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Mainstream, VOL LV No 38 New Delhi September 9, 2017

Gauri Lankesh’s Assassination

Saturday 9 September 2017

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COMMENTARY

“Ms Lankesh was like my mother. She once told me that if you are being attacked then you know that you are on the right track... powerfull people are being killed just to send across a message to others. Her death is a personal loss to me.”

That was how former JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar paid his homage to Gauri Lankesh, the fearless and outspokenly frank activist-journalist who was gunned down by unidentified assailants around 8 pm outside her residence in West Bengaluru on September 5. Kanhaiya was speaking at a largely attended rally at New Delhi’s Press Club of India on September 6. Gauri, 55, who edited the Kannada tabloid, Gauri Lankesh Patrike, was an unequivocal opponent of Hindutva politics and often referred to young Dalit activist Jignesh Mewani and Kanhaiya Kumar as her adopted sons.

Gauri’s assassination has triggered a wave of protests across the country and several meetings and rallies have taken place in different cities. Opposition leaders joined journalists to unambiguously denounce the killing of Gauri that is reminiscent of the cold-blooded murders of Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare and Dr M.M. Kalburgi in the recent past.

Significantly, BJP MLA and former Karnataka Minister Jeevraj, at a meeting in Chikkamagaluru, offered tributes to Gauri saying “she was like my sister” but if only she had refrained from writing such pieces as the report headlined “Chaddigola Marana Homa (the Slaughter of RSS)” “she would probably have survived”.

After this can there be any doubt about who assassinated Gauri?

September 7 Charvak

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