‘Saare Jahan Se Accha' Series Review: Pratik Gandhi's Espionage Drama Is Lost In Translation

Just like the Bhagat Singh story became a first-come-first-serve race for Bollywood historicals in the early 2000s, the Bangladesh Liberation War became the medium to stage Indian patriotism a few years ago. This month marks the beginning of a new period device for Hindi productions: the spymaster story. The recent Salaakar did its clumsiest best to fictionalise the career of India’s National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval. The role of an intelligence agent who sabotages Pakistan’s covert mission to go nuclear in the 1970s is reduced to a series of tacky espionage cliches and cultural stereotypes. It even uses two timelines to double the sense of victory.

Saare Jahan Se Accha is a six-episode thriller (with one timeline only, thankfully) cut from the same narrative cloth. The source material is similar, but the scope is wider. The Indian spy in Islamabad, Vishnu (Pratik Gandhi), finds himself up against his sharp counterpart, ISI boss Murtaza Malik (Sunny Hinduja). Vishnu struggles to secure his marriage with wife Mohini (Tillotama Shome) as well as his network of undercover R&AW moles across Pakistan — including ISI agent Shoaib (Anup Soni) and Karachi stock exchange trader Rafiq (Suhail Nayyar). Murtaza gets as much screen-time if not more; he battles to hunt down traitors and lead the secret tradecraft of nuclear material so that President Bhutto (Hemant Kher) can realise his ambition of being a South Asian superpower. If Bhutto succeeds, as R&AW chief Kao (Rajat Kapoor) tells PM Indira Gandhi, the Middle East will get access to the reactor and “it will be the last World War”.  

In terms of genre and production value, the series is far more competent and grown-up than Salaakar. There is an effort to touch upon the stakes on both sides of the border. Sunny Hinduja delivers a standout Jaideep Ahlawat-coded performance as Murtaza Malik — he plays a traditional villain through the lens of a conflicted anti-hero. It’s almost as if Malik is so committed to being a nationalist that he resents himself for feeling any disappointment or empathy; he’s afraid of not being the man his country demands. So he believes he is the only protagonist, irrespective of what the series thinks.  

Yet, Saare Jahan Se Accha falls well short of being a solid watch. Somewhere in its six episodes, there’s a nuanced and balanced drama about the emotional toll of war, duty, double lives and lost identities; there is a long-form Raazi — where someone wins but nobody wins — for the taking. But every time this drama threatens to show up, it seems to be compromised by an equal and opposite reaction. In other words, it has that reworked and patched-up vibe; you can tell that there are contradicting versions jostling for focus. For instance, I like that the series opens with the Homi Bhabha plane crash being the origin tale of R&AW. Vishnu is often portrayed as someone who carries the guilt and burden of the intelligence failure; he always feels for the sacrifices of his spies, unlike his bosses. Bit by bit, it chips away at his soul. He has his own strong opinion — of cross-border peace and infrastructure — about politics too. But his conscience is diluted to a point where he suddenly becomes a slick patriot during a terribly detached climax. The trajectory makes little sense, even if he is a spy pretending to be different people at once. The confusing tug of war — the push and pull between who Vishnu should be — makes him an opaque figure. 

There are several other examples. Murtaza, too, is beset by contrasts. You feel for him when he discovers that an old friend is a mole, but despite Hinduja’s turn, the character transforms into a more conventional and ‘ruthless’ antagonist. It looks like more of a modification than an organic change of personality. Nayyar’s depiction of trader Rafiq — who is actually a former Indian crook named Sukhir — is complex, particularly when his potential brother-in-law starts to suspect he’s a spy. The better moments revolve around Pakistani people feeling betrayal and trauma like regular folks, but there’s also a sense that the series is reluctant to commit. Even Sukhbir’s arc becomes unnaturally loud in the finale, where he sounds like he’s been brainwashed by another kind of loyalty. It’s like the 1970s character has been tweaked by the future to be more relatable. Even the R&AW chief’s philosophy is ‘softened’ so that Murtaza comes across as a sociopath. 

These holes in the social fabric of the show distract the viewer from more mundane mistakes, like Henry Kissinger (or any white character) sounding like he’s voiced by an Indian putting on a European-American accent. Or Tillotama Shome being wasted as a needy partner whose memo keeps changing. Or a spy’s voice-over again borrowing from an Argo (2012) exchange between a no-nonsense boss and his officer. Or various shots of the Hungarian parliament building serving as a stand-in for different countries and a globe-trotting plot. Or even a honey-trapping Mossad agent allying with an Indian team that’s torn between loving their country and hating Pakistan.  

The idea of a brave Pakistani journalist (Kamra) whose criticism of her government makes her a prime enemy recruit is fine. The subtext — that she could be any dissenter in any democracy today — is not lost on the viewer, especially in a scene where her ‘dialogue’ to a high-ranking officer (“If a leader threatens reporters, Pakistan is better off without an atomic bomb”) is heard by chuckling Indian spies through a pen microphone. They applaud her courage in silence, an image laced with an irony that echoes through the next few generations. Perhaps her arc escapes the scrutiny of the show’s too-many-cooks-spoil-the-broth syndrome, because the bottom line is that she deflects for the love of her country and the heartbreak for what it’s become. It’s a fleeting glimpse of how the phrase “Saare Jahan Se Accha” alludes to beating hearts on both sides. It provides a snapshot of what the series could have been, had it been made (or remade) in more porous circumstances. What we get instead is a spy-multiverse entry trying to tone down its own vulnerability. And a hero proudly declaring — rather than sadly confessing — that “the war never ends”.