By Mayank Chhaya-
As the 25th anniversary of the harrowing hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC 814 to Kandahar in Afghanistan from Kathmandu in Nepal approaches on December 24, a Netflix series about it is reopening old wounds and triggering political ferment.
Directed by Anubhav Sinha and created by him along with Trishant Srivastava, ‘IC 814 : The Kandahar Hijack’ has predictably ignited a political firestorm over many aspects but chiefly over the use of the five hijackers’ Hindu or non-Muslim sounding names as well as an apparent attempt by the makers to introduce nuance to their violent misanthropic ideology.
The hijacking that resulted in one death and lasted six nerve-wracking days was carried out by Sunny Ahmed Qazi, Shakir, Mistri Zahoor Ibrahim, Shahid Akhtar Sayed and Ibrahim Athar. However, they used either Hindu names or ethnically neutral names such as Chief, Doctor, Burger, Bhola and Shankar.
The current ferment in India over the series, which saw the government summoning Netflix India chief Monika Shergill, is focused specifically on two names Bhola and Shankar that the two of the hijackers used as their code. It is being widely claimed by many right-leaning social media users that Sinha and Srivastava have sought to whitewash the identities of the “Muslim terrorists” by using Hindu names to mislead people.
The Information and Broadcasting Ministry, which has asked Shergill for clarification, was quoted as saying via a senior official, “No one has the right to play with the sentiments of the nation.”
The truth is much more complex than what is being projected. Even at the time of the hijacking, which took place when Atal Bihari Vajpayee of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was Prime Minister, his Home Ministry had issued an official statement that said, “To the passengers of the hijacked place these hijackers came to be known respectively as (1) Chief, (2) Doctor, (3) Burger, (4) Bhola and (5) Shankar, the names by which the hijackers invariably addressed one another.”
The decision to use those names by Sinha and Srivastava is clearly in keeping with sticking as close to historical accuracy as possible. There does not appear to be any cinematic liberty in and of itself in using those names.
However, attached to the objection to the use of those names is that Sinha and Srivastava have either humanized them at best or whitewashed them at worst. While that is both a matter of subjective opinion as well as cinematic and creative license, at a time when India has witnessed a dramatic sharpening and coarsening of such debates during the last decade, nuance has fallen by the wayside.
Another point the show’s critics make is that it underplays the role played by both, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan as well the Taliban government of the day in Afghanistan behind-the-scenes. The series does not unambiguously fix any specific blame on either but that could be because even in the immediate aftermath of the hijacking it was not clearly evident whether the ISI orchestrated it directly, and the Taliban acquiesced to it after the aircraft was forced to fly to Kandahar via Amritsar, Lahore and Dubai.
The handling of the hijacking by the Vajpayee government as well as intelligence failure left them in deep ignominy, specially because the prime minister chose to swap the passengers with three notorious terrorists Masood Azhar, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar. All three went to cause widespread havoc through terrorism, including the beheading of the Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl apart from building up a terror network and unleashing violence in Kashmir.
What was particularly galling was that India’s then External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh accompanied the three to Kandahar, an act he told this writer on the second anniversary of the hijacking on December 24, 2001 in Delhi, “is a matter of visceral shame.” Singh, who was regarded as the most liberal and progressive of all BJP leaders, said that he could never “live down” the shame of having had to escort the three terrorists. However, he had said that was the decision Vajpayee took to secure the passengers and as a cabinet member he had to honor it.
It has not been clear after two and a half decades why Singh felt compelled to personally accompany the three but there was a suggestion in certain quarters that a large amount of dollars in cash was carried on the flight that took Singh as part of the terrorists’ demand. Of course, the government then had strongly denied the claim.
Singh was reportedly mistreated by the Taliban leadership, apparently egged on by the ISI, after he landed at Kandahar.
He passed away on September 27, 2020, at age 82.
The IC 814 hijacking is seen as a blot on Vajpayee’s legacy even though he did not have much choice. As the country’s prime minister, his primary responsibility was securing the safe return of the passengers whose relatives were ferociously vocal and critical of his government during those six days.
It is not clear what Netflix and the show’s makers might do after the government summons. There are demands to ban it, something that may not come to pass. It is possible that some significant changes and clarifications would have to be introduced, which is moot because it has already been widely watched. The changes and clarifications could be aimed at posterity.
