We, the prickly people

You can still put words in Indira Gandhi's mouth and get away with it. But if you garnish your pretence of fact with so much fiction, you might end up messing with Bhindranwale

R est assured, this isn't another piece of writing on Anubhav Sinha's Netflix series, IC814: The Kandahar Hijack. Rather, it serves to spark this larger argument on the insurmountable and often physically dangerous challenge of creating any work of art, literature, movie, or television series drawing from any chapter or personalities of our contemporary history.

The IC-814 controversy has erupted in the same week that the release of Kangana Ranaut's Emergency has been withheld.

Yet another contemporary history-themed movie, Farhan Akhtar's 120 Bahadur, has begun its pre-release promotions. This film portrays the heroic last battle of the storied Charlie company of the Kumaon regiment (C Company, 13 Kumaon) in Ladakh's Rezang La in 1962. This shows filmmakers see the juice in historical realities. However, the challenge of staying true to the complete truth remains formidable.

Why, for example, has Kangana Ranaut's film got into trouble? Usually, you would've expected it would pass through the system like a breeze, joining the already-large repertoire of garden-variety Gandhi-family bashing films thriving in the Modi era.

Given that Ms Ranaut is now a member of Parliament from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), you would expect to see Mrs Gandhi in her most self-destructive phase, particularly during the period when she was dismantling the Constitution. The BJP has just suffered electorally because an impression grew that it wanted a large Lok Sabha majority to do precisely this.