The Importance Of Being Arnab Goswami

 The best thing to have happened  to the legend  of ArnabGoswami(AG) is  his hasty  ill-advised  arrest and imprisonment.  It has turned AG into an  urban legend.A  modernday crusader in  the  quest of truth.

The  cross is not visible  to the naked eye, but it is there. The  rabid Goswami baiters  in  the film industry  are now  whispering to themselves about  his  sudden swerve into martyrdom. A  very  vocal  politically  savvy  screenwriter  said to me, “The Maharashtra government has turned  him(AG) into a cause célèbre. Overnight, even  those who were not too fond of his work methods  are  now seeing AG as  as  the  beacon of  hope, the voice of the downtrodden in  an irredeemably  corrupt  society.”

 AG’s arrest  on  November 4 took everyone by surprise, none  more so  than  AG himself.Colleagues who know  him well  say he expected   the  politics  of  vendetta to  deepen.  But  not to this extent.

“He’s taken  the  arrest well. He  will come out stronger  from this ordeal,” says AG’s friend Anupam who is on New York shooting for  a series.  Anupam adds, “Arnab is outspoken  , to the  extent that he  makes many people  very  uncomfortable.

Where does  the  narrative  of democracy-under-fire go from here? It would be  foolish to make a political martyr  out of  AG. But that’s exactly what’s  happening  in  the  country right now.Imprisoning him  has made  ArnabGoswami a symbol of  political oppression . It’s a master-stroke of  redemption. Just when  he was beginning to appear way too aggressive for  his own good, the Maharashtra  governed stepped  in  to remind the  world that no voice is too loud when it comes  to calling a spade a spade.

Ironically , no one cares why  AG was  arrested. What matters is  that he WAS arrested.