The streaming service Netflix airing the television series IC 814 depicting the 1999 hijack of an Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar in Afghanistan has amended its introduction by including the names of the real culprits. Given the size and reach of its Indian audience, the OTT platform may have found a way to buy peace with the Indian government and netizens.
The curious thing about the episode was that the film itself was true to fact in the hijackers assuming Hindu names while addressing passengers who had a harrowing seven-day experience. A compromise had to be struck to assuage those behind a backlash who saw it as a ruse to hide the fact that Islamist terrorists had hijacked the flight.
It would have been a simple enough course correction to a minor detail in a film based on a real event if not for the exaggerated reaction and response. There was never any doubt that the film portrays it as an instance of Islamist terror that had terrible consequences for the nation as in the release of the likes of Masood Azhar, founder of LeT and mastermind behind the 2001 attack on Parliament and the 2008 attack on Mumbai, Ahmed Omar Saeed Shaikh and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar.
A TV series based on a real-life event cannot claim the cinematic licence given to films based on fiction. It was in discriminatory compromises to deal with the sensitivity of the audience, which may be global but strikes a chord in Indians the most, that the makers and the streamers failed in.
Even so, there was little need to entertain the notion that Hindus may feel insecure in such a scenario and that the government, therefore, had to act. This matter could have been dealt with in a simple note or a phone call rather than a summons to the filmmakers and a virtual public rebuke, playing to the gallery.
IC 814 is not the first film or TV series to face the ire of protesters. Theatrical releases have gone through torment. A storm is also brewing over the certification of the film Emergency starring the BJP MP Kangana Ranaut. It takes a mature society and nation to accept cinematic interpretations of real events that may not suit differing views of history. But the less governments have to do with an artistic medium like cinema the better.
