The silence of press freedom crusaders is making the loudest sound!
It is midnight on 22 April 2020. A senior journalist in Mumbai is driving home accompanied by his journalist wife. Suddenly, two men on motorcycle overtake their car and obstruct them. The journalist pulls over to the left and stops. The two men attack his car, thumping windows and throw a liquid at him and his wife. The journalist is Arnab Goswami, Editor-in-Chief of the Republic TV network in India and his wife Samya, editor in the same establishment. He watches in the rear-view mirror to find the two men are nabbed by his security (provided by the Mumbai police). They manage to drive home. The security then reports to him that the attackers are members of Youth Congress — a youth wing of Sonia Gandhi’s Congress Party. Arnab reaches police station at mid-night to lodge a complaint. The police accept his complaint but allegedly refuse to record that the two men were Youth Congress workers. Within minutes of the attack on Arnab, a Delhi Congress leader celebrates with a tweet ‘’Victory to Youth Congress’’.
Why was Arnab attacked?
For a few days prior to the attack, Arnab had been questioning why Sonia Gandhi was silent about the lynching of defenseless Hindu seers in Palghar near Mumbai on 16 April 2020. A few policemen arrived but could not quell the murderous mob. One policeman to whom a seer clung for protection, actually handed him over instead to the murderous mob who lynched him.
Her party rules the Maharashtra state where the attack took place. Naturally, Arnab demanded answers from her especially on the background that when terrorists were killed in Batla House encounter Sonia cried for the terrorist, not for the police officer killed in the encounter! When a Christian Missionary was murdered, she ensured that the Chief Minister of the Odisha State was sacked. Similarly, her party was quick to condemn the lynching of Muslim cow smugglers. But when Hindu seers are attacked, she does not even tweet condemning the attack, Arnab continued questioning incessantly about her duplicitous behavior for days. Yet she maintained a stoic silence.
Besides the attack on Arnab allegedly by her goons, her party filed multiple criminal defamation cases, for questioning Sonia, mainly in the states where her party rules.
Supreme Court intervenes
Arnab approached the Supreme Court for protection of his journalistic freedom on the background of the cases filed against him. He contended that the cases were at the behest of the Congress Party which sought to muzzle his fundamental right to free speech and expression guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution of India. The court upheld journalist freedom and sets aside all defamation cases except one filed in Nagpur. The Supreme Court has now sought a probe report from the State Government which means the investigation would be scrutinized by it.
Mumbai police summon Arnab
Using the Nagpur case, Mumbai Police interrogated Arnab for 12.5 hours on 27 April 2020. The next day, Arnab appeared on the Prime Time show of his Network and declared that he would continue his crusade against Sonia Gandhi and that he is not going to be intimidated by her Party which rules the State with two other parties. They also summoned the Chief Finance Officer of the Republic TV network and interrogated him for long hours.
The Silence of the Western media
The total silence of the Western media which otherwise makes a big noise about journalistic freedom in India is astonishing. The silence of the New York Times (NYT), Washington Post, Atlantic, Guardian, and the BBC is deafening. Arnab is India’s foremost journalist and his channel commands the highest rating in India. And yet the Western media is displaying its ostrich-like attitude. They went ballistic and were screaming hoarse when an obscure journalist Kanojia was arrested for a provocative tweet on Yogi Adityanath, Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, or a nondescript channel was blocked. NYT did carry a story after some days that Arnab was booked for spreading hatred! Rana Ayyub wrote in Washington Times along with journalist the ‘’truth is under attack’’ as though Arnab is spreading lies. BBC and the Guardian remained silent.
Why is international media looking the other way when India’s foremost journalist is being intimidated allegedly by Sonia Gandhi’s Party or twisting the issue? Sonia keeps mum when Hindu seers are lynched and so does the Western media, and when a journalist questions her silence allegedly her party goons attack him almost like a typical Italian mafioso. When some 200 cases, barring one, filed by her party are quashed by the Supreme court, her police interrogate Arnab for more than 12 hours! If this is not fascism then what is it? Is she following the legacy of her mother-in-law who shut down media in 1975 and her husband’s legacy under whose watch 3,000 Sikhs were killed in 1984?
The important question, however, is the silence of the Western media and freedom of speech crusaders — a silence that is making the loudest sound at present!
