The Re­pub­lic has gone crazy. No­body ex­pected it to be any bet­ter. Ci­vil­ity and dig­nity are in dan­ger. WSN ed­i­tor Jag­mo­han Singh writes an Open Let­ter to raise a ban­ner of protest, not to match the shrill­ness of Arnab Goswami but to de­feat him.

Dear Arnab Goswami:
Some years back, on a fact-find­ing mis­sion to Sri­na­gar, I had a fleet­ing glance of you at the air­port, hud­dled away straight from the air­craft by top-notch se­cu­rity and army per­son­nel. My friend who had come to re­ceive us re­marked, “so much for in­de­pen­dent jour­nal­ism.”

Very re­luc­tantly, I in­flicted self-tor­ture for the last 6 days at dif­fer­ent times of the day, so that I could write about the new In­dian TV chan­nel, called Re­pub­lic -your pre­ma­turely born baby which per­fectly fits with the Ba­nana re­pub­lic im­age of In­dia which In­dian lead­ers are try­ing to pro­tect over the decades.

www.re­pub­lic­world.com

“Your blue-eyed boy, the om­nipresent BJP spokesper­son -Sam­bit Pa­tra, while talk­ing at other par­tic­i­pants whom he ob­vi­ously dis­agrees with, says “To­day, the Re­pub­lic of In­dia is ask­ing you? Who has given him the right to be a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Re­pub­lic? He rep­re­sents his party and if he rep­re­sents the Re­pub­lic, then surely it must be a Ba­nana Re­pub­lic.”

Your chan­nel and you are shrill­ness per­son­i­fied. You would not see any such thing even in the tin-pot lit­tle African coun­tries. Every­thing that hap­pens on the chan­nel is a les­son to jour­nal­ism stu­dents about what a jour­nal­ist should not do. While jour­nal­ists are trained not to dis­close their sources, in this case the sources and re­sources clearly seem to be of the pow­ers that be.

Do you re­mem­ber this? Your blue-eyed boy, the om­nipresent BJP spokesper­son -Sam­bit Pa­tra, while talk­ing at other par­tic­i­pants whom he ob­vi­ously dis­agrees with, says “To­day, the Re­pub­lic of In­dia is ask­ing you? Who has given him the right to be a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Re­pub­lic? He rep­re­sents his party and if he rep­re­sents the Re­pub­lic, then surely it must be a Ba­nana Re­pub­lic.

“Your Re­pub­lic TV is not a chan­nel. It is a new or­gan­i­sa­tion of Nazi na­tion­al­ists on the leash let loose on un­sus­pect­ing In­di­ans. Each word com­ing out of the mouth of each an­chor and on the field jour­nal­ists led by you.”

Last evening, the Sama­jwadi Party spokesper­son Ghan­shyam Ti­wari, who main­tained ex­treme pa­tience, had to lis­ten from you, “Don’t cross the line, don’t cross the line, don’t cross the line…how many times – a good 100 plus times, with in­ter­cep­tions like, “I will tear you apart”, “Have you ever con­tested an elec­tion?”, “Why should only politi­cians give speeches, even jour­nal­ists can?”, “I am a sea­soned jour­nal­ist with a decade long stand­ing.” Uff, I left the screen as I was tempted to smash it.

At an­other de­bate, an­other pan­elist, Gau­rav, ob­vi­ously pro-Arnab, kept laugh­ing when you con­tin­ued your mono­syl­la­ble talk, re­peat­ing it ad nau­seam, loudly said point­ing out to Pak­istani pan­elists, “You will hang Kul­bushan, try it, we will hang ten here.” “Have you for­got­ten 1971?”, he said and you joined in point­ing out to Baluchis­tan and other ar­eas of un­rest in neigh­bour­ing Pak­istan. It is sick­en­ing. I re­ally won­der why the Pak­ista­nis come for such coarse and in­sane dis­cus­sion. 

Every in­ter­nal is­sue of a mi­nor­ity, es­pe­cially the Mus­lims is the sub­ject of your chan­nel. Triple Ta­laq is an is­sue but the pain of the Kash­miri women can eas­ily be sac­ri­ficed at the al­tar of In­dian-ness. I dare you to touch any of the Sikh is­sues in the same man­ner and you will find the Sikh com­mu­nity at your doors, lit­er­ally.

The way you have been go­ing af­ter the left and the lib­er­als of this coun­try is noth­ing less than shame­ful – a word you used a thou­sand times in the heav­ily ad­ver­tised De­bates at prime time against those you dis­agree with. Last night you broke all records of shame­less­ness, pro­bity and norms of civil be­hav­iour -you en­dorsed the In­dian army ty­ing a Kash­miri man on a jeep and us­ing it as a pro­tec­tion shield.”

I had a hearty laugh when I heard you say, “If you are not a na­tion­al­ist, you are not a jour­nal­ist.” A young man, scared of your im­age, as seen in your self-pro­mo­tion ads, re­marked, “Five min­utes into the chan­nel and I feel like vom­it­ing.”

Your Re­pub­lic TV is not a chan­nel. It is a new or­gan­i­sa­tion of Nazi na­tion­al­ists on the leash let loose on un­sus­pect­ing In­di­ans. Each word com­ing out of the mouth of each an­chor and on the field jour­nal­ists led by you. In its shrill­ness, am­a­teur­ish­ness, faulty Eng­lish, it strikes at the roots of fun­da­men­tals of jour­nal­ism.

With the name Re­pub­lic, in com­plete vi­o­la­tion of the Em­blems and Names Act, it is con­ceived in sin and the sin­ners are the own­ers, the bu­reau­cracy and the gov­ern­ment which has al­lowed such per­mis­sion. The Em­blems and Names (Pre­ven­tion of Im­proper Use), Act, 1950 ex­pressly states in Sec­tion 1 that the pur­pose of the act is to “pre­vent the im­proper use of cer­tain em­blems and names for pro­fes­sional and com­mer­cial pur­poses.” In the sched­ule of un­der the Act, in re­la­tion to Sec­tion 2 and 3 of the Act, the nomen­cla­ture “Re­pub­lic or Union of In­dia” is listed as item no. 6 as a pro­hib­ited name. Of course, the cen­tral gov­ern­ment can give spe­cial per­mis­sion, which is quite ob­vi­ous in this case. How and why was spe­cial per­mis­sion given to you? What was the quid pro quo?

Let me say this loud and clear. A ba­nana re­pub­lic gets a Ba­nana Re­pub­lic TV chan­nel. Those who have any sense of dig­nity and deco­rum left in pub­lic life, should stay miles away from your stu­dios. I call upon In­di­a’s po­lit­i­cal par­ties -union and fed­eral level to stop send­ing their rep­re­sen­ta­tives to the Re­pub­lic-only to be chided and threat­ened. Where are the ethics com­mit­tees? Where are those who need to con­trol such ab­nor­mal be­hav­iour? Jus­tice Markandey Katju, we need you. Oh! Lib­er­als of this coun­try -politi­cians, jour­nal­ists, civil lib­er­tar­i­ans, please wake up. You have noth­ing to lose but noise, chaos and in­sults.

Arnab Goswami, see­ing and lis­ten­ing you talk is scary. I need to ask a Jew trained in the works of Si­mon Wiesen­thal to tell us how Nazis think and how to con­tain them. I will work for the suc­cess of the Peo­ple’s Com­mon­wealth and the de­feat of the pseudo-Re­pub­lic. I ask my read­ers to join me in this en­deav­our. 

Yours
Jag­mo­han Singh