At the very beginning of the film Dhurandhar, there is a striking scene:
Kandahar’s soil, a hijacked aircraft, the smell of gunpowder, fear hanging heavy in the air.
Ajit Doval enters the cabin and asks the terrified passengers to chant —
“Bharat Mata ki Jai.”
There is silence.
No voice rises. No slogan echoes.
An extremist smirks and spits venom:
“Hindus are cowards.”
The scene shocks the viewer — but the soul resists accepting it.
First, let’s be clear.
Inside that aircraft, blood has already been spilled. An innocent throat has been slit. People have been trapped for days — tied to seats, deprived of light, water, food — with gun barrels pressed to their chests.
In such a moment, silence is not cowardice.
It is human helplessness.
This is not about religion.
It is not an insult to India.
It is the silence of a human standing face-to-face with death.
Second, the idea that Hindus are cowards is historically false.
If they were, how would a civilization survive a thousand years of continuous assault?
How would its faith, culture, and identity endure through centuries of invasion, destruction, and humiliation?
If Hindus were cowards, Diwali would exist only in memory, not in lamps.
Holi would be buried in textbooks, not celebrated in color.
Let’s look outside India.
Recently, France restricted Christmas-related public celebrations — citing fear of religious terror attacks.
They said: What if someone opens fire?
Now ask yourself:
Has India ever cancelled Diwali out of fear?
Has Holi ever been suspended?
And this is a land far more diverse, far more complex, than France or most of Europe.
So who is truly afraid?
People often say Hindus lack a sense of the enemy.
That, too, is only half true.
Hindus do possess hostility — enough to drag their own brothers into courts, to fight legal battles for generations. The hostility exists in abundance.
What is missing is not anger —
it is the correct identification of the enemy.
That is where the film falters.
That is the unease it leaves behind.
Hindus are not cowards.
If they were, they would not have fought for a thousand years — and survived.
The war is still on.
The form has changed.
The battlefield has shifted.
But the warrior remains.
Cowards do not fight this long.
Tags:
#Dhurandhar #SilenceIsNotCowardice #CivilizationalMemory #HinduHistory #CulturalSurvival #IndiaSpeaks #NarrativeVsTruth #Prafulkr
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