Prominent Journalist’s Arrest Increases Concerns About India’s Press Freedom
Arnab Goswami, famed and controversial right-wing TV journalist, in 2011 (Wikimedia Commons).
Mumbai police arrested prominent pro-government TV journalist Arnab Goswami in his home on November 4. The arrest brings an ongoing feud between two political parties—the Shiv Sena and BJP—to the surface, striking further concerns about declining freedom of the press across India.
The government of Maharashtra, the state where Mumbai is located, claimed they arrested Goswami in connection to the 2018 suicide of an interior designer, Anvay Naik. Naik, who worked for Goswami’s right wing channel, Republic TV, allegedly claimed in his suicide note that he was driven to death when the network refused to pay him more than $726,000 for work he had done. Despite denials from Goswami, Mumbai’s High Court sentenced him to 14 days of judicial custody. He is currently being held in a city jail awaiting further hearings.
The arrest provoked outrage from members of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), whom Goswami has been a vocal supporter of. Goswami has gained fame and notoriety for his brash and incendiary style of reporting, as well as his frequent support of conspiracy theories. Earlier this year, he suggested that the Maharashtra’s Shiv Sena government, which has a fallen out with the BJP in recent months, had a hand in the suicide of young Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput in June. Goswami’s coverage of this has dominated Indian media for months, and it is likely what landed him in hot water with the Shiv Sena.
“Congress and its allies have shamed democracy once again,” tweeted Amit Shah, India’s minister of Home Affairs, referring to the Congress Party, the BJP’s main rival in Parliament. “Blatant misuse of state power against Republic TV & Arnab Goswami is an attack on individual freedom and the 4th pillar of democracy.”
Republic TV also put out a statement on Twitter, saying that Goswami’s arrest “has been made part of a larger vindictive exercise against an independent journalist & news network” and that 90 percent of Anvay Naik’s settlements had already been made by the time of his suicide.
Though the Shiv Sena and the BJP were previously allies, with both parties having Hindu nationalist roots, the two have now become bitter rivals, as Shiv Sena is now in a coalition with the liberal Congress Party. Many therefore suspect this arrest as an attempt to escalate the feud with the BJP. The Shiv Sena itself has a fraught history with journalists, with party members having attacked and vandalized news offices critical of the party as recently as 2009.
Some are criticizing the BJP for hypocrisy, however, as the party has also been accused of silencing journalists in the past. According to a report by the organization Reporters Without Borders, India’s rating of press freedom in the world has fallen by two points in 2020, to 142nd in the world. The report accuses the BJP, led by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, of pressuring journalists to report on favorable news to the party—or else risk being labeled disloyal to the country or “anti-national.”
Despite such criticism towards the BJP, the fact that this recent action was taken against a BJP-supporting journalist shows that the issue is not straightforward—multiple parties may seek to use punishment of the media as a political tool.