Two of them - Accident or Conspiracy: Godhra and The Sabarmati Report - are based on the deadly anti-Muslim riots that broke out in Gujarat in 2002. Veer Savarkar, a biopic celebrating the legacy of the controversial 20th-Century Hindu nationalist leader, includes a dialogue that claims India would have been free of British rule much earlier if it wasn't for independence leader Mahatma Gandhi.

Film critics say the slew of releases points to the solidifying of a new genre of films that plainly aligns with the ruling party's ideology. They add that not all of them work at the box-office, but the stories with their outright fabrications of key events play a part in shaping public perception.

"Cinema has been weaponised for ideology on a scale not seen before," says Nandini Ramnath, film critic at Scroll.in. "These films seek to challenge what we think we know about historical personages or important historical incidents. They are out to create a new alt-history."

This has also sparked concerns about the future of Bollywood, one of India's few cultural spaces whose appeal cuts across religious and political divisions, making it a unique binding force.

Filmmakers behind these projects, however, reject the claim. "My films are not political, they are of human interest," says Sudipto Sen, director of The Kerala Story - the 2023 film which claimed to tell the "true story" of Hindu and Christian women lured into converting to Islam and joining the Islamic State (IS) group.

Sen says his views don't reflect that of any political party and claims that his film angered many because of its "exposition of the truth". But when the film released, the Supreme Court ordered the makers to add a disclaimer that it was a fictionalised account and did not have "authentic data" to back its claim of 32,000 such conversions.

Of course, this is not the first time Bollywood has tapped into nationalism and sold it to a willing audience. The industry has a history of high-octane patriotic, sometimes jingoistic, films. These films dramatise stories of heroes fighting a cast of villains - ranging from malevolent terrorists and corrupt politicians to tyrant colonisers.