Opinion Not hysteria, RDX!

“I am glad”,said Omar,“you used the word responsibility,because more than all others,you have behaved irresponsibly… look at the way you have bandied about absolute lies without any effort to verify whether they were true or not. Let me give you two examples…”

Goswami was by now completely blindsided,like a vegan chef who’s been bitten in the arm by his salad: “You’re not going to answer any specific questions,is it?” he asked,an angry edge to his voice.

“I am going to,” claimed Omar with aplomb,“but let me have my say on this. God knows,I’ve listened to you for an entire week.” So have we all,Omar,you are truly a man of the people. “You have a responsibility,” continued Omar,“to ensure what you broadcast is actually true.”

Damn,thought Goswami. This is not going to plan. Well,when called on deviating from facts,the highly intelligent have only one option: deny the nature of truth itself. Goswami,who clearly reads French intellectuals in his spare time,revealed himself to be an academic postmodernist: “We do believe that everything we put out is different versions.” (A statement simultaneously internally consistent,irrelevant,and quite nonsensical. Classically postmodern.) “And you know what happens,Omar,sometimes one person’s version of the truth does not suit another. You have every right to disagree with versions.” (More postmodernism: Truth is unknowable. What matters is who has the power,or ratings,to enforce their “version”.)

Omar endured more questions from the News Hour Bench,before bursting out: “This is not the judicial commission of inquiry…. this is just an interview. Just wind it up,this cannot be an endless conversation… You editorialise,you jump to conclusions,you made the wildest of allegations without bothering to check,and you’re going to lecture me?”

“You hold a public office,” Goswami reminded the CM,reprovingly.

But Abdullah was on fire now. “And you have no responsibility?” he asked. Goswami,conscious of the awesome responsibility of Questioning for the Nation,didn’t quite know how to answer that.

Abdullah ended the interview by saying: “Can we go on the record that the four questions I asked you have gone unanswered.” The story had been Abdullah; but it became Times Now.

This has become a new pattern,it seems. On the show in which the Babbar Khalsa explosives haul at Ambala was discussed,the Pakistani strategic analyst was just as ready to lead an insurrection as the Babbar Khalsa. At one point,Arnab offered to share details of the accusation with him,and the analyst replied,insulted: “My friend,if I start sharing details with you…” (His explanation for the explosives: “You can make these with urea and nitrogen. In Punjab,there is a lot of urea.”) The other Pakistani,a former general,emboldened,said “You get hysterical. You start shouting in interviews like this.”

“This is not hysteria!” Arnab shouted,confident that one Indian could out-bellow ten Pakistanis if necessary. “This is not hysteria,this is RDX!” The barmy Pakistani general,pausing only to accuse RAW of 26/11,said “You rant,and you shout,you don’t listen to what anyone else has to say… I have never heard of the Babbar Khalsa before! Why should the ISI do such a thing?” It then became a twenty-minute shouting match in which each accused the other of not listening,at a volume that ensured we would never hear again,either.

Goswami,and the News Hour has a problem: he has made himself such a target that anyone can avoid answering even the simplest of questions by viciously attacking the questioner.

In the News Hour discussing the Bhushan attack — during which I can swear I heard Goswami quote another French philosopher,Voltaire — one of his guests even used the anchor’s new vulnerability to criticism as a rhetorical prop: “I think you are divisive and jingoistic,does that mean I come and bash you up?”