Aditya Sinha: Son of the soil vs glass ceiling-breaker

As my wife is Assamese whenever Arnab Goswami is on TV I laugh wildly and tell the children ldquoLook tumhare mamardquo My wife shakes her head in chagrin If Irsquom visiting my inlaws then on the rare occasion that we spot Arnab I announce ldquoSon of the Soilrdquo They merely bob their heads noncommittally Neither my inlaws nor anyone else in Guwahati watches Mr Soil there are shriekier Assamese news channels that make Mr Soil look subdued even BBClike I have on occasion met Mr Soil once in Mumbai he was kind enough to drop me at office from the CMrsquos place and when I said that my inlaws considered him sonofthesoil he was so thrilled that I was afraid he might take me in his arms right there in the back of his Innova He did notArnab Goswami and Barkha DuttBarkha Dutt is wellknown and wellconnected though there hovers in her past the unsettling Radia tapes a bunch of phone conversations that revealed the coziness of ldquothe establishmentrdquo Barkharsquos calls had to do with proposed Cabinet appointments and though some tried to link it to the 2G scam nothing criminal came of it More relevantly however is the way that my wife and daughters see her they once spoke of her admiringly and I realised that for women across India and possibly beyond she remains a powerful role modelIn fact Barkha is a lot like her American friend Hillary Clinton who is despised by many American men the way President Barack Obama is despised mdash seething and saying howdareyou take over leadership in a white manrsquos world No wonder both Barkha and Hillary appear to their detractors to be ideologically compromised and ethically corrupt to their supporters these charges are simply part of the staggering obstacles in way to breaking through the glass ceilingItrsquos a nobrainer that if Barkha is Hillary then Mr Soil is Donald Trump Arundhati Roy famously called him ldquoFox News on acidrdquo though meth is probably more appropriate Mr Soilrsquos recent diatribe against journalists critical of the governmentrsquos Kashmir policy or lack thereof called for action against dissenting journalists Thatrsquos plainly a call to muzzle the press If the press werenrsquot critical it would not be the watchdog of democracy it would like Mr Soil and his Hindisubtitled Sudhir Chaudhary be a lapdog of powerLike all of this governmentrsquos groupies Mr Soil is logicchallenged He does not marshall facts for his rants He has little use for history He conflates different issues into one rhetorical weapon For instance Pakistanrsquos support to Kashmiri militancy may overlap with the homegrown antiIndia movement but it is not its cause It suits polemicists to make them singular because the agenda is clear keep the land rid it of people If you disagree and say letrsquos give the Kashmiris a fair hearing Mr Soil and his ilk brand you as proPakistan Short on facts and long on fear just like TrumpBarkha actually reports from Ground Zero Mr Soil hasnrsquot even visited Assam which has seen consecutive years of floods the latest claiming at least 26 lives and displacing more than the entire population of Gurgaon and so his diatribe was aimed at her She replied with logic and reasoning though the problem with Mr Soil and his devotees is that they have little use for reason and logic the tools of intellectuals They are evangelical about their destiny truth be damnedWhile others like Rajdeep Sardesai have weighed in the governmentrsquos apologists have stayed out some calling it a lsquopersonal quarrelrsquo and some dismissing the controversy as lsquochildishrsquo This puzzled me until Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar out of the blue lashed out at actor Aamir Khan and Snapdeal Parrikar who earlier looked sane accused Aamir of speaking against the country when we all know he spoke against the current atmosphere of intolerance in the country created by this government Why this untruth and why nowClearly Mr Soil and Parrikar are working to a plan BJP President Amit Shah is desperate to win the 2017 UP Assembly election but his party keeps scoring selfgoals when it comes to Dalit voters As for the upper castes mdash the Congress one government survey allegedly says will do better than expected This would be catastrophic going into the 2019 parliamentary pollsYet Shah is nothing if not a onetrick pony and as they did at JNU last year it looks as if another round of polarisation is being whipped up with an eye on polls Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel the English writer Samuel Johnson said 240 years ago It is equally true in these terribly interesting times which is why we can expect more HillaryTrump fireworks in the days to come not just in America but right here at home in IndiaSenior journalist Aditya Sinha is a contributor to the recently published anthology House Spirit Drinking in India He tweets autumnshade Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycom