Arnab Goswami: India’s most loved and loathed TV anchor

Arnab Goswami, arguably India’s most controversial TV anchor, became the story when he was arrested recently over a suicide case. He denies the charges and has been granted bail, but the case only adds to his polarising personality, reports BBC’s Yogita Limaye.

“In a country where 80% of the population is Hindu, it’s become a crime to be Hindu,” Arnab Goswami declared on the prime time show of his Hindi language TV station Republic Bharat in April.

“I ask today that if a Muslim cleric or Catholic priest had been killed, would people be quiet?”

He was speaking about an incident where two Hindu “godmen” travelling in a car, and their driver, were lynched by a mob.

Police said the men had been mistaken for child kidnappers. The attackers and victims were all Hindu. But for nearly a week, the Republic network ran programmes claiming the victims’ Hindu identity was a motive for the crime, echoing an unfounded theory floated by some members of India’s governing Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP).

This, critics say, is the real danger of Mr Goswami’s brash, cacophonic and often partisan coverage.

They believe viewers of his network are being drip-fed false information, divisive and inflammatory views, and propaganda for the Hindu nationalist BJP – its six years in power have been linked to the increased marginalisation of India’s 200 million Muslims.

Mr Goswami and Republic TV didn’t respond to the BBC’s request for an interview, or answer questions about allegations of airing fake and inflammatory news, or partisanship towards the BJP.

A contentious style

Mr Goswami is certainly not the first to adopt this manner of coverage but he has made it louder and more aggressive than ever before. The tone is often polarising, tapping into India’s religious fault lines.

In April, for instance, he falsely accused a Muslim group Tablighi Jamaat for violating lockdown orders, and called on India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi to “lock up their leadership”.

In the early days of the pandemic, the group’s gathering in Delhi was linked to at least a 1,000 covid cases across the country. The event’s organisers insisted the congregation had been held before the government imposed a lockdown, a claim which has now been upheld by many courts in India.

But misleading broadcasts by Republic and other networks triggered Islamophobic reactions on social media.

“If there is one culprit for what we are going through as a nation in an aggravated manner, like it or not, it is the Tablighi Jamaat,” Mr Goswami said in one of his many contentious segments.

In July, the network turned its lens on the death of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput, who police said had killed himself.

But Singh’s family registered a police complaint against his girlfriend, actress Rhea Chakraborty, alleging abetment to suicide.

Ms Chakraborty has denied the charges, but they have sparked a relentless wave of vitriolic and misogynistic coverage – Republic ran a campaign calling for her to be arrested on charges of abetting Singh’s suicide and displayed hashtags on screen like #ArrestRheaNow.

“A comparison that people love to make in India is between Republic TV and Fox News, but I think that is a bit misplaced,” says Manisha Pande, executive editor at Newslaundry, which runs a weekly critique of Indian news media. “While Fox News is seen as partisan and pro-Trump, Republic TV is outright propaganda and it often spreads misinformation in service of the current national government.”

“What Republic does is it sort of demonises people, often people who don’t have the power to fight back, whether it’s activists, young students, members of minority communities, or protesters.”

BBC