Arnab Goswami, by all accounts, is a marked man. It was in April 2020 that Arnab Goswami was first called for interrogation by the Mumbai Police. The saga began with Arnab questioning Sonia Gandhi’s silence on the brutal Palghar lynching where two sadhus were simply handed over to the crazed mob, to be beaten and murdered. The police at the time stood by and did nothing. In fact, they willingly handed the Sadhus over to be murdered. Arnab Goswami was not wrong. The silence of the top-echelons of power after two sadhus were lynched was deafening. The allegations of the probe being compromised were also getting louder.
However, the truth seldom sits well when those in power are hard-wired to be buttressed constantly. After Arnab Goswami questioning Sonia Gandhi, the saga of him being hounded began. First, there were over 200 FIRs filed against him. Then, he was physically assaulted while driving home from his studio and thereafter, the police refused to acknowledge that the attack was carried out by Congress workers. If that was not enough, after a long saga of witch-hunt, the Mumbai Police decided to take it to a whole different level.
While a Hansa Research Report and the FIR filed on the basis of it named India Today in a potential TRP scam, Mumbai Police Commissioner Parambir Singh held a press conference naming Arnab Goswami and Republic TV. FIRs were filed against a 1000 journalists working in Republic, all his financials were summoned, allegations of witness tampering surfaced and the Mumbai Police declared war against Republic. In the meantime, Republic TV did a sting where leaders of the Maharashtra government were heard saying that Arnab will be trapped and eventually, he will commit suicide. They confessed on rape that an entire unit has been created for the specific purpose of hounding Goswami.
Yesterday, this witch-hunt reached its nadir. Tens of policemen armed with assault rifles and other weapons barged into Arnab Goswami’s house and assaulted him. The Mumbai Police had revived a 2018 suicide case, which was summarily closed by the same police, just to hound him. He was dragged off and arrested by the Alibaug police and Mumbai Police. The haste in which he was dragged off did not even allow Arnab Goswami to put on a pair of shoes.
Shoved into a police van, he was taken away to Alibaug police station, which comes under Konkan Range, of which, Parambir Singh was the Inspector General when Sheena Bora’s body was burnt in the area. Arnab Goswami mouthed from the police van while being taken to the court that he had been beaten and tortured. He showed a 6-inch long red mark on his hand. His lawyer said he was beaten on his lower spine. His bandage that covered several stitches he had received earlier, was allegedly ripped open by the police. In the re-opening of the case, nobody really knows what ‘new evidence’ has the Mumbai police suddenly discovered that would justify the re-opening of the case. Nobody really knows why Arnab Goswami had to be dragged and arrested, in-camera, instead of simply being summoned.
After this shameless state terrorist played out on national television, several fellow-journalists grudgingly came out to support Arnab. None of them from the Left, however, condemned the concerted witch-hunt without adding qualifiers. “You may not like his journalism.. but..”, “He is not a journalist.. but..”, “We condemn the arrest… however”. The format was mostly the same. Those who did not bother putting up the basic facade of decency, refused to condemn the arrest saying that they would have supported him if he were a journalist, however, in their worldview, he is not.
Without really saying a word about not just the arrest of Arnab Goswami, but also the organised witch-hunt against him since April, some went as far as to question why the non-Left was silent when other journalists, such as Prashant Kanojia were arrested.
Essentially, the Left said that the Right’s condemnation of the witch-hunt against Arnab Goswami was hypocritical while being completely silent on the witch-hunt themselves. Then, they blamed the BJP leaders for speaking out in favour of Arnab Goswami and even holding protests in Mumbai and elsewhere.
“Every arrest is not the same for BJP”, “they are supporting Arnab Goswami because he supports the BJP”, they said.
Well, yes. For the BJP and the non-Left in general, every arrest is not the same. We really won’t fight for those who want the Azadi of Kashmir, who shield Islamists, who keep quiet when Hindus are murdered, who twist a riot to call it an anti-Muslim pogrom when the violence by the Muslim community had created the riots, while they murdered Ankit Sharma and Dilbar Negi. We will not speak up when those who are accused of working as Chinese spies are arrested. We will not speak up those who fuel ant-Hindu violence are taken to task. We will not speak for those who rather piss on the dead bodies of Hindus than be honest about the malaise of Islamic terrorism. We won’t.
However, it is extremely peachy for the Left to start pontificating about hypocrisy now. It is indeed true that for the non-Left, not every arrest will be the same, just like not every death is the same for the Left.
Despite a girl being beheaded by her Muslim husband for not converting to Islam in Sonbhadra, Nikita Tomar being shot down by Tauseef for not accepting his advances and converting to Islam and several such cases, the Left looks away. Portals like The Wire publish articles after articles talking about how the phenomenon of Love Jihad is a mere myth. Muslim men simply fall in love with Hindu girls and live happily ever after.
They forget that in August 22, 2020, a 25-year-old Hindu widow was targetted by a Muslim man named Nizamuddin, who concealed his identity to lure her to convert her religion to Islam before marrying and impregnating her. When the woman got to know that the man, who identified himself as Goldie, was a Muslim she resented. Nizamuddin alias Goldie then started torturing her. He once stabbed her on the thigh and even tried to strangulate her. Goldie, along with his parents, threw the pregnant woman out of the house.
They forget that a Muslim man in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, was accused of luring a 14-year-old Hindu minor girl by pretending to be a Hindu. The accused wore a Kalawa (Hindu sacred thread) around his wrist, sported a Tilak and frequently visited temples to fool the Hindu girl. As per the family’s complaint, the accused Fateh Khan had been pressuring the victim to adopt Islam and sexually exploiting her too.
They often say that the murder of Kamlesh Tiwari by radical Islamists was his own fault, his own doing. Kamlesh Tiwari should have limited the exercise of his freedom of expression so Islamists would not get offended enough to murder him.
This, while they play up Hathras and even lie about it, simply to gain political points. When a Junaid is murdered, the Left sees a ‘beef-angle’ even though none existed. He was sadly murdered over a seat dispute, not for carrying beef, a narrative that the left had burnt India over.
For the Left, the fake Jai Shree Ram lynchings are real but Muslims murdering Hindus during Delhi riots, the Bangalore riots, the murder of RSS activists, BJP workers killed in Bengal and the hundreds of girls sacrificed in the name of Jihad do not exist. One recalls, that when Prashant Poojari was murdered by Islamists, Rajdeep Sardesai, the Patron saint of hypocrisy, had written a piece trying to whitewash the crime and assert that his murder had a “political context”.
What is to be accepted here is that every side has its own set of biases. The journalists important for the Left aren’t important for the non-Left, in fact, they are despised deeply, mostly because of their own doing. The dead bodies that are important for the non-Left aren’t even talked about by the Left, in fact, they work extremely hard to justify the brutal murder of Hindus, whom the non-Left speaks up for.
The Left simply does not care about anyone who is remotely seen as an individual not towing their line. They rather have them dead. They rather see their head on a spike. They rather have them obliterated. While whitewashing even the death of the people they don’t agree with, it is a bit rich for them to expect the BJP or even the non-Left to support the very journalists who help them whitewash the murders of the non-Left. What the Left wants is to subjugate the very people who they expect to be fair.
It has long been established the playing field is not level for the non-Left and the Left. Had a journalist like Ravish Kumar or even Rajdeep Sardesai been held by his hair and dragged out of his home to be arrested even in a legitimate case, the nation would have been burnt by the Left. Heck, one remembers the loud moans when Prannoy Roy was being investigated for a financial crime and was simply asked to not leave the country. When NDTV was to be penalised by the central government just for a day for their coverage of the Pulwama attack, Ravish Kumar dramatised the situation and turned his screen black. Such is the power of the Left that even the central government went back on the levied punishment – NDTV never went off the air for a day.
In an uneven playing field, while Arnab Goswami was hounded for over 6 months, the Left remained stoically silent. They justified his interrogation. They wanted Republic to be shut. They hounded his advertisers and did everything they possibly could to not just encourage the hounding of Arnab, but even provide covering fire to the Maharashtra government that was blatantly misusing its power.
The rules of the game were set by the Left, not the non-Left. The selectivity with which the Left functioned gave rise to the sentiment against the very journalists that the Left is now whining about. The non-Left’s existence and its selective protection of Arnab Goswami is not the reason for the malaise, but a product of the Left’s hypocrisy.
When the Left refuses to treat dead bodies equally and even does a little twirl when the dead body is that of a Hindu, it is foolish for them to expect the non-Left to care for the very journalists who humiliate those they expect to stand with them now.
The Left icon and artist TM Krishna once said, “we are unable to empathise when an RSS member is killed”. While this comment leaves one jarred, one has to appreciate the un-intellectualised honesty in what Krishna said. The Left indeed feels no sympathy when Hindus are killed. It is time that they stop expecting the non-Left to feel any sympathy for those who feel exactly what Krishna does.
