I am a wee divided on what exactly was the purpose of creating Netflix’s IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack. The right-wing furore on social media suggests Anubhav Sinha aimed at influencing impressionable minds by giving non-Muslim (including Bhola and Shankar) names to the hijackers so that those uninitiated to the December 24, 1999 incident tends to doubt whether it was indeed an act of Islamic radicalism. But, as mischievous and shifty as the fleeting disclaimer reads at the beginning of the show, one cannot deny that the terrorists did indeed use those aliases. Hence, why even expect the left-leaning Sinha, who crafted insidious narratives such as Mulk, Bheed and Article 15, to back that with a proper explanation that the Government of India did publicly reveal the real names of the hijackers after an investigation into the incident. This would be like wishing him away from the crop of Bollywood celebrities giving their shoulder to the anti CAA protestors in Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Considering that the Hindi movie industry has had a long and problematic history of apologising with Islamic terror by trying to justify the cause and going on to humanise terrorists, this was a given. So, in the series when the hijackers help an injured airhostess, fetch water for a woman throwing up or playing Antakshari with the passengers, one must just shrug and move on from the ludicrous scenes dished out by the director. At this juncture, there isn’t much one can do to change the way most of the Hindi movie industry thinks or acts. After all, you have had terror apologising movies such as Fiza, Fanaa, Mission Kashmir and Haider where pussy footing about the real issue of holding the prime perpetrators accountable for the death and destruction was the main aim. They got away with whitewashing facts and history, too, with the support of a heavily biased media whose top guns could not be called out for spreading lies and fake news by whistle blowers on social media like it happens so democratically now. Since the country and the world is familiar with the main proponent of religion-backed terrorism, moviemakers like Sinha would serve their propaganda in an even more crafty way. Hence, brace up!
Or as author Arnab Ray suggests in a pertinent FB post, ignore. Making an agenda-driven filmmaker become irrelevant would actually deflate their toxic cause. Wish the right wingers did that instead of ‘clutching the wrong end of the straw’ that is now making practically everyone catch up on the series and Sinha smirking and ‘watching the magic’ reveal itself as a commercial money spinner profiting out of a sensitive, historical incident by getting away with factual flaws in the name of creative dispensation allowed for fictional depictions based on real events.
Meanwhile after struggling through the extremely badly written work that is riddled with disjointed, jumpy editing and flippant performances, I am still trying to figure whether Sinha roped in a melee of tinsel town veteran and luminaries to ensure they deliver his main message convincingly: The impotence/incompetence of the then BJP government and the humanity of the Pakistan’s ISI funded hijackers. Here I must mention that the right wing IT cell pushed the narrative that Sinha tried to pass the hijackers off as Hindu terrorists. He did not. As Ray writes, “No one with half a brain would think that Hindu hijackers would fly to Taliban land, that sleight of hand was not what the director was going for, in this case.” If you analyse why this was the wrong thread to attack his series, you would see through what Sinha was actually targeting so diabolically. The way the RA&W, IB, MEA decision makers, the NSG and other government officials are depicted in the series any discerning mind would gauge that this was a slander fest created to defame the Vajpayee lead NDA government manning India that time while giving Pakistan’s ISI a clean chit. It’s as if Sinha sat down calmly, took a paint brush, dipped it in stickiest black grime and slathered it on the map of India to discredit how the government handled the situation during the hijack to save the lives of the passengers stuck in that flight for seven days by dangerous gun toting Muslim terrorists waiting for the slightest reason to spill blood.
In that, Sinha has been pretty meticulous. Despite the technical flaws in script and execution, he has peppered the work with lines uttered by the actors playing the important government officials that would show them in extremely bad light (I am not even going into the irritating verbal canoodling between the TV and print media representatives shown). While the joint secretary of RA&W casually remarks that since the hijacked plane is still in India, they can afford to take a break with chai and cigarettes, another suggests deleting the name of an important person from the passenger list to reduce tension. Vijaybhan Singh, the Indian minister of external affairs, played by Pankaj Kapur, sounds detached and mousy throughout. Vinay Kaul, the cabinet secretary of India and the head of India’s Crisis Management Group, played by Naseeruddin Shah, is more eager in a blame game on why things happened the way it happened. Here it is important to mention that the series was adapted from the book Flight into Fear: A Captain’s Story so there are moments when a viewer might feel that its Captain Sharan Dev, played by Vijay Varma, who was most stretched during the incident. A line by DRS, the joint secretary of the MEA, played by Arvind Swamy, says that the ‘captain should not be thrown under the bus’, thus suggesting that this is what the Vajpayee government is prone to doing in crucial times. Shirk off their responsibility towards civilians when it matters the most! Insidious attack by Sinha but a rather cheap one I must say! Or an expensive PR job to exonerate Pakistan’s ISI if you please!
At this juncture I would like to mention a series that highlighted another terror incident attacking India’s safety, security and sovereignty. Avrodh: The Siege Within, directed by Raj Acharya retold the 2016 Uri Attack and the daring retaliating strike by Indian forces across the Line of Control. Based on a chapter from the book India’s Most Fearless by Shiv Aroor and Rahul Singh, the work dramatizes in a balanced way how top Indian government, intelligence and army officials came together under the Narendra Modi Government when the country faced a heinous terror attack. It is one thing to pass a badly made series that monkey balances the truth as creative liberty and another thing to collate a battery of incidents with and narrate those with utmost objectivity so that the work is both enlightening as well as gripping because countrymen would then realise the extent to which our leaders went and jawans go to ensure that India and its people are safe from radicals funded by the noxious ISI nurtured in its neighbourhood.
While all this is on, I have some questions for the current government regime as well. After the outrage against IC 814: The Kandahar Attack, the Indian chief of Netflix was called by the IB to discuss the distortion in historical facts and all that. Fair enough. But why make censorship noise after the horse has bolted? Why wake up late to just be seen doing something when their online base slams the mischief maker when there are no checks and balances before the show goes on air? Since there is no Censor Board for OTT series what is the IB ministry doing to check the propaganda being circulated as content by the left cabal? Why is the Indian government always on the backfoot in the war of narratives? And last question. Since freedom of expression and artistic license is what the left liberals celebrate as their so-called leitmotif, why is the Censor Board of Film Certification trying to hold back the September 6 release of actor, director and BJP MP Kangana Ranaut’s upcoming film Emergency for flimsy reasons of upsetting certain people? Is this not the most glaring sign then that the (eco)system aakhir unki hi hain!
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