The 1999 hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC 814 is back in the spotlight with the release of a new Netflix series, IC 814 – The Kandahar Hijack. The series, a dramatized version of the high-stakes incident, has triggered a wave of controversy over its depiction of the hijackers and the events that unfolded.
The hijacking, which occurred on December 24, 1999, saw the flight en route from Kathmandu to New Delhi, seized by Pakistani hijackers shortly after entering Indian airspace. The aircraft was diverted to several locations, including Amritsar, Lahore, Dubai, and ultimately Kandahar, Afghanistan (then under Taliban rule), before the Indian government conceded to the hijackers’ demands and released three terrorists in exchange for the hostages.
Leftist filmmaker Anubhav Sinha has attracted significant backlash over his propaganda Netflix series IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack
. This series starring Naseeruddin Shah, Vijay Verma, Pankaj Kapoor and Dia Mirza lead roles is facing criticism for whitewashing the crimes of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen terrorists who hijacked the Indian Airlines plane IC 814 in 1999. This six-episode series deliberately did not reveal the real names of the Pakistani terrorists rather only used their codenames Bhola, Shankar, Chief, Burger and Doctor to hide their Muslim identity.
This leaves the audience with the impression that the plane was hijacked by Hindus rather than Islamic terrorists. This Anubhav Sinha directorial also gives ISI a clean chit, which was directly involved in the ploy. .
Amidst the outrage, Anubhav Sinha and the cast of the IC 814 are promoting the series. During a media interaction, actor Naseeruddin Shah who plays the role of Cabinet Secretary Vinay Kaul invoked Islamophobia to whitewash crimes committed by his co-religionists. He said that when the hijacking happened in 1999, he feared that a fresh “wave of Islamophobia” would prevail.
It is ironic that the veteran actor was more concerned about how the hijacking of the IC 814 plane would trigger Islamophobia than how Pakistani Islamic terrorists brutally killed two innocent people, held 191 passengers and 15 crew members hostage and got three Islamic terrorists released from Indian jails. He was more concerned about how the incident would lead to the spread of Islamophobia than what the terrorists freed would do in future. It is pertinent to note that Masood Azhar, Omar Sheikh, and Mushtaq Zargar were the three terrorists released in exchange for passengers held hostage.
‘Maulana’ Masood Azhar went on to form the Islamic terrorist group Jaish-e-Muhammad which carried out the 2001 Parliament Attack, and the 2019 Pulwama Attack among others. Omar Sheikh kidnapped and beheaded journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002. While Mushtaq Zargar founded Al-Umar-Mujahideen a banned terror outfit. He was trained in Pakistan and said to be linked to the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front as well.
While it is alarming that Naseeruddin Shah is more concerned about how terror crimes of Jihadis would trigger ‘Islamophobia’, it warrants understanding why some ‘artists’ feel the compulsion to whitewash Islamic terrorism. What are the reasons that the need to defend those killing non-Muslims in the name of Islam is more important than denouncing them?
One of the reasons is the delusional belief in conspiracy theories popular in the Islamic world – where everything is an ‘inside job’ by the other side rather than willing to admit that there are terrible Muslims. Since they don’t believe that any crime was done by Muslims in the first place, it becomes their duty to whitewash. This could simply be the result of brainwashing or being fed with targeted literature/propaganda or maybe just an unhealthy love for conspiracy theories (which make for good fiction). This very belief that there are only ‘good Muslims’ and the rest are just bad people, drives those, especially in the film industry, who have weird limerence for Islamist terrorists [both armed and intellectual] to create characters, write scripts that would present Muslims either as victims or terrorists who turned to violence to fight the oppressive system. Here the Muslim religiosity is not depicted as the motivation behind turning violent but rather it is shown that the Muslim was targeted due to his religious identity by ‘bigoted’ Hindu ‘extremists’ and thus he was compelled to ‘fight’ against them. Remember? there are no bad Muslims!
Bollywood’s Islamist cheerleaders go to any extent to whitewash the crimes of Islamic terrorists, Pakistan and its barbaric army. A classic case of this was seen in Meghna Gulzar’s directorial “Raazi” which showed the Pakistan army as “humane”. The very Pakistan Army that burnt Captain Saurabh Kalia with cigarettes, gouged out his eyes, broke his bones and teeth, clipped his nails, and assaulted his face before shooting him dead was shown in a sympathetic manner.
While Pakistan, as in the words of former Prime minister of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1990, wants to wage a “1000 years war against India”, its cheerleaders in Bollywood want Indians, particularly, the Hindu majority to not see its hostile neighbour has an enemy.
Naseeruddin Shah is not the only one who fears that if Islamic terrorists carry out terror attacks in the name of Islam against Kafirs, a ‘wave of Islamophobia’ will spread. What is Islamophobia, besides being the oxymoron it is, Islamophobia is the favourite weapon of Islamists and their sympathisers to silence those criticising Islamic terrorists even as they kill Kafirs in the name of Allah. The pro-Islamist ‘artists’ consider it imperative that the non-Muslims do not form stereotypes against Muslims because as per their brainwashed thinking, ‘true’ Muslims can never commit a crime and thus, those who kill, convert or rape non-Muslims are either angry over the ‘system’ or are simply ‘bhatke huye naujawan’. A perfect example of this was seen in the Amazon Prime series “The Family Man” wherein a shameless attempt was made to arouse sympathy for terrorists by contextualising why Muslims pick up arms against others
In their warped understanding of crime and justice, a criminal can happen to be a Muslim, but a Muslim is never a criminal. This mindset is reflected in the movies and web shows of leftist filmmakers.
Another reason behind ‘artists’ whitewashing Islamic terrorism is Wokeism-the cultural Marxism- which reduces the world into conflicts between oppressors and oppressed; here Muslim strategists and Islam apologists have been hugely successful in painting themselves as victims in almost every scenario. So much so that even if they are throwing gays off roofs, satrangis would rather stand by Hamas.
In the last few months, people from the LGBTQ+ community across the globe have been protesting screaming “Free Palestine” slogans and siding with Hamas oblivious to the fact that the religion Hamas terrorists follow shows no respect towards LGBTQ+ people but rather hates them. Despite this, the people of this community have largely been supportive of the Islamist terror group Hamas. Why? Because they have been brainwashed into believing that Palestine has been oppressed and Israel is its oppressor. This oppression has compelled them into waging Jihad against Israel, ignoring the massacre of Israelis on 7th October 2023. The oppressor and oppressed conflict come into play. This makes the ‘artists’ and extension Islam apologists in all walks of life whitewash all crimes by Islamists because Muslims must be protected from their oppressors; this is also one of the reasons why they worry about ‘Islamophobia’ more than anything.
When anti-Hindu violence was at its peak in 1947, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had advised Hindus saying that “Hindus should not harbour anger in their hearts against Muslims even if the latter wanted to destroy them. Even if the Muslims want to kill us all we should face death bravely. If they established their rule after killing Hindus, we would be ushering ina new world by sacrificing our lives”.
This, thought that Hindus must not retaliate even if the Muslims want to kill them has deeply impacted the psyche of left-liberal not just in the field of arts but beyond that. The Islam apologists in India have been brainwashed into believing that they should not dislike Muslims even if it’s a large number of its members hate non-Muslims simply because of their religious identity. They are convinced that ‘terrorism has no religion’, and ‘crime has no religion’, these principles, however, are only applicable in the context of Muslims. In the case of Hindus, a tilak sporting Hindu is an oppressor, those who do Devi pooja commit crimes like, the more religious you are the bigger villain you are contrary to Muslims, who is shown as the more religious the nicer person. For an inherently tolerant community like Hindus, tolerance has been presented as an act of bravery, while for Muslims violence against imaginary oppressors stemming from the perfectly carved narrative of perpetual victimhood, is deemed an act of bravery.
Thus, much like the communal violence bill, which if passed would have made sure that only minorities and SCs/STs could be “victims” and the perpetrators of communal violence would always be Hindu, tolerant Hindus are oppressors no matter what and Muslims are oppressed even if they do your Sar tan se juda in the name of their religious figures or over perceived ‘blasphemy’.
The third major reason that drives the artists, particularly, in Bollywood to whitewash Islamic terrorism is Hinduphobia. It is real, people hate Hinduism for having survived proselyting/colonising Abrahamic religions and it appears like an eyesore. Even non-Abrahamised worlds, say China and the Far East, have largely become ‘Western’ but Hindus continue to be largely neither. Thus a default feeling of putting guilt on Hindus because they are still not ‘civilised’ rather than blaming the real oppressors.
Hindu Dharma being the oldest and most authentic religion in the world, has survived numerous attacks, be it the early Islamic invaders, the Mumluk dynasty, the Mughals or the British Raj, despite their best efforts and significant success in killing and converting Hindus to their respective religions, these forces could not completely uproot Hinduism. This doesn’t sit well with the Hindu-hating lot. An average liberal who has watched movies like Mughal-e-Azam or Jodha Akbar 100 times believes that “Mughals brought culture to India”, the British brown sepoys believe that Britishers civilised a Hindu majority India. They, thus, see Hindu beliefs as the root cause of India still not being ‘civilised’.
However, the Netflix series has come under scrutiny for its portrayal of the hijackers, particularly the use of ‘Hindu’ code names, which some critics argue are misleading. Additionally, concerns have been raised over the depiction of the negotiation process led by current National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, and the alleged omission of the role played by Pakistani intelligence agencies in the hijack. In response, the government has summoned Netflix India’s content head to address these issues.
Now, amid the ongoing controversy, here’s a closer look at the three terrorists released by the Indian government in exchange for the hostages aboard IC 814.
Who were the three terrorists released by the Indian government?
The three terrorists released in the aftermath of the hijack—Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, Masood Azhar, and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar—have had a lasting impact on global terrorism.
While, Masood Azhar went on to establish Jaish-e-Mohammed, a group responsible for numerous attacks on India, including the 2019 Pulwama attack. His brother, Rauf Asghar, continues to engage in violent activities in Jammu and Kashmir.
Further, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, initially sentenced to death for the murder of journalist Daniel Pearl, had his conviction overturned in 2020 by Pakistan’s Sindh High Court. He remains imprisoned in Lahore while his acquittal is under appeal. Significantly, according to the information available, Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar remains involved in militant activities in the region.
