Gauri Lankesh: A firebrand journalist vocal on secularism and Dalit rights

Gauri Lankesh: A firebrand journalist vocal on secularism and Dalit rights [Best quality in Gauri was one could always argue with her, dispute her and tell her she was wrong]

“Be careful about what you post on social media. We live in dangerous times,” I told Gauri Lankeshlast week. She replied saying “We can’t be so dead. It is human to express and react. What we feel impulsively is usually our most honest response.”

On Tuesday night, she was shot and killed in cold blood. The killing was not impulsive. It was well thought and carefully planned, like the murders in Maharashtra and Karnataka of the rationalists and thinkers Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare and M.M. Kalburgi that she had herself condemned and protested.

I grew up in a family of writers. My father, K. Marulasiddappa, and P Lankesh, Gauri’s father, were colleagues and close friends. Lankesh was an English lecturer. My father taught Kannada.

ALSO READ: Right-wing critic, senior journalist Gauri Lankesh shot dead in Bengaluru We lived in the same neighbourhood. My mother often left me in the care of the Lankesh household. Whenever I argued with Gauri, she used to joke saying “Magane (child), I used to babysit you before you learned how to speak.”

But the best quality in Gauri was that one could always argue with her, dispute her and tell her she was wrong. And no matter how fierce our arguments, she respected our right to say what we did. We were close friends because we could disagree. It was a quality that she inherited from her father.

Gauri’s father was a firebrand writer and thinker. In 1980 he launched the Lankesh Patrike, a tabloid in black and white. It carried no advertisements. Lankesh believed that publications succumb to favouring rich corporations or powerful government officials and politicials because they sponsor ads that are a crucial to a newspaper’s survival.

Lankesh believed this would kill journalistic integrity. He decided that Lankesh Patrike was to run purely on circulation. Read More