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Dear reader, have you ever wondered what the Indian propaganda fest Dhurandhar would have been like if it were a joke — or significantly more of a joke than it already was?

Well, we got an answer from Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions on Wednesday. Brace yourselves for the trailer of Udta Teer, a ‘comedy’ that leans into stereotypes and jokes so ridiculous, it’s difficult to imagine someone actually sat down and green-lit this project.

The trailer of Bollywood’s umpteenth Pakistan-obsessed film starts with a narrator telling the audience that India keeps sending spies to Pakistan, but the Pakistanis have finally found the ultimate answer to their adversary’s antics: Bilal Ahmed, played by Ayushmann Khurrana.

The trailer makes it clear that Bilal is, for all intents and purposes, the Pakistani equivalent of Dhurandhar’s Jaskirat Singh Rangi. He’s seen dodging bullets, leaping from explosions and walking through a military installation like he owns the place.

The narrator is quick to point out, “Our guy is no ordinary spy. He’s got passion in his heart, a fire in his eyes and just one cry on his mind…” The scene then cuts to Bilal waving an Indian flag and chanting “Bharat Mata Ki Jai (Glory to Mother India).”

Okay, now if we gave Bollywood the benefit of the doubt and stopped watching here, it would be reasonable to assume he’s simply undercover and trying to blend in… but it gets worse.

Turns out Bilal, if we can even call him that anymore, got hit in the head while leaping from yet another explosion and lost his memory. So, naturally, the Indians nursed him back to health, convinced him he was an Indian with a tragic, anti-Pakistan backstory and gave him a job in a counter terrorism unit — which raises less questions about Pakistan and more about who the Indians would let onto a counterterrorism team.

Of course, Bilal only forgot his nationality and his entire life story — his martial arts skills are as good as ever and he fits right in. The double agent — if he even counts as one — starts dropping ‘terrorists’ left and right until he comes to the realisation that they are led by a shadowy figure named Bilal Ahmed.

If that makes you want to shake some sense into the guys, we are glad to report that his Indian colleagues tried, they even told him he was Bilal, but the man is just in too deep.

To add to all this, there’s the apparent primary villain, a portly caricature of a terrorist with a terrible accent who needs to get himself in shape — and from one scene where he’s on an app called “Hinder”, find himself a Mrs Terrorist. Obviously, he speaks with the hardened kh sounds and a surplus of janaabs that are a staple of Muslim (mis)representation in Indian cinema.

The rest of the trailer is your usual Indian spy movie stuff, more gunshots, more explosions, some angry members of Pakistan’s top brass and, of course, romance shots up in the mountains.

Judging by the trailer, Bollywood seems to have lost the plot entirely. We get that jingoism and propaganda is selling out Indian theatres and that Bollywood comedies aren’t in a great place right now, but this is ridiculous.

In fact, it’s not just ridiculous, it’s harmful. Where art is supposed to bring people together, this film seems to aspire to create a twisted version of the Two Minutes Hate from George Orwell’s 1984 where, the audience is in hysterics instead of visible rage. The hysterics, of course, are socially mandated just like in the rage in the book.

We don’t know yet if Udta Teer will be a commercial success when it comes out next month — and we hope audiences have the good sense not to go watch it in theatres — but it is indicative of long-term societal problems.

The fact that a movie so ridiculous with some rather obvious hate for India’s largest religious minority is allowed to go to production, much less screen in theatres, shows that Bollywood’s propaganda machine has already done some serious damage.