Netflix bends to the Indian government: series respectful of national sentiments
The streaming giant forced to bow to pressure from radical Hindus after the release of 'IC 814', a drama about the 1999 hijacking
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From our correspondent
NEW DELHI - "National sentiments", whatever they may be, come before historical truth. This is the outcome of a meeting on Tuesday 3 September in New Delhi between the Indian top management of Netflix and some officials of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Bringing into the same room the streaming giant and the government was a television series entitled IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack that dramatises the longest airline hijacking in Indian history.
The affair dates back to 1999, when, on Christmas Eve, a flight from Kathmandu, Nepal, to Delhi was hijacked and wandered for a week in the skies over South Asia - with stops in Amritsar, Lahore, Dubai and Kandahar - before a prisoner exchange between the Indian government and the five hijackers belonging to the Pakistani jihadist group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen ended the odyssey.
Of the 190 people on board, only one lost his life. But it was not a success: the Indian government and services came off badly, while the three jihadists exchanged for hostages did not stay idle for long. In the following years, their footprints were found almost everywhere: in the assault on the Indian Parliament in 2001; in the Karachi kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002; in the Mumbai attacks in 2008 in which more than 160 people lost their lives.
But what has led to the convocation of the Netflix top brass - who, bizarre as it may sound, would be no strangers to confrontations with Indian policy on the content of TV series - is something else. Namely the fact that in some scenes two of the five jihadists are called by the other hijackers Bhola and Shankar, two Hindu names. It was enough for the trolls to get to work, accusing Netflix of wanting to hide the (Muslim) names of the 'bad guys'.
