One of these happened in Bengaluru on 5 September 2017, when a small-built 55-year-old woman, Gauri Lankesh was shot from behind by two men on a motorcycle when she was about to enter her home after the day’s work. Until that afternoon, she had been editing and publishing a Kannada weekly: Gauri Lankesh Patrike.
It calls for infinite cowardice to murder an unarmed woman in the crepuscular darkness of the evening. But that is not why her murder shook the nation.
Gauri Lankesh was the fourth victim in a row after Narendra Dabholkar, Malleshappa Kalburgi, and Govind Pansare. Each one of them was a rationalist who protested against the deep-rooted superstitions of the Hindu religion and promoted a scientific way of life. It has now been established that each of them was killed for their belief by some extreme Hindu right-wing politico-religious Taliban-style extremists. The same killers apparently murdered Kalburgi and Gauri, using the same gun, as noted by forensic experts.
Gauri was a crusader for the values enshrined in Lingayatism, founded and propagated by the 12th-century philosopher and statesman Basava in Karnataka. The original Lingayat sect was unbelievably egalitarian, and had as their preacher people from the so-called lower castes, even prostitutes. It was a revolutionary movement which had to be suppressed by the upper-caste Hindus through much bloodshed, but the flame could not be extinguished.
However, in the recent years, in the rising time of Brahminism among Hinds, Lingayats have been absorbed as another sect within the dominant Hindu establishment and their original egalitarian values have been buried. Gauri opposed this construct.
Gauri Lankesh
was also a political activist who began her career as an English language journalist,
but later, relentlessly fought the rise of Hindutwa which has been destroying
the secular structure of India. A divorcee who never married again, she was a
mentor to several young people who an average Indian looks up to as their
future saviours. Gauri adopted several of them as her children, including
Kanhaia Kumar and Sheila Rashid.
The three bullets that pierced Gauri’s slender body was fired by two cowardly men, but they were not alone. A gigantic project that aims to marginalise Muslims, Christians, and Dalits, that has been trying their best to convert India into a Hindu Pakistan was behind the men holding the trigger, although the connection is hardly clear or easily discernible.
Chidanand Rajghatta, ex-husband and lifelong friend of Gauri Lankesh, exposes the connection through painstaking research with the help of his deep understanding of the situation in Karnataka and India by virtue of being a top journalist.
The story of their personal lives meshes neatly with the recent history of India and the changes we are wading through.
Please read this book. It will help you understand the India of the 21st century better.
14 September 2020
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