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Dharma Productions’ latest offering – Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl found itself in the middle of a controversy when IAF woman officer Sreevidya Rajan said that Gunjan was not the first woman to fly into the war zone of Kargil in the year 1999. In her Facebook post that has gone viral, Sreevidya objected to the idea of portraying Gunjan as the sole ‘female hero’ of the Kargil and showing the IAF as a gender-biased institution.
In an interview with Mid-Day now, Rajan said that she talked to Saxena about the movie recently and got to know the latter had, in fact, informed the makers that there were two female pilots in the Kargil and she wasn’t the first one to have gone on a mission during the war. “We had a long chat on Monday. During the conversation, I came to understand that she had clearly told the filmmakers there were two of us. She doesn’t know why they changed the fact. I told her it was an oversight on her and the filmmakers’ part to not reflect me at all,” she said.
She added that she was the one flying with the first crew to Srinagar during the Kargil while Saxena was in the second set. Rajan said that when she went to the war, there was hardly any media traction and they were also barred from speaking to the media, however, the restrictions were lifted when Saxena flew off with her set. This is the reason why even the Limca Book of Records credits only Gunjan Saxena as the first woman pilot to have flown into the Kargil war area. “By the time the second crew came, the media was allowed and Gunjan was interviewed. Naturally, people assumed she was the first woman [to achieve the feat], but after the war, the IAF arranged for press interactions with both of us,” she said.
Even though the film added a disclaimer stating that it ‘does not warrant, represent or make any claim of the authenticity of historical correctness of any events projects,’ Rajan said that the makers should have been responsible before making a ‘biopic’. She said, “Creative freedom is permissible in a fictional story, but a biopic has to be done with more responsibility. The organisation, back in the day, was largely male-dominated. Gunjan and I fought tooth and nail to make our place. That said, in the last 20 years, thousands of women have signed up for the service and shone along the way.”
Actor Janhvi Kapoor plays the role of Gunjan Saxena in the film. Neither director Sharan Sharma, nor producer Karan Johar has addressed the controversy yet. What are your thoughts on the entire discourse?
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