How Hindi Cinema Has Told the Story of Freedom, From Shaheed to Batwara 1947

On 15 August 2026, India's 80th Independence Day, WION published a feature on how Hindi cinema has depicted the country's freedom over the decades.

What happened

The piece starts with post-Independence films. It cites Shaheed (1948), starring Dilip Kumar and Kamini Kaushal, as the highest-grossing Indian film of that year, and notes that 1950s social dramas such as Do Bigha Zamin and Mother India explored poverty and class rather than celebrating freedom directly.

It then covers the war films shaped by the 1962, 1965 and 1971 conflicts, including Chetan Anand's Haqeeqat (1964). It describes JP Dutta's Border (1997) as the film that brought war cinema a mass audience, with an estimated ₹66.70 crore earned on a ₹12 crore budget.

The feature ends with recent titles based on real operations, including The Ghazi Attack (2017), Raazi (2018) and Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019). It also mentions 2026's Border 2, Netflix's Kargil series Operation Safed Sagar, and Batwara 1947.