"IC 814" on Netflix is a costly public relations ploy by the ISI, depicting R&AW abusing civilians

It appears that none of the show's participants are familiar with the workings of the Indian government or intelligence services. or newspaper offices, for that matter.

Perhaps a sign of how divisive our culture and discourse have become is the predictable ideological paths that the debate about the Netflix series about the IC 814 hijacking has taken.
There are those who could be referred to be the Hindu Right Wing voices on one side. Because the screenplay does not explicitly state that the hijackers were Muslims, they are against the program and many of them want it boycotted or outlawed.

The hijackers give themselves monikers like Bhola and Shankar in one incident. This has sparked a social media backlash, particularly from people who haven't seen the play and think it denigrates the Hindu community by assuming the hijackers were Hindus.
People on the so-called liberal side have responded to the scandal by defending the show, applauding its authenticity and realism, and standing by its resolve "to tell the real story."

Everybody is mistaken. And most of them are stupid in their positions.

Inaccuracy issues

The hijackers had given phony names to Hindu people, which were obviously untrue. However, they did refer to themselves by such names. To accurately depict this reality on the screen is to simply document what transpired, not to disparage the Hindu community.

On the other hand, the liberal reaction to the Hindu Right wing's campaign is nothing more than a reflexive acknowledgement that the series is accurate to the facts and, despite some artistic license, shows us what actually happened.

The series consists of two parts. The first is a reconstruction of the aircraft's interior events. I'm prepared to trust that this is a true account of what happened, even though different passengers have differing memories of what really happened. This is reportedly based on a memoir by the pilot.

The second aspect of the series that bothers me is how it describes what transpired on the ground. This is untrue and frequently naive and foolish.

It's a lie, too. The calculated deceptions and fabrications convert the entire production into a costly public relations stunt for the ISI.

My issue with the series is not with the Hindu-Muslim component but with that. Telling falsehoods to a generation too young to recall the truth about a crucial event in recent Indian history results in your lies becoming the official narrative and burying the truth.

Indeed, Hindu aliases were used by the hijackers. That is true, then. However, the show never tells us what their true names were. As a matter of fact, Sunny Ahmed Qazi, Shakir, Mistri Zahoor Ibrahim, Shahid Akhtar Sayed, and Ibrahim Athar have all been officially identified by the Indian government.

The fact that these individuals were Pakistani and that Indian intelligence services had recognized them as Pakistani agents a few days into the hijacking and even knew where regions of Pakistan they were from is not even mentioned in the show.

Rather, the show makes a hazy and unpersuasive attempt to connect the hijackers to Afghanistan and even Al Qaeda, implying that Osama bin Laden was behind some kind of elaborate scheme and that, if ISI was involved, it was a very little one.

This is an outright falsehood. The hijacking was an ISI operation that was a part of Pakistan's long-running, clandestine conflict with India.

 

The errors mount up

The narrative's intended direction is evident when it depicts an Indian agent, claiming to be a first officer in the embassy, although there is no such position, pursuing a Pakistani ambassador. But then we find out that the Pakistani is just a pawn in the game; the real mastermind is an Afghan.

This narrative suggests that R&AW knew about the plot ahead of time and that an Indian agent even attempted to prevent the jet from taking off, all without any solid factual evidence that I have seen in 25 years. It's a lie, this.

Then, it is proven that R&AW is using torture to coerce information about the plot from Nepalese citizens. This is all concocted. This isn't some sort of "creative liberty"

The series' narrative relies heavily on these fabrications to convey the following points: the Indian government, albeit not much better than the terrorists, was likewise a group of inept fools who tortured people.

Without any credible evidence to support it, it is an odd stance for an Indian TV show intended for an Indian audience to adopt.

The other Delhi-set sequences read as though they were penned by a twelve-year-old who has never visited a government building. The foreign minister, who is supposed to be Jaswant Singh, appears to be a passport office receptionist as he sits in his own office beneath a huge sign that reads, "Ministry of External Affairs."

The Jaswant Singh persona is heavily involved in shaping the Indian response to the hijacking from this office. This is yet another lie, as Jaswant Singh's sole contribution to the story up to its conclusion was an attempt to beg for assistance from the outside world, which it did not provide. His contribution to the security response was minimal.

The errors multiply: the torturer from Kathmandu shows up in Delhi to meet with the head of R&AW, and he clicks his heels at the conclusion of the meeting as if he were a cadet sitting for his NCC exam. (Or perhaps the Gestapo is lending him out.) We are not a military-run state like Pakistan, and it appears that none of the people working on the show understands the workings of the Indian government or intelligence services.

There isn't any research on exhibit—just concoctions.

They also have little knowledge of newspapers. An unneeded subplot that entirely misrepresents the nature of newspapers and their offices in 1999 and exists just to give Dia Mirza a part in the story. It is evident that the creators conducted no research at all in this area as well.

By the conclusion, the show's message has become even more apparent: Al Qaeda and the Afghans were at the center of everything. The narrative tells us that when the hijackers eventually got their way, they celebrated with Osama bin Laden, and the ISI was so short on supplies that it wasn't even invited to the festivities.

What transpired in reality

Actually, the Islamist ideologue Masood Azhar's brother planned the hijacking in order to get his brother out of jail in India. By the second day of the hijacking, this had been resolved between R&AW and the Indian government.

Pakistani assets included the other terrorists who were subsequently freed along with Masood in exchange for the passengers aboard IC 814. Mushtaq Zargar (also known as "Latram"), who was employed by the ISI to incite unrest in Kashmir, and Omar Sheikh, who absconded and later returned to Pakistan, both participated in the abduction and murder of Daniel Pearl.

The Taliban aided the three terrorists who were freed to travel to Pakistan, where they were welcomed with open arms. Even Masood Azhar showed up for a public event held in his honor.

Why then would an Indian TV program downplay all of this? Why would it draw attention to an improbable link with Al Qaeda in order to absolve ISI? Why would it lie so much?

I don't think the show's creators wanted to twist the truth in any way. They simply didn't know any better, in my opinion. They were working from a script that had these deceptions and evasions, and in their ignorance, they thought that this was the actual story.

 

The actual query

Not every conspiracy theory that is out there is one that I necessarily agree with. Yes, the series was shot in Jordan with the help of the nation's film board, but I wouldn't put too much stock in it.

Similarly, there are claims regarding Adrian Levy, the British journalist responsible for the report, who Indian intelligence suspect has ties to the ISI. (In his book Spy Stories, the ISI appears considerably better and India and R&AW much worse, with suspicions of their sectarian bias; nevertheless, this does not prove any ISI sympathies.)

 

It is evident that none of the show's participants bothered to communicate with any significant character that was featured in it. For scenarios that took place inside the aircraft, they relied on the pilot's testimony and made up the rest.

While it is true that many of the principals are no longer with us, those who are—AS Dulat, the R&AW commander at the time; Ajit Doval, who oversaw the discussions on the ground; and Anand Arni, who traveled to Kandahar on behalf of R&AW among others—were not contacted. The series' distortions and inaccuracies startle a lot of them.

The Indian security apparatus made mistakes, of course. However, the greatest gaffe (allowing IC 814 to take off from Amritsar) revealed levels of incapacity and indecision not shown in the screenplay. Rather, we are being fed false information about torture and covert tape recordings in Kathmandu.

So disregard everything that is Hindu-Muslim. That is merely a red herring on social media. Let's go to the heart of the matter: Why did Netflix permit the ISI to produce a whitewash job?

Vir Sanghvi hosts chat shows and works as a journalist for print and television. He sends @virsanghvi tweets. Opinions are individual.