[1] It is based on two-hundred plus eyewitness accounts and official documents with the information gathering and research for the film taking almost three years to compile and execute into a story and screenplay which was finished in July 2015.

It was filmed on location in India, primarily in a village around Anandpur Sahib, as well as around the Golden Temple Amritsar, Moga and Mohali.

The story revolves around the era when Satnam Singh was a young man and he tells his grandson about being involved in the Punjabi Suba movement and the Dharam Yudh Morcha, as well as the escalation from peaceful protest to the violence which ensued when the Indian government, viewing the movement as secessionist, moved against the protestors with military force.

Historical events and topics featured in the film include The River Water Dispute, the Anandpur Sahib Resolution, the 1978 Sikh–Nirankari clash, the Dharam Yudh Morcha, the arrest of over thirty thousand Sikhs in two-and-a-half months in 1982, the life of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, and Operation Blue Star.

The script was completed in July 2015 after 3 years of extensive research into the events surrounding the Dharam Yudh Morcha movement, (from which the film takes its name), and the violent clashes between the Indian Government's military forces and Sikh protestors, who were viewed as a secessionist threat.