A brave journalist falls
TUESDAY’S murder of Indian journalist Gauri Lankesh in Bangalore could have two outcomes.
The death at the hands of suspected Hindutva militants,
who shot her several times at the doorstep of her home at close range,
could become one more screwdriver turn in the coffin of free media in
the world’s largest democracy.
Or her brave writings
could set off a long-delayed popular showdown against growing assaults
on civil liberties and free speech under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Civil society groups such as Not In My Name have already fanned out across India raising their voices
against Hindutva lynch squads. Lankesh’s death triggered large protests
in different parts of the country. ‘I am Gauri Lankesh’ placards came
up overnight and the Congress government in Karnataka has ordered a
dragnet for the killers.
Initially an English-medium
journalist with leading newspapers, Lankesh migrated to writing and
publishing in her native Kannada in the footsteps of her late father P.
Lankesh.
Like him, she began to publish a weekly, which
she named after herself. Gauri Lankesh Patrike inevitably became a
lightning rod with Hindutva groups who saw in her a formidable
challenger.
They attacked the journalist as an
anti-Hindu Maoist sympathiser while she saw herself as a practising
devotee of India’s secular constitution.
Belonging to
the Lingayat community of Shiva mystics common in southern India, the
55-year-old social activist worked to dissociate her people from the
larger Hindu identity, which she described as a body of exploitative
hierarchies ranged against women and minorities. She bonded with Dalit
icon B.R. Ambedkar’s criticism of Hinduism.
As such, she
stood for solidarity with religious minorities and support for the
lowest ranks in India’s caste heap. One of her last pieces was about the
plight of Rohingya Muslims, refugees from Myanmar shunned by India as a
threat to its security.
Days before her death, Lankesh
had nudged her supporters to not be cowed by Hindutva. “Intolerant
voices find strength in our silence,” she had cajoled them.
Published in Dawn, September 7th, 2017
