Her killing, and the shock it induced, was an exhilarating spectacle for them. Seemingly well-to-do and “progressive”, she was the archetypal “presstitute” despised by Modi’s myrmidons. But not for her the preening platitudes about the relative harmlessness of extremists who happened to be her co-religionists: in her work and her life, she was an unrelenting critic of Hindu supremacism and Modi’s project to recast India as a Hindu nation. She struggled to make ends meet and paid the bills by writing occasionally for English newspapers.
Gauri Lankesh, the scion of a distinguished family, edited a tabloid in Kannada that hardly anybody outside Karnataka read. If his election to the premiership energised Hindu supremacists, his silence as prime minister emboldened them. The decade in between was the decade in which Modi became the undisputed leader of the Hindu-nationalist cause. But, in September 2017- almost ten years to the date after Sanghvi’s assertion about the innocuousness of Hindu nationalists appeared in print-Gauri Lankesh, a Hindu journalist who did just that, was shot dead in an ambush outside her house. This secret sense of security bred a smug complacency that blinded them to the danger staring them in the face. They saw their own faith as a form of terror indemnity against the savagery of men who slaughtered Muslims and Christians. For all the noise they made about the dangers of Hindu nationalism, affluent Hindus seldom radiated fear of saffron-clad supremacists. “Unlike Muslims who deviate from Muslim fundamentalists, the editor Vir Sanghvi wrote in the Hindustan Times in 2007, Hindus who “condemn the worst excesses” of Hindu nationalists “face no real danger”. īelow is an excerpt from an article published on the 29th May in the New Statesman, which is, in its turn, adapted from Kapil Komireddi’s Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India, (9781787380059) published in the U.K.
A collection of her writings, The Way I See It: A Gauri Lankesh Reader, is now available from Shalimar. She was honoured with the Anna Politkovskaya Award for speaking against Hindu extremism, campaigning for women’s rights and opposing caste based discrimination. At the time of her death, Gauri was known for being a critic of right-wing Hindu extremism.
She was shot to death outside her home in Rajarajeshwari Nagar on 5 September 2017. Gauri Lankesh was an activist-journalist from Bangalore, Karnataka. At the darkest hour, it is this memory of light that keeps hope alive.” AMITA BAVISKAR “In this moving, loving tribute to the women of Shaheen Bagh, Ita Mehrotra reminds us of the flame of courage that ordinary people can ignite in extraordinary times. Shaheen Bagh reminds me of the fearless strength people can find in solidarity.” JOE SACCO “Ita Mehrotra’s book provides a fantastic street-level view of the iconic women’s protest against the Indian government’s show-me-your-papers legislation for its citizens. Shaheen Bagh: A Graphic Recollection brings alive the protest that lasted 101 days and forever changed the way women’s role in movements would be seen and understood. Through the portrayal of women’s stories in image and word, we re-enter some of the many poignant dialogues, debates and questions that were raised about citizenship, democracy and minority rights, over the course of the movement.
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