There are similarities between the murders of Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, M.M. Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh that cannot be dismissed as merely coincidental.
THE CRIME, CHILLING AND MACABRE, WAS A challenge to the sovereignty of the state and to the freedom of thought and expression and individual activism. The gruesome, premeditated shooting of Gauri Lankesh on the evening of September 5 outside her home at Rajarajeshwari Nagar in south-west Bengaluru raises worrying questions about the growing intolerance of independent voices.
The 55-year-old publisher and editor of the Kannada tabloid Gauri Lankesh took on with courage the political establishment and Hindu right-wing forces through the three decades of her journalistic life. She attempted to bring naxalites to the mainstream and batted for the rights of Dalits, farmers and minorities. Certainly, she had detractors. But who would gun her down with such brutality? What was the motive, and who will gain from her death? To put it more simply, was the murder (clearly a professional hit job by as yet unidentified assailants) meant to send out a chilling message to those supporting her views?
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) D.N. Jeevaraj, who represents the Sringeri Assembly constituency, actually insinuated that she might have been killed for her statements against the Hindu right wing. At a rally in Koppa taluk in Chikmagalur a day after the murder, Jeevaraj, a former BJP whip in the Karnataka Assembly, criticised the language that Gauri Lankesh used in her writing and quoted the headline of one of her articles: “Chaddigala Maaranahoma” (Death to wearers of shorts), a reference to the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS). “If she had not written ‘chaddis’ maaranahoma’ in her paper that day, would she still be alive today?” he asked his audience. Later, he claimed that he had been misquoted.
この記事は FRONTLINE の September 29, 2017 版に掲載されています。
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この記事は FRONTLINE の September 29, 2017 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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