The Kargil War of 1999 was certainly a conflict.
During our Defence Ministry-sponsored “media interaction and training” course in 2000, we often debated whether the female TV journalist who reported India’s plans to attack Tiger Hill the next day should have been arrested or deported from the reporting scene.
The Indian audience and authorities dealing with TV media were immature, and instead, she was made a celebrity.
The country paid a heavier price later when the 26/11 live television coverage became a controversy after the death of a brave NSG personnel. The journalist later became a prominent “sickular” champion and was also infamously involved in the Radia tape controversy.
Nevertheless, fictions on conflicts and wars don’t always outrun reality.
While most of the action and drama in the new web series ‘Operation Safed Sagar: The Untold Story of the Kargil War’ is centred around Air Force operations and exercises, there are side plots too.
Web series and histories might often play with the horrors of the past.
“Koi medal itna keemti thori na hai Ki mein apne desh se gaddari karun.” Squadron Leader Ahuja says this in the web series during questioning by a senior Pakistani Army officer.
The three-star general responds: “Jisey asulon aur pagalpan ka fark samajh mein nahin aata…” “He who cannot understand the difference between principles and madness … neither I nor God can save him.” Dialogues should be cherished.
(Episode 4 — aptly named “Golden Arrows”)
One sample:
a young pilot proposes to his girlfriend inside a MiG-21.DVD & Video Rentals
There are also simple moments such as a birthday celebration and breakfast with fellow officers. A lover who lands at the squadron, or Air Force campus, is allowed to stay at a senior officer’s quarter, where his wife Alka is ready to welcome the guest.
Such gestures are not quite unusual in units.
The web series is gripping enough. In the second episode, Jimmy Sheirgill tells his junior colleague: “In Pakistan, a colonel on retirement gets five acres of land … will they allow peace?”
Operation Safed Sagar was the codename given to the Indian Air Force’s aerial campaign during the 1999 Kargil War.
The operation officially began on May 26, 1999, after Pakistani soldiers and armed intruders occupied several strategic mountain positions on the Indian side of the Line of Control in the Dras, Kargil and Batalik sectors.
Many pilots had been trained primarily for air-to-air combat. But during the Kargil conflict, they had to adapt quickly and carry out highly accurate strikes against enemy bunkers hidden among steep mountain ridges.
The initial bombing missions achieved limited success because identifying well-camouflaged targets from the air proved extremely difficult.
The operation gathered momentum after the Indian Air Force deployed Mirage 2000 fighter jets fitted with laser-guided bombs.
Operation Safed Sagar was historic for several reasons.
It marked the first large-scale use of Indian Air Force combat aircraft in Jammu and Kashmir since the 1971 Indo-Pak war.Military History
The mission also became one of the most challenging air operations ever undertaken because fighter aircraft and helicopters had to fly at altitudes ranging from 16,000 to 18,000 feet. The mountainous terrain, thin air and unpredictable weather made every sortie more difficult than a conventional combat mission.
The series begins in the middle of the action. Squadron Leader Ajay Ahuja’s (Siddharth) jet is struck by a Stinger missile over the snow-capped peaks of Kargil on May 27, 1999 — Day 24 of the war.
The pilot in the MiG is shown “straying” from formation to find his wingman. But then a Stinger missile from the ground is launched, hitting the MiG.Death & Tragedy
The scene immediately draws you in.
Then the story steps back four months, to when Wing Commander B.S. Dhanoa, also known as Tony (Jimmy Sheirgill), brings MiG-21 coach Ahuja to Bhatinda to train a group of young pilots.
The first episode is subtitled “Peace and War.” It shows, among other things, Nawaz Sharif (played by Vinay Pathak) boasting about his decision to give Pervez Musharraf an out-of-turn promotion, superseding three seniors.
The Pakistani prime minister was confident that Musharraf would play on behalf of the team. But the reality was entirely different.
The new Army chief of Pakistan had his own plans — and the series shows that the then DGMO and ISI chief were not with him in his plans to take over Kashmir.
“Do you take over Kashmir daily…?” he throws the googly to his officers.
Musharraf’s role is played by Manu Rishi Chadha, who plans a covert operation, disguising Pakistani soldiers as Mujahideen and sending them across the Line of Control. The then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif does not know. “The series also strikes a good balance between personal stories and the larger conflict,” says a review in India Today.
Another media review says: Operation Safed Sagar, a new Indian drama on Netflix, takes place before and during the Kargil War, a real war waged between India and Pakistan in 1999.
The war was touched off when Pakistani Army forces took over vacated Indian outposts along the Line of Control that the two countries maintained in the disputed region of Kashmir. The drama concentrates on the Golden Arrows, the elite Indian Air Force squadron that fought in the Kargil War.
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| Nawaz Sharif and Vajpayee |
And perhaps that is where the series works best: in bringing the larger history of the Kargil conflict into the personal worlds of the officers and pilots who lived through it.
Fiction may dramatise history. But sometimes, the history itself is dramatic enough.
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