This six-episode Netflix series stars actors Vijay Verma, Naseeruddin Shah, and Dia Mirza among others. IC814 has been at the epicentre of online backlash for multiple reasons. Firstly, the names of the terrorists are Bhola, Shankar, Burger, Chief and Doctor. While it is true that the Pakistani Islamic terrorists used these names as their codenames to hide their Muslim identities, the series deliberately does not reveal the real names of these terrorists. With the deliberate emphasis on the non-Muslim aliases like Shankar and Bhola taken up by the terrorists, the audience unaware or with limited knowledge of the real 1999 hijack would believe that the IC 814 plane was hijacked by Hindus. Thus, conveniently shifting the blame from Islamic terrorists to Hindus by vilifying them while also handing a clean chit to Pakistan’s ISI. The series provides no proper context or background of the nefarious intention of the Pakistani terrorists behind using Hindu names like Shankar and Bhola as their codenames.
Notably, the names of the actual hijackers were Ibrahim Athar (from Bahawalpur), Shahid Akhtar Sayeed, Sunny Ahmed Qazi, Mistry Zahoor Ibrahim (all three from Karachi) and Shakir (from Sukkur). All of them were Pakistani nationals. The Indian authorities had identified Sunny Ahmed Qazi as “Chief”, Shakir as “Doctor”, Mistri Zahoor Ibrahim as “Burger”, Shahid Akhtar Sayed as “Bhola” and Ibrahim Athar as “Shankar”
Secondly, the Anubhav Sinha directorial hands a clean chit to Pakistani intelligence agency ISI by insinuating that somehow ISI or Pakistani authorities were not involved in the hijacking of the plane and seeking the release of three jailed terrorists— Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, Masood Azhar, and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar. However, in his book A Call to Honour: In Service Of Emergent India, the then External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh had written that ISI was directly involved in the move.
“The friends/relatives of the detenues to be exchanged were brought to Kandahar by them [ISI] from Pakistan and they confirmed the ‘correctness’ of the released person. Only then were the hijackers assured that the TADA detenues brought were genuine and that a ‘trick’ was not being played upon then by the wily Indians,” Singh wrote.
Interestingly, Anubhav Sinha attempted to cover up the Muslim identity of the Pakistani terrorists by not revealing their real names till the end and humanising them by showing Mistri Zahoor Ibrahim [codename: Burger] asking the air hostess to take care of herself, alongside showing terrorists play Antakshari with hostages. While Anubhav Sinha desperately tried to humanise the Jihadis and emphasise their codenames instead of the real ones to dilute to religious identity and Jihadist motivations behind their move, former foreign minister Jaswant Singh wrote in his book about how it was all essentially about Islam.
Singh being an average Hindu unaware of the hatred Islamic texts contain towards Kafirs, especially polytheists like Hindus, was wondering why such an evil incident was happening in the ‘holy’ month of Ramadan [Ramzan]. Jaswant Singh asked the terrorists about the same and their response was that in Islam, Ramadan is the period of ‘struggle’ and ‘sacrifice’.
“When I inquired why such evil was occurring at such a holy time, those who were knowledgeable scoffed at my ignorance, and responded that in Islam, the period of Ramadan fasting is the true period of struggle and sacrifice,” Singh wrote.
This, very Islamic motivation, the Jihadist dream of establishing Islamic supremacy over non-Muslims was downplayed by Anubhav Sinha in his sinister propaganda series. The farcical and far-from-reality scenes of terrorists playing Antakshari with passengers, a terrorist showing concern towards an air hostess etc intended to downplay the brutality inflicted by the terrorists of Pakistan-based terror outfit Harkat-ul-Mujahideen.
The ISI handlers of the terrorists used Hindu identities to build a misleading narrative of ‘Hindu terror’; a similar attempt was made by Pakistani terrorist Ajmal Kasab during the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks when he was photographed wearing a “Kalava” [sacred thread] around his wrist and carrying ID card with Hindu name. Director Anubhav Sinha should either have picked an alternate set of names for the hijackers or, if he used the original codenames, he should have disclosed their real names as well, rather than advancing the ISI’s narrative by using Hindu names. Perhaps that is what he intended to do.
Be it IC 814, or Kabir Khan’s Tiger franchise, nobody does the PR job for ISI better than Bollywood. While Kabir Khan’s Tiger franchise whitewashed Pakistan’s ISI responsible for countless anti-India operations, Anubhav Sinha’s IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack serves the same purpose for Pakistani terrorists.
Sadly, the whitewashing has been rampant, habitual and done with impunity. Often to even reverse fact and portray outright lies to peddle political narrative. It is pertinent to recall the 2018 Meghna Gulzar directorial “Raazi” starring Alia Bhatt. The movie was based on author Harinder Sikka’s bestseller “Calling Sehmat”. While the book was a story of a Kashmiri girl who was trained as a spy and was married in a prominent Pakistani military family to gather information for the Indian Army, facts presented in the book were heavily distorted in the movie making the audience feel sympathetic towards Pakistan and its army.
In the movie, the protagonist Sehmat, after accomplishing her goals as a spy, is shown returning to India as a broken, depressed woman. Portraying the image that the Indian Army had used, and exploited a young Kashmiri girl. However, in Sikka’s book, Sehmat had returned to India as a strong woman, proud of her achievements and with love and longing for her homeland.
Coming back to the outrageous series “IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack”, Sinha was so occupied with humanising Pakistani terrorists that he failed to even discuss the long-term consequences of the terrorists released during the hijacking, undermining the gravity of the real-life situations. It must be mentioned here that the three terrorists— Masood Azhar, Omar Sheikh, and Mushtaq Zargar—freed in an exchange for passengers held hostage, went on to form the Islamic terrorist group Jaish-e-Muhammad which masterminded the 2001 Parliament attack, its Jihadis were behind the 2016 Pathankot attack that resulted in the killing of seven, the 2019 Pulwama attack which resulted in the martyrdom of 40 Indian Army troops.
Whitewashing the deeds of those who shed the blood of Indian people is not ‘creative liberty’ but ‘criminal liberty’ and is intolerable.
Pertinently, this is not the first time that Anubhav Sinha has exploited creative freedom to peddle certain narratives by distorting facts and passing off figments of his imagination as facts. Rather, Sinha thrives using his work to further his opprobrious political propaganda.
Back in 2018, Anubhav Sinha wrote a letter to Pakistani people urging them to watch his propaganda movie “Mulk” even illegally since the Pakistani censor board banned the film. To please the Pakistani people, Sinha decided to defame Indians and call them “losers”. Once Sinha had claimed that Muslims are becoming terrorists because Hindu miscreants are being facilitated.
A year later, Sinha came up with another political and anti-Brahmin propaganda film “Article 15”. The film claimed to be based on the true events of the infamous Badaun hanging case where two young girls were murdered in a village in Uttar Pradesh. However, the film claimed that the crime was committed by ‘Mahant ji ke ladke’. Mahant ji is mentioned as a Brahmin of the highest order. It was obvious that the “Mahant Ji” was an invisible sly on UP CM Yogi Adityanath who is the Mahant of the Gorakhnath Math. Even though the real accused were Pappu Yadav, Avadhesh Yadav, Urvesh Yadav, Chhatrapal Yadav and Sarvesh Yadav, the film shows Brahmins as accused persons. Chhatrapal and Sarvesh were policemen. The police department was accused of showing leniency to the accused in the case due to political pressure from the Samajwadi Party which was favouring the Yadavs. Even the police investigation was severely criticised and the people demanded a CBI inquiry.
While the film vilified Brahmins, the CBI investigation revealed that the two girls, aged 14 and 15, had committed suicide and they were neither raped nor murdered. The five accused were all given a clean chit.
Back in 2020, Amazon Prime released a series named “Paatal Lok”. This series was out an out leftist propaganda with numerous anti-Hindu elements. The series produced by actress Anushka Sharma showed idol-worshipping Hindu police officers as narrow-minded and bigoted people who doubt their fellow cops’ professionalism merely because he is a Muslim. Alongside the vilification of Hindus, this series stirred controversy over the portrayal of Sikhs as rapists, a complaint was filed in this regard. Similarly, Gorkha communities were also disparaged in Paatal Lok, stirring outrage. The series also featured BJP MLA Nandkishore Gurjar’s morphed image without the MLA’s permission only to change it after he filed a complaint against the show’s makers.
Aamir Khan notorious for furthering anti-Hindu propaganda in films like “PK” gave one of his biggest flops “Laal Singh Chadda” in 2022. This film was a cheap copy of the iconic Tom Hanks starrer Forest Gump. In the Indian adaptation of Forest Gump, Laal Singh is shown rescuing a Pakistani terrorist named Mohammad contrary to the original version wherein Gump rescued his unit chief Lt Dan in Vietnam. Film Forest Gump’s iconic character Gary Sinise became an Islamist terrorist and a ‘good’ person since Aamir Khan movies are incomplete without anti-Hindu propaganda. No wonder he played a terrorist Rehan who was the protagonist in the film “Fanaa”. There are many more examples of how Bollywood movies and web series are peddling lies and propaganda against Hindus, and yet receiving appreciation from a largely Hindu audience, since what’s propaganda if the target audience recognises that it is actually propaganda?
Other than movies and OTT, Television shows are also turning into a medium for whitewashing crimes of Muslims. Back in December 2022, OpIndia reported how Sony Entertainment Television (SET) televised a Crime Patrol episode that had a striking resemblance to the Shraddha Walker murder case. The episode telecasted on December 27, 2022, under the title “Ahmedabad-Pune Murder” with the names of the victim and perpetrator changed to Anna Fernandes and Mihir Kanchwala respectively. In the now-deleted episode, it was shown that a boy named ‘Mihir’ kills his partner in a fit of rage and then cuts her body into several pieces and wraps it in multiple plastic bags before storing it in the fridge, exactly what happened in Shraddha Walkar’s case. As an outrage erupted, the channel deleted the episode.
While Netlfix may have announced that the disclaimer of the IC 814 series will contain the real names of the hijackers, the story doesn’t end here.
Netflix succumbs! Annoces to add Disclaimer with real names of all 5 Pakistani Islamist terrorists in the series #IC814TheKandaharHijack.
— Megh Updates 🚨™ (@MeghUpdates) September 3, 2024
•Sunny Ahmed Qazi
•Shakir
•Mistri Zahoor Ibrahim
•Shahid Akhtar Sayed
•Ibrahim Athar pic.twitter.com/oOHVEHrPpn
The Pakistani terrorists who hijacked the India Airlines flight carrying 191 passengers and 15 crew members were members of Islamic extremist organisations, and their actions were motivated by Islamic extremist motives in the ‘holy’ month of Ramzan. By employing humanising strategies to gloss over these aspects and show them playing Antakshari with passengers, the series obfuscates historical facts and downplays the gravity of the event while mocking the suffering of the two persons ruthlessly murdered by the hijackers. Anubhav Sinha’s narrative that is sympathetic towards the hijackers also mocks the families of the passengers and crew who were kept hostage for seven days. This not only reopens old wounds but also trivialises the fear and suffering experienced by the victims.
The hijacking was widely known to have been backed by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The series attempts to legitimise Pakistan’s apocryphal narrative by softening the portrayal of the hijackers and leaving out their Islamic religious identities and motivations. Being a hypocrite of the top order, Pakistan has often dismissed its role in sponsoring terrorism against India even as it remains the safe haven of Islamic terrorists like Hafiz Saeed.
Anubhav Sinha, a notorious leftist propagandist, has already been creating content with significant political undertones as discussed above. His approach in this series sets a disturbing precedent in which Islamic terrorism is downplayed or rationalised. A country that romanticises its enemies is bound to be doomed. Only if you know who exactly your enemy is and what he wants that you can fight and defeat them. It is thus, paramount for the government to make sure that such anti-India and anti-Hindu propaganda content is de-platformed.
Keeping the disdain leftists in any field harbour for Hindus, particularly, the so-called upper caste Hindus, leftist and Islamist cheerleaders have long been trying to establish their farcical narrative that “terrorism has no religion”. So much so that even as a terrorist does a fidayeen attack on non-Muslims after screaming Allahu Akbar, the leftist will come up with some or the other tactic to downplay the religiosity by either calling the terrorist “gareeb headmaster ka beta” or by making the terrorists play Antakshari, as seen in Anubhav Sinha’s propaganda series.
There is a culture narrative war ongoing in India, with leftist media, online content creators and Bollywood playing a major role alongside the left-liberal politicians. Every tactic and every medium is being used to whitewash the crimes of anti-Hindu and anti-India forces, attempts are being to distort history to glorify the oppressors and gaslight the oppressed. The Indian audiences deserve to see historical events in movies and web shows as they happened and not the cheap product of leftist historical revisionism [read distortion].
