Cold War paranoia permeates. India–Pakistan tensions keep the subcontinent on edge. Netflix’s Saare Jahan Se Accha milks both, but stumbles without political backbone.
Set in the shadow of East Pakistan’s fall and what the show bluntly calls a “humiliating defeat,” the six-episode series plants itself in 1970s South Asia. It follows Indian RAW operative Vishnu Shankar (Pratik Gandhi) as he’s dispatched to sabotage Pakistan’s nuclear program at any cost. The premise sounds taut -spies in Karachi, nuclear secrets, backroom deals with Washington but the execution veers between melodrama and propaganda. The show jams Cold War paranoia into every corner. Mossad–RAW collaboration, CIA warnings, Kissinger cameos.
For all the explosions, clandestine meetups in Budapest, and melodramatic betrayals, the series never risks asking the hardest question: was it really Pakistan that tilted South Asia into a nuclear arms race or was it India’s Pokhran test in 1974?
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his foreign minister Aziz Ahmed are both reduced to cardboard villains. They conspire in dimly lit rooms about Libya, Iran, and China, all while Bhutto’s “humiliated ego” is hammered into the audience through voiceovers. Meanwhile, Indira Gandhi who in reality personally authorized India’s nuclear test at Pokhran is barely present. ISI chief Murtaza Malik (played with magnetic menace by Sunny Hinduja) becomes a bloodthirsty caricature, executing spies with sadistic flourish.
Saare Jahan Se Accha is less blatantly nationalistic drivel than Mission Majnu and The Sky Force.
There are flashes of texture. Parallel weddings of Vishnu and Malik offer visual symmetry, hinting at shared humanity. Spies struggling with loyalty, they admit that no-one has any sense of home anymore. Momentary pauses suggest feelings of guilt and consequence for double-agent Brigadier Noushad – a Pakistani who is blackmailed into working for RAW. These subtleties are lost in obvious graffiti messages like “we are watching” that land like satire. Scenes are spliced to show an absurd contrast, In India Vishnu meets a fiery bride to be. Meanwhile Pakistani scientists being kidnapped in desert bunkers. In India founder of Raw R.N. Kao mentors Vishnu. Meanwhile in Pakistan, Bhutto plots a nuclear dawn for Pakistan.
The politics are paper thin. The narrative reduces a complex nuclear arms race shaped by India’s Pokhran test, CIA meddling, and global Cold War rivalries into a soap opera about bruised egos. The realpolitik of South Asia is erased in favor of a nationalist bedtime story. In this retelling, India plays the moral adult, Pakistan the reckless child, and the West a minor character.
The final mission: RAW agents sneak into Karachi’s Gadani port to destroy a dismantled reactor. The plan fails, agents die, and one sacrifices himself to delay Pakistan’s nuclear dream by 25 years. It’s high drama, but also high fiction. In reality, India detonated the first bomb in the region in 1974, and Pakistan didn’t test until 1998.
The series flips that script, painting Bhutto’s Pakistan as the reckless instigator while India stays the reluctant defender.
Saare Jahan Se Accha may entertain but it also reveals how streaming platforms recycle the same tired binaries. In a region where nuclear brinkmanship is not fiction but daily reality, the shows spycraft is uncomfortable to watch. As journalist Fatima betrays her own country to spy for India and remarks that “Pakistan’s prime ministers change just as often as the weather,” she has no sense of remorse.
A pamphlet on a political loyalty can be this clear but storytelling needs more nuance.
The title’s irony hits hard: Allama Iqbal’s beloved children’s anthem of unity, once cherished in India, now just the tagline for a paranoid Netflix spy drama.
Documentaries for a deeper look:
Explained: How Pakistan became the only Muslim nuclear power (TRT)
Who are has nuclear powers and how did they get them (BBC)
How Pakistan went nuclear (Middle East Eye)
