By Aditya Aamir
‘Personal interest’ shouldn’t overshadow ‘national interest’. One journalist knows this better than most. He once let his scooped out journalist mind report a coup that wasn’t a coup. Divested of the thought rather ingloriously, he ventured out only to ‘Walk the Talk’ with politicians and celebrities, quizzing them about their personal interests. One such was Kashmiri Congress leader Saifuddin Soz whose personal interest in Pakistan holding on to POK goes against India’s ‘national interest’!
Even countries prop up their national interests. Donald Trump’s ‘USA First’ and Narendra Modi’s ‘India First’. But thanks to Trump and actor Sanjay Dutt, the top editor has regained his voice, his pen dripping gentle vitriol, notching up journalistic coups again. To borrow his own word, he’s no longer “pusillanimous”. That description fits ‘Mumbai Cinema’ (he doesn’t like the moniker Bollywood), which bows to bhais and ‘bada netas’ alike.
Anger erupted when he sat through filmmaker Raju Hirani’s biopic on Sanjay Dutt – ‘Sanju’. What got the journalist’s goat was Dutt-the-real throwing obscenities at hacks at the ‘ending’ of the biopic. The top editor finally chose to ‘walk the talk’, himself. He wrote that if Sanjay Dutt wasn’t such a pusillanimous “man-child”, the Mumbai serial-blasts of 1993 would not have taken place.
Debate raged since the journalist wrote and, encouraged, the journalist rounded up the entire ‘Mumbai Cinema’ for being “pusillanimous cowards”, who don’t have the guts to take on politicians like Hollywood counterpart Robrt De Niro does. “Sanju honours Raj Thackeray and Robert De Niro says ‘F… Trump’, that’s the difference,” says the journalist, forgetting that he too lacked the guts to say that for Modi for four years.
Only, now, is he pointing out that “transactional Modi” royally goofed up by believing “an even more transactional Trump”. If journalists are weathercocks, then the climate doesn’t seem to be too good for Modi. More so, after Trump’s peahen Nicky Haley dropped in and told Modi to take a relook at his “Iran Policy”, or else? Modi is now all ‘bowwow’ to Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, even willing to call Taiwan ‘Chinese Taipei!’
With Modi looking weather-beaten and heading for a poll-beating, the journalist is all crust, once again dreaming of being the mover and shaker that his name rhymes with! And giving thrust to his belief that Modi’s BJP is losing steam is Union Minister Jayant Sinha, who the other day felicitated nine cow vigilante in Hazaribagh. What father Yashwant Sinha thinks of that is not yet known, but like Sunil Dutt, he too will not disown his son, that much is for sure! Fathers have a soft-spot for wayward sons.
All part of BJP’s “chaos theory to win 2019” one may conclude. The top journalist, if he has not already caught on to it, maybe doesn’t know the BJP is out to polarize and win. A complete vertical polarization of the electorate. Garland the “Bihari Bijilante”, to polarize. Let trolls troll Sushma Swaraj, to polarize. Ban “black clothes” from Modi’s Jaipur rally, to polarize. ‘Ram Mandir Wahin Banega’, to polarize.
Amidst all this “chaos”, it’s a toss whether the top journalist has come out too soon, for his own good. For “his pusillanimity”, too, is well known. His network of contacts is a list of ‘Who’s Who’ of India, and many of his scoops are because he has kowtowed to the right people and gone with the wind, Hawa Ke Saath Saath; Ghata Ke Sangh-Sangh! This is the same journo who sat on a TV panel and declared BJP “winner in Bihar” before the ‘mahagathbandhan’ squelched that prophecy.
That ‘mahagathbandhan’ has now been enlarged to all over India and the journalist has also stepped out of his narrow heft to embrace the motto “united we succeed, divided we fall”. His courage restored by Modi looking down in dumps, he is not the only journalist looking in the pink of health. There are several others fit and ready to take on Modi & Shah.
‘Pusillanimous’ is a word coined to fit ‘personal interest’. And ‘national interest’ is like the saying ‘one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom-fighter’. Sajnu’s ‘national interest’ is not the same as that of this mover and Shekhar’s! (IPA Service)
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