Struggling British filmmaker Sue (Alice Patten) comes to India after she reads the diary of her grandfather, who served in the British Force during India's struggle for Independence. She plans to make a short film about some of the unsung revolutionary heroes of the Indian Independence Movement. Her friend Sonia (Soha Ali Khan) helps her find four young men to act in the film: Daljeet a.k.a. DJ (Aamir Khan), Karan Singhania (Siddharth), Aslam (Kunal Kapoor) and Sukhi (Sharman Joshi).

They aren't enthusiastic at first, but Sue wins them over. Laxman Pandey (Atul Kulkarni), a political party activist, later joins the group, although he is initially unpopular on account of his Hindutva beliefs and contempt for Aslam, who is a Muslim. As the young men learn more about the history of the Independence movement, they lose their cynicism and start to consider what they can contribute to society.

Then Ajay, Sonia's fiance (Madhavan), an Indian air-force pilot, is killed when his plane crashes. The government claims that the crash was caused by pilot error. Sonia and her friends know that Ajay was an ace pilot and don't accept the official explanation. Instead, they claim that he sacrificed his life to save thousands of other lives, which would have been lost had he ejected from the aircraft safely, leaving the aircraft to crash in an overcrowded area. They investigate and learn that the crash was due to a corrupt Defence minister (Mohan Agashe), who had signed a contract for cheap, spurious MiG aircraft spare parts in return for a large kickback.

Not content to accept this as "just the way things are done", the group decide to protest peacefully. Police forcefully break up their protest. The young men then decide that they must emulate the early freedom fighters and resort to violence. Tragedy and a shocking ending follow where they sacrifice their lives to make their point.