Some in Bollywood Are Forgetting Pahalgam Attack Isn't Reel but Real Life

In times of peace, cinema fosters empathy. In times of conflict, it can become a weapon.

When filmmakers choose to become mouthpieces for rage instead of reflection, the line between fiction and hate speech blurs.

(Photo: Aroop Mishra/The Quint)

When news broke of the Pahalgam terrorist attack on 22 April, killing at least 26 tourists, there was collective mourning across India. But very quickly, that grief turned into a spectacle of communal rage. This was not the quiet, justifiable anger at systemic failure, but a loud, performative hypernationalism that was out to seek retribution.

From YouTube channels to prime-time news, the aftermath of this tragedy followed a chilling pattern we are all too familiar with and resigned to now: incendiary rhetoric and co-opting of grief, to fuel a divisive hunger for vengeance.

We saw this happen after Uri in 2016 and after Pulwama in 2019. ​​The Uri attacks led to India’s much-publicised “surgical strikes” across the Line of Control (LoC), marking a shift in military posture. The Pulwama attack provoked nationwide outrage as well, and was followed by Indian airstrikes in Balakot, Pakistan, dramatically escalating Indo-Pak tensions. Both incidents were swiftly politicised and became cultural flashpoints, inspiring films and media narratives that glorified retaliation and anti-Muslim and anti-Kashmiri sentiments.

Then too, blood had not dried on the streets before film producers rushed to register titles like Pulwama: The Surgical Strike, Balakot, How's the Josh, Surgical Strike 2.0. T-Series, Abundantia Entertainment, and others treated the national trauma like intellectual property up for grabs. While not all these films saw release, the cultural shift they represented was undeniable.

By 2019, we had films like Uri: The Surgical Strike, starring Vicky Kaushal, which wore jingoism on its sleeve. Dialogues like “How's the josh?” turned into marketing slogans for everything from bank ads to school campaigns. Like most war movies from Bollywood before this, from Border (1997) to Kesari (2019), Uri: The Surgical Strike didn’t just tell a story—it reflected the consensus that screamed that violence is cathartic, war is heroic, and revenge is patriotic.

Films like Article 370 (2024) further entrenched the idea that complex geopolitical issues could be resolved through a display of swift brute strength. Even The Kashmir Files (2022), though not directly related to these attacks, fed into the same ecosystem, stoking division and hysteria under the guise of truth-telling. Together, these films didn’t just reflect national sentiment; they helped manufacture and solidify it, making space for propaganda to pass as entertainment.

The Mainstreaming of Warmongering

Pen Studios (formerly known as Popular Entertainment Network), the production and distribution company behind popular films like Kahaani (2012), Singh is Bliing (2015), RRR (2022) and Gangubai Kathiawadi (2022). decided to post a clip from Shaurya (2008) on their YouTube channel, Pen Multiplex.

In the scene, Kay Kay Menon’s character Brigadier Rudra Pratap Singh rants that the only way to prevent terrorism is to kill all Muslims in cold blood.

Pen Multiplex’s caption read, “Maturity is realising Brigadier Rudra Pratap Singh was right.” It’s a fictional monologue spoken by the main antagonist of the film. However, a mainstream film production house turned it into a call for bloodlust.

Although the video has since been deleted, screenshots have flooded social media, with right-wing circles applauding the “patriotism” of Pen Studios. Some even flocked to an older post with the same clip to praise Brigadier Rudra Pratap Singh’s zealous admission of guilt.

There is nothing “mature” or patriotic about dehumanising an entire community. It is nothing but yet another excuse for blatant Islamophobia. This is how propaganda operates—amplified by legitimate platforms and people in power, to stoke blind bigotry, silence dissent, and redirect public anger away from institutional and security failures. It constructs a dangerous binary: one side cast as the perpetual aggressor, the other as the heroic victim just waiting to snap.

From Fiction to Hate Speech

When filmmakers choose to become mouthpieces for rage instead of reflection, when studios like Pen use cinema to incite rather than interrogate, the line between fiction and hate speech blurs.

At a time when we need sober thinking, we are handed soundbites along with calls for boycotting Indian actors and brands—like Vaani Kapoor and Dot & Key—for daring to work with artists from Pakistan—Fawad Khan and Hania Amir being the ones on the other end of these brickbats.

The fate of Vaani Kapoor and Fawad Khan’s upcoming film Abir Gulaal now hangs in the balance, as calls for boycott grow stronger. The songs released on YouTube have already been removed amid backlash.

Mainstream media, especially the right-leaning channels, are stoking the fire. Rather than demanding accountability for glaring security lapses—how did these terrorists manage to target a high-profile tourist area in the world’s most heavily militarised zone—they have pivoted to the usual anti-Muslim rhetoric.

Weaponising Grief

Our media instead thinks it is right to ask Indian Muslims to condemn the attack—as if being Muslim makes one complicit. They bait secular voices, asking them to prove their loyalty. Hate is the only thing that gets airtime and TRP gains. In the meanwhile, acting in further ridiculously inhuman ways, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s official channels on social media get away with using horrific footage from the valleys of Baisaran and turning it into AI Ghibli imagery, turning grief into content.

When individuals and companies with immense reach, especially those related to media and the world of entertainment, use real violence to fuel hate, it should scare us all. They endorse conflict as if we are living in a Bollywood film, without concern for all the real lives that will be lost to a mindless act of aggression, without concern for the soldiers, civilians, and entire communities that will be caught in the crossfires of manufactured outrage. In a country already brimming with communal tension, such reckless glorification of violence is lethal.

Every frothing, raging warmonger conveniently forgets that Muslims and Dalits are lynched by upper-caste Hindus precisely for their dharm (religion) and jaat (caste) as they circulate meme-fied outrage screaming, “Dharm poochha, jaat nahi” (they asked our religion, not caste).

They absolve themselves of centuries of caste violence and religious warfare in performative amnesia. This isn’t a minority faction shouting into the void, even though the “Hindu khatre mein hai” (Hindus are in trouble) narrative believers would like to think their numbers are shrinking. It’s a majoritarian chorus, and actual minorities in India have been living under the weight of its violence for far too long. It feeds into the beast of cyclical violence that demands the whole world go blind in a never-ending eye-for-an-eye, tit-for-tat battle.

Cinema has always been a powerful vehicle for ideology. In times of peace, it fosters empathy. In times of conflict, it can become a weapon.

Patriotism or Performance?

Aditya Dhar’s Uri has become a template for valorising military might without question in modern times. It encouraged any dissent as unpatriotic, and it’s not an isolated case. From The Kashmir Files to Gadar 2 (2023) and Chhaava (2025), a new kind of filmic nationalism has emerged. This one asks the audience not to think, but to feel vitriolic sentiments. Not to question, but to cheer as more blood is shed.

It’s the cultural climate these films are a part of. Where production houses release militaristic monologues like war cries, where people flood social media with calls to “avenge our dead” by attacking minorities, where a call for peace is framed as betrayal, and where Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza is evoked as a threat of annihilation towards Kashmiris and Muslims.

After the terror attack, Aditya Dhar expressed his strong reaction to the recent terror attack in Pahalgam, Jammu & Kashmir, by sharing a quote from his film on Instagram.

Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri, director of The Kashmir Files, reacted to the attacks by saying his films were "protests."

What’s perhaps most heartbreaking is how far we’ve strayed from saner responses of the past. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Bollywood had space for more nuance. After Kargil, there were films like Lakshya (2004), which, while patriotic, didn’t caricature the enemy. Even in the wake of 26/11, actors spoke of unity, not vengeance that aligned with “ghar mein ghus ke marenge” (We will enter your homes and kill you) sentiments. The collective messages were about resilience, not retribution. 

Mainstream Indian publications like The Times of India tied up with Pakistani media conglomerate Jang Group to spread messages of unity and solidarity over our shared love for cinema and songs. There was “Aman ki asha” (Hope for peace).  Today, that space for grace has all but disappeared.

India, and Kashmir in particular, is no stranger to communal violence. But what we do in the aftermath of tragedy—who we choose to blame, what stories we amplify, how we shape our grief—is what will ultimately define us. So, do we surrender to our bloodlust or do we break free from the poison of propaganda?

(The author is an independent film, TV and pop culture journalist who has been feeding into the great sucking maw of the internet since 2010. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)