Editorial: The Kandahar Question

Within the genre of films based on historic events, the new Netflix series IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack is quite a departure from the trend of superpatriotism we have been subjected to in the past 20 years. Jumping on the ethnonationalist bandwagon, filmmakers have in recent years vied to celebrate every sliver of heroism in our history, even falsifying facts with great abandon. It follows from this that only episodes that lend themselves to triumphalism are of interest to them. Defeats are orphans.

In that context, IC 814’s sober treatment of the 1999 hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight to Kandahar and the government’s compulsion to release three dreaded terrorists to save the lives of 180 passengers is therefore welcome. While the writing, casting and production are serviceable, the creative divergence from fact is truthful, and so permissible.

However, the film is being criticised on several counts. The Information and Broadcasting Ministry last week summoned the India content head of Netflix to answer a few questions. The government’s overt concerns are that the film ought to have deferred to religious sentiments and the sensitivities of the Indian public.

Specifically, the film is being pilloried for giving Hindu codenames for two of the five hijackers; for humanising them; and for not apportioning blame to Pakistan. Some of these objections are specious, such as the one about the hijackers sporting Hindu names. Several survivors have vouched this to be a fact, and the two hijackers in question are only minor actors in the drama. Similarly, if the hijackers appear to us as human, it is entirely due to the dictates of film-making rather than any sympathies the film-makers might have for them. The film could not have shown them always hooded, as they in reality were during the entire week-long drama. As for the quibble about sparing Pakistan from blame, that’s simply not true. No one then or now has ever been in doubt about Islamabad’s hand in the episode, not least because the hijackers are seen driving straight to the Pakistan border from Kandahar.

Why then this brouhaha? Why does the government have an issue over this depiction of a setback India suffered 25 years ago? The fact is Kandahar has never been subjected to the kind of serious public introspection it ought to have been. As a nation that prefers to savour its triumphs, we would rather have Kandahar remain in the recesses of our memories. IC 814 delves into those dark corners and stirs those disturbing experiences.

Without much harping, IC 814 brings home the shortcomings in the way India dealt with that crisis: The lack of a quick response, the tendency within the Crisis Management Group to engage in belaboured discussions rather than take decisive action, the lack of predecided protocols, the lack of even data like amount of fuel left in the aircraft, and the absence of proper channels of communication with the actors in Amritsar and so on. As KPS Gill wrote in his analysis of the Kandahar crisis, “If anything, the hijacking underlined the fact that we have far too many amateurs in government – and that it is time that they were, at the very least, told to shut up.”

IC 814 only stirs our memories of 1999; it does not hold them up for examination. It does not for instance ask why it was necessary for our external affairs minister to escort the three terrorists to Kandahar and present them to the hijackers. It makes us ask that question. No wonder the government doesn't like it.