The plan was as audacious as it was unexpected. In the middle of the night, from the least suspecting quarters, a bunch of men with weapons slip into the residential area and fan out, hunting for their targets. Upon finally identifying the potential building, they barge in guns blazing killing a few and taking a few hostage. Terrorist attacks have a sickening sense of predictability - terrorize, kill/take hostage, highlight the cause/message and get away. What is not predictable is how the governments respond to the terrorist attacks - a) Cave to the pressure, give in the to the demands, and rue the decision for years to come. b) The second approach calls for spines of steel and cold blood coursing through the veins, in that, no negotiation, risk the wrath of the public by risking the lives of the hostages, make sure there are no survivors from the kidnappers group during the resuce, and this is more important, send out the message that the government doesn't negotiate - no way, no how. Gold Meir, the Prime Minister of Israel when the hostage drama unfolded during the 1972 Munich Olympics, drew up a doctrine that became a gold standard for hardline governments - you kill one of ours, we will kill all of yours. And so every single member of the operation that planned, funded and executed the Munich hostage crisis was marked down for assassination, even if in foreign lands, officially but surreptitiously sanctioned by the government of Israel, sending out the message loud and clear to anyone that attempted such acts in the future that revenge may not be swift but never forgotten. The same doctrine continues to this day, albeit disproportionately, for killing about a 1000 Jews last year, the government of Israel has exacted way more than its pound of flesh by killing over 60,000 Palestinians and counting. When Chechen rebels lay siege an opera house and demanded its compatriots be released from Russia's prisons, Russia coolly sent it its commandoes who stormed the house, pumped in sleeping gas through the air vents. At the end of siege, more than 100 hostages died, but not one terrorist lived to see the next day. The edifying rule is simple, make terrorism costly.
When the daughter of the then Union home minister was kidnapped, the government of India faced a ethical dilemma - is the life of one in power dearer than an ordinary citizen's? Indian government answered in the affirmative then, released Kashmiri separatists from the prison in exchange for the Daughter. A few years later, an Indian Airlines plane was hijacked and was rerouted to Kandhahar, Afghanisthan. Similar demands - hostages for prisoners, and unfortunately the same playbook played out. Kandhahar was even more agonizing because of the pressure piled on by Indian government by the civil society, pointing at the glaring lopsidedness of administration of justice, that if prisoners can be released for a minster's daughter, why cannot the same rule be applied to the civilians. The Prime Minster had no answer to that question and had to release some hardcore elements back into the society. Attacks of Parliament followed thereafter and the biggest of all on the grandest of stage - Mumbai attacks on 26/11. America got wind of the government's military response to the attack, which had already mobilized and amassed about a lakh of troops on the North Western front, and immediately started its placating measures, offering sops and carrots. All the Indian government posturing remained just that. The government was forced to make a strategic decision of treating the issue as one concerning international law, and not as an act of war, as it tried to bring the perpetrators of the Mumbai massacre to justice through the legal route, sharing dossiers with the Pakistani government about the direct involvement of the terrorist elements operating from Karachi. As is always the ways involving terrorism and Pakistan, the latter brushed aside India's "evidence" as fabrication and intentional maligning of a sovereign nation. 2008 was when Mumbai happened, and seventeen years later, for reasons that had nothing to do with justice, law or diplomatic pressure, other than the fact US is now headed by a maverick leader who was India's dear friend on that day, decided to extradite one of the brains behind the Mumbai operation, David Headley, to India. Up until Modi's government, all the previous administrations simply did not have a clear policy/doctrine on how to handle ISI's proxy war, treating the terrorist attacks as an internal security issue so as to not give the issue the "bhaav" that ISI hoped it would garner on the international stage. And Modi followed Meir's erstwhile rule, giving it the desi twist - eenTH ki jawaab patthar se denge (Come at us with a brick, be prepared for a boulder). It is ISI here and not Pakistani government, because....
...Pakistani state has slipped into a twilight zone long ago. It is a democracy only to the extent that there are elected leaders to the ruling bodies, who are devoid of any real powers that dictate the direction of the nation, viz., finance, internal and external security. It is not entirely a military state, in that the notional ruling heads are, at times, elected, if not always selected; its Press is free, strong and independent, its judiciary, until it comes to matters of savings its own skin, is fiercely vocal. But all these traces of democracy do not add up to the real deal, as Mr. Shashi Tharoor once aplty put, "Pakistan is not a state that has a military, Pakistan is a military that has a state". The military apparatus in order to justify its strong hold on the civic society constantly raises the spectre of the Big Brother neighbor, as it tries to view and route all the democratic operations of the country through its hawkish, self-preservative, security lens, leaving India in a tough spot as to whom to engage diplomatically to resolve long standing issues between the two nations - whether with the civic institutions or with the true powers that be, the military, which is trained to only have a myopic view when it comes to the matters of nation-building. And so the change happened when Modi's government took over to help Pakistan ('s military) understand the cost of doing terrorism in India in its own language - ghar mein ghuske maarenge (Among your four walls is no longer your safe space). Despite the lengthy disclaimer at the start of the movie that this is indeed a work of fiction, please...."Dhurandhar" is not historcal fiction
...every single incident portrayed in the movie is ripped right out of the headlines at various points in time. Infiltration of the Karachi street gangs by the Indian intelligence's covert operatives, drive by shootings of key recruiting members of Lakshar-e-Toiba (there was detailed reportage of how close the coverts came close to offing Dawood Ibrahim at his secretly guarded place in Karachi), Pakistani internal strife with its warring sectarian tribes - the Pasthuns, the Punjabis, the Balochs, the Mohajirs - reminding of the Middle Age's Middle Eastern tribes, the unholy nexus of local politicians and the underworld, and among all this, the hapless civilian society caught between patriotism and propaganda. "Dhurandhar" does not play like a mere movie, it reads like a playbook, like what Indian intelligence would do to counter ISI's strategy, like how coverts are identified, groomed and slipped into the cracks of the society and how the covert, lying in the dark, waiting in the shadows, patiently, for years together, suddenly make their play at the opportune moment, and either slip back into dark, escape or sometimes even get caught (like the Indian operative, Kulbhushan jadhav, whose trial and (death) sentencing sparked a major diplomatic row), whose identities are never acknowledged, whose achievements are never celebrated and whose lives are unlived. At more than three and half hours running time, the movie earns every single minute of it and its movement in and out of facts into plausible territory is as seamless and effective (like halting the proceedings on the screen with real life transcript of the conversations between the terriorits holed up in Taj, Mumbai and their handlers in Karachi)....
Violent, messy long, patient, understated - "Dhurandhar", the movie, is just like its subject.
