But he said to us later he had to do it to protect his people whose safety and evacuation Iraq guaranteed. He was cursed globally for embracing Saddam Hussein for the cameras. Within less than a week, Inder Kumar Gujral, our external affairs minister, was in Baghdad, the first foreign leader to reach there.
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In the film, while the government washes its hands off and the minister says he is helpless, a local hero emerges, gets all Indians into camps, and then escorts them in a convoy 1,100km through the Iraqi and Jordanian desert, even thrashing an Iraqi army picket led by a Lieutenant Colonel, no less, on the way and leads fellow Indians triumphantly at the border checkpoint, not far from where Moses supposedly parted the seas and gave the call of “Let my people go”. Sadly, in trying to Sunny Deol-ise the Kuwait evacuation (sorry for using that metaphor, Akshay Kumar, but Deol is the original) Airlift has completely changed history.
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A tiny army unit with a big heart made the Pakistanis wait for the night and in the morning the IAF came and destroyed them, unopposed in the air. But the basic thread in Border was accurate and faithful to history. But nor does anyone fight like Stallone or Schwarzenegger or Tom Cruise, so drama is fine. Now, we know no soldier fights in real life as Sunny Deol can in movies. There was no fighting on the ground of any note and while Chandpuri richly deserved his Maha Vir Chakra, exploits of Sunny Deol, apparently playing him, would have only amused if not embarrassed him. This bought IAF time until first light to come in waves and destroy Pakistani armour. The small contingent of Indian troops at Longewala post, under Major Kuldip Singh Chandpuri, performed a heroic role by staying put, warning the headquarters of the Pakistani tank offensive and held it back, therefore, by making the attackers believe their strength was larger than in reality and also probably that the approaches to their position were heavily mined. The battle was indeed a remarkable chapter in the history of that war, but it was nothing like what was shown, at least not on land. The film Border, supposedly based on the 1971 battle of Longewala is another such example. We have also seen some mythologies built successfully in the past around real events. Of the recent and celebrated releases, Argo and American Sniper are good examples. Bollywood is not the only one to exploit real events for fictional drama. They need crises, helplessness, drama and then characters, good or bad, who make the story. Movies are not made about boring government systems and bureaucracies that work sometimes. Two being, of course the hero, Akshay Kumar or Ranjit Katyal and the other, Mr Kohli, joint secretary in the MEA whose office looks more modest than that of a clerk-joint secretary is actually a very high position, equal to a senior ambassador.īut never mind. If India succeeded in bringing the stranded people back, it was because of the extraordinary initiative of some - in fact just two-and-a-half - individuals. The external affairs minister too threw his hands up, saying his government was unstable, could fall any time and only the bureaucracy could do something to help as they were permanent. These included the local embassies, where staff either ran away or (as in Baghdad) expressed helplessness. The film shows that every government agency responded to the predicament of expatriate Indians with total callousness. Next to the wreck of an Iraqi tank after the first, short and one-sided armour battle in Kuwait in January 1991. Bombed day and night, losing Kuwait yet smiling and flashing victory signs. With Saddam Hussein's soldiers in Baghdad. But did it really have to be mythologised as much as it has been done in the film, particularly as it completely rewrites history with zero concern for facts? Some drama is also justified because of the sudden outbreak of that war and the crisis that hit mostly lower-middle class workers. Surely, the return of more than 1.5 lakh Indian workers from Kuwait and Iraq was a remarkable Indian achievement and deserved a film.
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That question has arisen with the success of Airlift, young director Raja Menon’s new film, which tugged at our hearts on the eve of Republic Day with much patriotism and national spirit of unity in diversity.
Airlift hindi movie movie#
How accurately is a mere movie expected to adhere to facts and history even if it claims to be set in a real, recent event – recent is defined here as something that took place in our adult lifetime.