Murder of Gauri Lankesh, a critic of Hindu nationalism, highlights social polarisation
A protester holds a photograph of journalist Gauri Lankesh at a demonstration on Wednesday against her killing in Bangalore, India © AP
3 HOURS AGO by: Amy Kazmin in New Delhi
A prominent Indian journalist known for her outspoken criticism of rightwing Hindu nationalist politics has been shot dead outside her home in Bangalore, sending shockwaves across India and highlighting its deepening social polarisation.
Gauri Lankesh, 55, had worked in New Delhi for leading English language newspapers and was more recently editing her own Kannada-language weekly, which was critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party and rightwing Hindu nationalist ideology.
Ms Lankesh was shot at close range in the chest and head on Tuesday night by motorbike-riding gunmen.
The killing came as Karnataka state — of which Bangalore is the capital — is gearing up for assembly elections next year. Mr Modi’s BJP is hoping to retake control of the state from the incumbent Congress government.
Siddaramaiah, Karnataka’s chief minister, denounced the murder on Twitter as “an assassination on democracy”, and on Wednesday his administration established a high-level team to investigate.
Stunned journalists gathered in cities across India on Wednesday to protest against the slaying, which was also condemned in formal statements by media bodies as an attack on press freedom. Meanwhile rival political parties traded recriminations over who was responsible.
Rahul Gandhi, leader of the Congress party, said the slaying was a warning for critics of the BJP and its rightwing Hindu supporters. “The idea is that there should only be one voice in this country,” he said on Wednesday. “The entire idea is to crush dissent.”
BJP leaders rejected claims that rightwing Hindu groups were behind the killing, saying that the murder highlighted a breakdown of law and order in Karnataka under a Congress government.
Daughter of a prominent Kannada journalist and writer, Lankesh was an outspoken critic of the rising tide of threats, intimidation and violence against those opposed to Hindu nationalism, or those who challenged orthodox Hindu interpretations of faith and history.
Speaking in New Delhi in March, Lankesh recalled how, after the 2015 slaying of a controversial retired academic, a local leader of rightwing Hindu group Bajrang Dal had tweeted: “Mock Hinduism and die a dog’s death.”
Relatives of Gauri Lankesh in shock after the killing © AP
Lankesh had previously told a journalist that she believed some rightwing groups in Karnataka had a hit list, and that she was likely to be on it. Last year, she was convicted of defaming a Karnataka-based lawmaker from Mr Modi’s BJP in a 2008 article about alleged corruption. She was appealing against the conviction.
Siddharth Bhatia, co-founder and editor of the digital media business The Wire, tweeted: “The message and not to independent journalists but to all dissenters is clear. We are watching you and one day we will get you.”
Shashi Tharoor, a Congress party politician, tweeted “assassination is the most extreme form of censorship. #GauriLankesh said things some people did not like2her. She was killed4doing her job.”
The killing of journalists is not unknown in India, where 40 reporters have been murdered since 1992, according to the Committee for the Projection of Journalists.
However, most were working in small towns, often for local publications, and took on vested interests in their communities, often over large-scale corruption.
Lankesh, however, was based in Bangalore, the heart of India’s IT industry, and had long associations with English-language publications. Her criticism of rightwing Hindu nationalism, and its adherents, was largely on ideological grounds.
“Uncompromising in her secularism, #gaurilankesh appears to have been targeted for her views, an ominous turn to intolerance,” tweeted Samar Halarnkar, the Bangalore-based editor of IndiaSpend, a data journalism website.
"The message and not to independent journalists but to all dissenters is clear. We are watching you and one day we will get you" SIDDHARTH BHATIA, THE WIRE
SIDDHARTH BHATIA, THE WIRE
Despite the constitutional right to free speech, Reporters without Borders in April ranked India 136 out of 180 countries in its press freedom index report, down three places from 2016.
The report cited pressure on the media from “Hindu nationalists trying to purge all manifestations of ‘anti-national thought’ from the national debate”. It said journalists were engaging in “self-censorship” and were increasingly the targets of “online smear campaigns by the most radical nationalists who vilify them and even threaten physical reprisals”.
Indian assassinations
India has been rocked by the assassinations of several high-profile personalities who have questioned Hindu religious orthodoxies and nationalist politics.
In August 2013,
Narendra Dabholkar, 67, Maharashtra-based physician and rationalist out on his morning walk, was shot dead by assassins who fled on motorbike. Dabholkar was a critic of self-appointed “godmen” who claim to possess supernatural healing powers, and he addressed more than 3,000 public meetings to promote rationalism. No arrests have been made in his murder.
In February 2015,
Govind Pansare, a 81-year-old Marxist politician, was shot dead by motorbike-riding gunmen near his home in Maharashtra. Pansare had written a popular book arguing that the 17th century Hindu king Shivaji, who is revered by rightwing Hindu nationalists, was in fact a deeply secular figure. Before his murder, Pansare had received multiple death threats.
In August 2015,
M.M. Kalburgi, former vice-chancellor of Kannada University and a scholar of ancient religious texts, was gunned down at his residence in Karnataka. Kalburgi’s murder came after he drew the ire of rightwing Hindu groups for a speech in which he cited the work of another prominent Kannada author who had written how — as a child — he had urinated on Hindu idols to see whether he would be subject to divine retribution.
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