A lot of people watch
the NEWSHOUR on Times Now. Not because it enlightens, but because it
entertains. And the entertainer-in-chief is none other than Arnab Goswami, the
anchor of the programme and the editor-in-chief of the channel.
In most social gatherings,
after the usual preliminary inanities, the discussions veer round to him. Most
people agree that Arnab is pompous, loud-mouthed and dominating with an uncanny
ability to needle the people he is interviewing by means that are not taught in
journalism schools. He rarely allows the others to complete what they are
saying. And, except for a lot of hot air, nothing comes out of the programme.
Episode after episode, featuring discussions on various subjects under the sun,
featuring some of the biggest celebrities, remain inconclusive simply because
Arnab does not allow the participants to talk...
Yet people watch the
show for pure entertainment value. It is the male equivalent of the soap operas
that grip the imagination of women TV addicts. It has sound. It has fury. There
are verbal fights. There are emotions... But in the final analysis you are left
wondering what the discussion was all about in the first place.
Some months ago (in
fact, it was when “Maunmohan Singh” was still India’s PM), I received a “forward”
in my e-mail inbox. It was in the form of a father’s letter to his Canada-based
daughter and the subject of the letter was none other than Arnab Goswami. I
reproduce the letter here because it gives a fairly accurate picture of the man
everyone loves to hate.
Heregoes :
My Dear Sharada
Sometime ago during a
Google group discussion you innocently asked: “But who is Arnab?”
In India not knowing Arnab is against national interest. You are lucky you live in Canada.
But if you don’t want to be deported on arrival on your next visit, you better
pay attention to this complimentary crash course on the subject.
Arnab, as in Arnab Goswami, is India’s most-watched prime time news anchor and
editor-in-chief of Times Now. But
designations don’t even begin to describe him or what he is famous for.
You must have heard
about hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. Like them, Arnab is also a storm, a news-storm that hits India
every night via his show, the “Newshour”. Nobody is quite sure how, but somehow Arnab gets to know the questions that the “whole
nation” wants answers for. He also has the unpublished list of sinners the
nation wants hanged before midnight that
night. In effect, Arnab speaks for a "billion-plus people"
each time he opens his mouth.
I can’t say for sure
if he took this burden upon himself voluntarily or if his employers made it a
contractual obligation. Whatever it is, the fact is that Arnab has come to relish asking the most “simple and
direct” questions to the most dubious people demanding instant answers to
complex problems because the “nation wants to know” and it wants to know
“tonight” as in right now.
That’s how impatient India has become while you’ve been away, Sharada.
The Newshour airs
on weekdays from 9
PM and
continues till Arnab’s pleasure lasts. Often the show stretches up to 10.50 PM. That’s actually “News
hour-and-three-quarters-and-then-some” but I guess Arnab has not asked himself a “simple, direct”
question: how many minutes make an hour?
That, or his primary
school maths teacher is not his viewer. In which case it is safe to say Arnab speaks for a billion-plus minus one Indians.
You will see that at the altar of national interest it is not just the hour
that is stretched.
About two decades ago, Dileep Padgoankar was the editor of the Times of India owned by the Sahu Jains of Bennett, Coleman
& Co who
also own Times Now.
Padgaonkar had pompously proclaimed then that he held the second most important job
in the country after the prime minister's. Arnab hasn’t said so, but I think he disagrees with
Padgaonkar on the pecking order: it’s now the prime minister who holds
the second most important job in the country.
Hence Arnab runs the show like he would run the country or
like the prime minister should but doesn’t.
You see, Sharada, there’s an awful lot of stuff the nation wants to know by
nightfall but our prime minister (Maunmohan Singh) isn’t much of a talker. Arnab fills the need gap. He opens his show with a
passionate agenda-setting preamble that spells out all the problems of the day
and how he wishes to solve them. We gratefully receive this wisdom and call it Arnab’s Address to the Nation, a prime ministerial
duty that has fallen on his broad shoulders because the real guy has abdicated
it.
Let me tell you this, however. In all fairness, Arnab is a very reluctant power-grabber. It is not
his intent to upstage the prime minister or make him look silly. He gives the
prime minister an entire day to prove his worth and gets to work only at 9 PM when it is clear that the latter can’t handle stuff.
He then solves all outstanding national issues of the day in just one 110
minute-hour of feverish debates where he grills the skin off the back of
everybody who dares to stand in the way of India’s national interest.
He is unrelenting in his pursuit of the truth and doesn’t give up unless or
until everybody has agreed with him.
“I am worried”, “I am concerned”, “I won’t let you politicise”, “I don’t
agree”, “you can’t get away", "you have to tell me right now….” are
some of the phrases he uses to suggest he is in complete control and that
endears him to a nation starved of decision-makers.
Arnab hates home work. He wants to settle everything here and now,
tonight. As a result, in Arnabcountry, there is no trace of the policy paralysis that has
grounded the prime minister in the real country. Here you get resolutions,
decisions, orders, diktats, judgements, justice and denouements all in one
place, one show, by one man.
The only people paralysed are the victims of his grilling, and the bevy of
experts he gathers around himself, not because he needs them, he doesn’t, but
because it must feel awfully good to invite experts and out-talk them on
national prime time.
Like confused baboons trapped in little boxes, the experts, who are neatly
arranged around Arnab’s own imposing self in the centre of the screen, keep staring
into nothingness and nodding most of the time.
Yes, you get the drift, Sharada, Arnab is the main dish here. The rest are just
intellectual dips.
For most of their airtime the experts keep putting up their hands or calling
out “Arnab….Arnab….” to indicate they want to make a point. Arnab is too engrossed in disagreeing with what he
has not allowed them to say to care too much.
Some clever guests try to appeal to his Assamese roots by hailing “Ornob… Ornob”.
He ignores them as well. Nationalism, after all, is above parochialism. The
cleverer among them have cracked the code: they just agree with Arnab in exchange for a little extra air time. These
are usually the people who have paid close attention to Arnab’s Addresses to the Nation and picked up the
right cues on what to say that will get them his benefaction.
It is tough to figure out why Arnab needs any experts at all because he knows the
answers to all his questions. Times Now insiders say that more often than not he finds questions
to the answers he already has. On his show, politicians can’t politicise,
bureaucrats can’t beat around the bush, sportspersons can’t play games and
lawyers can’t use legalese. In fact anybody who is good at something can’t do what they are
known to do, to the extent that even civil society can’t be civil, especially
if it wants to get a word in sideways. Everybody has to be direct, honest,
blunt and keep things simple because that is what the (one-man) nation wants.
Corruption, political expediency, opportunism, forked tongues, doublespeak,
dishonesty and hypocrisy, are red rags to Arnab. He takes them head-on with the help of his
reporters who keep throwing up “documentary” evidence ever so often to expose
scamsters.
Usually this is a thick sheaf of indistinguishable papers Arnab holds up threateningly. It could be a bunch of
used airline e-tickets for all we know, but since we don’t, he waves the sheaf
confidently in the face of the enemies of the nation and it is generally
assumed he’s got some incendiary stuff in there. None dares to question or ask Arnab to lay the papers to public scrutiny for fear
that they would be subjected to the equivalent of a rape on TV.
Arnab’s
problem-solving repertoire is not restricted to national boundaries. In fact,
he is at his best when dealing with nations that have evil designs on India.
The patriot in Arnab is best aroused when he is dealing with that evil, failed, rogue
nation called Pakistan. He deals with Pakistan
like no prime minister has ever been able to or decimates it like no Army has
ever managed to. Each time a blade of grass bends to the breeze on the LoC, Arnab breathes fire at Pakistan for trying to sneak
in terrorists into the country. He lines up a battery of serving and retired
generals of Pakistan and conducts the verbal equivalent of a summary execution.
Yet, the same generals
keep resurfacing on Arnab’s show each time he feels the urge to have a Pakistani or two
for dinner. This causes much wonderment among Newshour hounds on the masochist streak that
makes the Pakistani generals offer themselves up as bait repeatedly. So, it is assumed the money must be good. But
since Arnab insists that Pakistan is the way it is only because the generals
have sold their country cheap, it is unlikely he is blowing his budget for this
routine cross-border target practice.
Of course, left to Arnab, Pakistan would have existed only as the largest crater on earth
since the meteors wiped out all life on the planet. Yes, he would have nuked it
many times over by now.
The Times of India, the country’s oldest English newspaper and the mother brand
from the Times Now stable
runs Aman Ki Aasha (Hope for Peace), the widely-acclaimed campaign for ending
India-Pakistan hostilities. Just as Arnab doesn’t seem to know of this campaign,
the Times of India seems quite oblivious of the fact that the last time there was
absolute peace on the LoC was when Arnab took a two-week holiday in early September. It
could be the marketing genius of the Times group to milk the issue from both ends or it could also be
that their internal boundaries are not as porous as our LoC.
Apart from conducting
war exercises against Pakistan, Arnab-land is eyeball-to-eyeball with China, exposes
the double standards of America in almost anything it does and highlights the
hypocrisy of racist Australia which loves the education dollars from India but
not the brown students who come along with.
His blood boils so much when an old Sikh is roughed up by a bunch of racist
women in the UK that he almost gets the whole of Punjab to rise in revolt
against the Indian government’s inaction -- even though there is nothing it can
do as the gentleman is a citizen of the said country -- or builds a tide of
emotional revulsion against “inhuman” Norway for snatching an infant from his
Indian mother’s custody for alleged physical abuse.
I can go on and on, Sharada, but everything good must come to an end and so
must my Arnab eulogy.
So, in short and in conclusion, here’s what I have to say: Arnab is not just the editor-in-chief of Times Now. He’s India’s Protector-in-Chief. He is the
guy who is keeping India safe while you are away on selfish pursuits like
earning money in Canada. You are lucky you can get away by not knowing him.
For a billion-plus
Indians, minus of course his maths teacher, that is not even a distant option.
Because, truth told, Arnab is the best we have got !
Your loving dad
Post script : Why is the invincible, irascible know-all, Arnab
Goswamy always on tenter-hooks when interviewing Jayalalithaa? One wonders...
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