Arnab Goswami's contribution in building an anti-Muslim narrative in India cannot be understated. In the last several years, his News Hour programme has consistently created a perception of Muslims as a community of terrorist sympathisers who support a 'terrorist' like Ishrat Jahan but hate nationalist and patriotic officers like DG Vanzara and PP Pandey.
During panel discussions, he adopts every trick to muzzle the voice of neutral panelists who refuse to buy the official line on fake encounters or in cases where Muslims are wrongly implicated. He has been successful in building a very negative image of Muslims among the English-speaking urban middle class.
His news programmes are highly opinionated and content is editorialised. His panel discussions are carefully managed to ensure a pre-conceived outcome even if it is far from truth. Moreover, the News Hour topics, hashtags are carefully chosen to pre-judge stories, especially while handling Muslim issues.
I am convinced and I say this with full responsibility that Goswami has an agenda. I refuse to believe that he pursues this hyper-nationalistic line only to increase his TRPs or to impress his audience who are looking for this kind of news content.
Goswami's agenda, I sincerely believe, is to paint the entire community as disloyal citizens who pose a security threat to the nation -- a narrative that supports RSS' strategic goals, and helps the Nagpur based organisation in shaping opinion of urban middle class Indians, who are well educated and occupy positions of influence in government and private sector. This narrative helps RSS in infiltrating executive, judiciary and armed forces.
Till a few years ago, RSS was unable to influence this section of the society. Up to a certain extent, Arun Jaitley has been successful in articulating RSS viewpoint among the English speaking middle class. But his reach is limited, partly because he is an active politician and a minister, preventing him from expressing his views on controversial subjects. Goswami, however, suffers from no such handicap. His English is excellent, he addresses the 'nation' six days a week on prime time TV, wears a dark suit and he is the boss of a news channel -- all requisites to impress the middle class Indians who are wired to pay attention to someone who speaks good English.
It is well known that Goswami's family members are actively associated with the Sangh. His maternal uncle recently fought and won election in Assam on a BJP ticket. Some may argue that there's nothing wrong if a journalist has family members in politics. But Goswami has made no effort to hide the pro-Sangh and anti-Muslim bias of his channel's content. He has religiously pushed half truths and untruths about Muslims in the last several years, a dangerous practice with far reaching consequences for the society. I fear that image of Indian Muslims created by Goswami will be long lasting.
I wish to be a part of his show someday and let's make it haywire like I did with salman rushdie a year back on Twitter.
-- Remember Asad Ashraf who Goswami said is a terrorist sympathiser on live TV.?
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