood-india
It is impossible to understand Modi’s India without understanding the RSS, which was founded in 1925 as an echo of European fascist parties and now has some 6m active members. The group’s disciples have included Gandhi’s assassin and many BJP politicians—up to Modi himself. Its primary aim is to establish a Hindu Rashtra, a theocratic or semi-theocratic state, with minority faiths inevitably relegated to second-class status, or worse.
On 7th and 8th February this year, the group held centenary celebrations in Mumbai and rolled out the saffron carpet for Bollywood’s brightest stars. And it wasn’t just the usual suspects, Modi’s vocal allies in the film industry, who attended. Directors, actors and composers who had never attended an RSS event were present, too. Ten years ago, this would have been unthinkable.
Even Salman Khan made an appearance, permitting himself to smile at a line in Bhagwat’s speech acknowledging Khan’s influence: “What Salman Khan wears, college students do the same… Why do they do it? Because he is wearing it. Why is he wearing it? They don’t know.”
In those words was a clue to why all the actors were invited in the first place. After all, the country’s far-right leaders don’t just see themselves as the custodians of Indian culture—but also its shapers. And by merging the blind devotion of nationalist politics with the blind devotion of Bollywood fandom, what can stop them?
Is Bollywood’s latest megahit propaganda for Narendra Modi?
https://www.economist.com/asia/2026/03/29/is-bollywoods-latest-megahit-propaganda-for-narendra-modi
"Is Bollywood's latest megahit propaganda for Narendra Modi? “Dhurandhar: The Revenge” portrays India extracting a price for Pakistani perfidy".
"A country that cannot pull off an assassination in Canada—Canada!—without getting rumbled is in “Dhurandhar” capable of retribution that makes Mossad look like LARPing teenagers."
“Some of the biggest cheers for “The Revenge” at the showing Banyan attended erupted not when patriotic dialogue is delivered, nor when Pakistanis are finished off in increasingly imaginative ways, nor even when the sneering terrorist has his brains blown out. The loudest cheers came when the screen lit up with news footage of Mr Modi, the bravest Hindu of all. But to dismiss “Dhurandhar” as propaganda is to miss something important. It did not become a monster hit by trying to convince viewers of an alternate reality. Its genius is to reflect the world many Indians, browbeaten by years of shrill pro-Modi messaging on TV news and social media, already believe to be real.”