Letter to Arnab Goswami

Aarif Qadir

Before making a beginning, I am making a disclaimer. I will not shout; I would just write. I can’t applaud what Umar Khalid or Kanhaiyya Kumar ‘allegedly did’ but must appreciate them for what they really did. I am up for getting Kashmir its ‘Right to self-determination’ as promised by Jawaharlal Nehru. I am not in favour of Hurriyat who shout for “Azaadi” or “Sticking to Pakistan”. This is to make certain that I’m not labelled as seditious.

This article is in response to the half literate and shallow ‘News Hour Debate of Arnab Goswami’. May be his “running out of patience” with Umar Khalid was motivated by the pre-planned script of the News Channel, I am running out of patience with him for some real.

The people like him have made the hell of journalism and it has taken the shape of a negative competition for bigger TRPs. What Arnab does; first, invite a panel; second, choose the guys who speak for you (Arnab) and let them speak when you yourself run out of breath; third, restrict the stature of those who try to make a logical argument going against you to a mere mute passport-size photo; fourth, take a stand and make arguments to prove it right even if it is not.

The “debate” over the JNU-row was a total illogical stuff on your part. I wish I was there in place of Umar or Lenin. I live in Kashmir, of which you have made the rhetoric as the “Integral part of India”. You know not the exact conditions of Kashmir. Who you are to discuss over us? We are not anti-India. We are not pro-Pakistan. We just want to decide our own fate.

You asked Umar about the passport which he was never possessing but he couldn’t make the ‘nation know’ because you muted him. Well, I answer on his part. I would never apply for your passport if you let us free.

When he tried to answer your point, you interrupted with the emotional drama over LN Hanumanthapa. Umar couldn’t answer because he’s a non-Kashmiri and to him, Hanumanthapa is a protector. Let me answer this query on his part again. His counterparts have killed many of us in the past, raped many and tortured innumerable youth. You highlight the death of Hanumanthapa which was natural and we didn’t play any part in it. You should also have the knowledge of Gowkadal massacre, Bijbehara massacre, Pathribal fake encounter and so on which was unnatural and had the backing of government.

You may have forced Kanhaiyya or Umar to repeat the “Integral Part” rhetoric. But I don’t subscribe to this. In a radio broadcast to the nation on 3rd November, 1947, Pandit Nehru said, “We have declared that the fate of Kashmir is ultimately to be decided by the people. That pledge we have given not only to the people of Kashmir and to the world. We will not and can’t back out of it”.

Now you lachrymose kiddo, tell me if you are a nationalist of higher stature than Nehru. If he pledged us the right to self-determination, who are you to deny us that sitting on that comfortable chair, shouting at all around you?

You accused Umar of having benefitting from the subsidised education. Does that mean we don’t pay any taxes? Or does that mean whoever enters JNU has to refrain from being opinionated?

On Afzal’s hanging, they tried to convince you that his hanging was to satiate the hunger of the collective conscience of RSS and fundamentalist Hindu elements. But you quoted the half of the court order to silence them. I quote here a small line of the Supreme Court order that says much about your law and your democracy.

The Supreme Court said, “The collective conscience of the society will be satisfied only if the death penalty is awarded to Afzal Guru”.

Could you please go through the comparative analysis of the cases of Guru, Memon and Bhullar? Bhullar’s sentence was commuted on grounds of health issues. But you didn’t spare Memon on the similar grounds. He was a changed man and had returned to you to cooperate in the concerned case. He was aged and ill but you stabbed him in the back just to satisfy that collective conscience of which we Kashmiris are not a part. And you remember, Bal Gangadar Tilak was a freedom fighter but to British he was and continues to be (in their history) a terrorist. Likewise, Guru may be a terrorist to you but to Kashmiris, he is a martyr.

Arnab you are a stain in the name of journalism. You are a ‘traitor’.  When you finally, after making a noise, let Lenin Kumar to speak and read the rule to him that nobody will cut anybody, he resumed his reaction. But you cut him just after his point on Rohith Vemula pinched you.

Do you have any sense of journalistic ethics?

I have a suggestion for the change of name of the show to “Survival with Shouting Arnab” which I think is more dangerous than “Survival with Bear Grylls”. And about that panelist in Nupur who termed it sedition. Nothing else can work as a better demo than her indiscriminate shouting for explaining the consumption of energy for nothing.

During that show, I remember, you interrupted Lenin, then that doll Nupur, then Sushil P and finally Umar as well. Are you the only person in the world who knows the reality? You didn’t want to present Umar or Lenin as the leftists because binding them to an ideology could lose you the TRP in the upcoming shows where you plotted Umar as having links to the JeM. How cheap?

I want to ask you, what is cultural about keeping lacs of armed forces in Kashmir? I ask you, who is funding you for shielding ABVP activities inside the campus?

I dare you Arnab Goswami to have an open debate on the Kashmir issue with us, the people of Kashmir. I dare you. If you have any journalistic still left then let’s have an open debate not under the sponsorship of your channel, but along the roadside where you can’t mute us or speak over us.

Can you accept the challenge?

Author can be mailed at aarifqaadir@gmail.com