The World Sikh News pays trib­utes to fear­less jour­nal­ist Gauri Lankesh who had pre­mo­ni­tions of what was in store for her, but who nev­er­the­less stood up, mock­ing the state and those who toed the line and those who are crawl­ing. WSN will con­tinue to stand up as we live up to our maxim, “be­cause the truth needs to be told.”

The mur­der of fear­less jour­nal­ist Gauri Lankesh forces us to think about how In­dian me­dia has evolved and how the In­dian state is cop­ing or ac­tu­ally not cop­ing with a new speed­ily-de­vel­op­ing lean­ing to­wards re­li­gious, so­cial and po­lit­i­cal in­tol­er­ance in pub­lic life and an un­mon­i­tored ma­li­cious, vi­cious and bru­tal cam­paign us­ing so­cial me­dia plat­forms. 

In­dia has had a rea­son­ably vi­brant print me­dia since pre-in­de­pen­dence times. It par­al­lels the best of jour­nal­ism in the west­ern world. Like most de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, In­dia is a late en­trant to multi-chan­nel 24 x 7 elec­tronic news me­dia. It was not un­til the eco­nomic re­forms of the early 1990s that the flood­gates of pri­vate news chan­nels opened up.  With the ad­vent of satel­lite me­dia, In­dian chan­nels faced com­pe­ti­tion with in­ter­na­tional gi­ants. It was a healthy change for the dis­cern­ing masses who were so used to state-con­trolled and vir­tu­ally ‘his mas­ter’s voice’ All In­dia Ra­dio and Do­or­dar­shan.

We con­demn mur­der of #Gau­ri­Lankesh. Deeply sad­dened. Heart­felt con­do­lences to her friends/​fam­ily.  https://​t.co/​xehrc7o9lj #Press­Free­dom

— MaryKay Loss Carl­son (@US­Am­bIndia) Sep­tem­ber 6, 2017

To­day In­dia is home to hun­dreds of News chan­nels both na­tional and re­gional vy­ing for pub­lic at­ten­tion and a mad rush to raise their rat­ing points (TR­P’s), with an “ethics be damned” ap­proach. As with life and pol­i­tics, in re­cent times, a new and dis­turb­ing trend of tak­ing sides has emerged -ei­ther you are with me or against me. If you are with me, you are a pa­tri­otic na­tional and if not, then you are a trai­tor, an anti-na­tional per­son.  To­day, many of the pop­u­lace so used to pop­ulism and a com­plete dis­dain for al­ter­na­tive views, watch news chan­nels based on their po­lit­i­cal pref­er­ence and lean­ings.

Di­rectly and in­di­rectly, politi­cians and po­lit­i­cal par­ties, sens­ing the power of elec­tronic me­dia have started mak­ing huge in­vest­ments, thus cre­at­ing a new genre of mouth­pieces, not jour­nal­ists and pre­sen­ters. The ad­vent of In­ter­net so­cial me­dia plat­forms -Face­book and Twit­ter, in par­tic­u­lar, have on the one hand in­creased the reach of news and views, but its mere pro­lif­er­a­tion and un­con­trolled set-up have brought up a new class of fake, ma­li­cious and opin­ion­ated trolling me­dia mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to sep­a­rate the chaff from the grain.

“The scene on so­cial me­dia af­ter her mur­der was dis­turb­ing, to say the least. Her de­trac­tors who are sup­posed to be ‘fol­lowed’ by top BJP lead­er­ship had a field day re­joic­ing her killing and post­ing vile hate mes­sages against her and those who ex­pressed out­rage against her killing. It is no se­cret that the BJP has a ded­i­cated IT cell led by a sup­pos­edly US re­turned IT ex­pert which keeps on churn­ing fake sto­ries and com­mu­nally harm­ful ma­te­r­ial on a reg­u­lar ba­sis. Every Hitler has his Goebbels.”

In the mid­dle of this ca­coph­ony, there are very ho­n­ourable ex­cep­tions. How­ever, as in life, there are a set of bold peo­ple, how­ever small in num­ber, who hold a di­a­met­ri­cally op­po­site point of view.  There are some chan­nels and fear­less jour­nal­ists, writ­ers and web­sites -in­clud­ing start-ups, who still hold the head high and whose qual­ity of re­port­ing is un­com­pro­mis­ing.

This set of jour­nal­ists, writ­ers and thinkers are the new “al­ter­na­tive me­dia” but in the num­bers race, they are only on the fringe, al­most mar­gin­alised as it is a huge strug­gle for them to bring out the truth and ex­tremely dif­fi­cult to pre­sent the same and even ex­haust­ingly im­pos­si­ble for it to reach the masses.

Gauri Lankesh was part of this fringe. The same fringe that con­stantly chal­lenges the po­lit­i­cal and mus­cle power and speaks for the op­pressed and the weak. Gauri was di­vid­ing her time be­tween the Eng­lish me­dia and a weekly Kan­nada-lan­guage tabloid called Gauri Lankesh Pa­trike started by her late fa­ther and vet­eran jour­nal­ist, Kan­nada poet and writer P. Lankesh.  He was out­spo­ken and she had in­her­ited his courage and fear­less­ness.

The bold and out­spo­ken Gauri was equally crit­i­cal of the rul­ing party in the state and the ac­tiv­i­ties of Hin­dutva forces. She had of­ten voiced her opin­ion against com­mu­nal pol­i­tics and the caste sys­tem. A strong ad­vo­cate for free­dom of the press, she was con­victed of crim­i­nal defama­tion in a case filed by BJP MP Prahlad Joshi and was cur­rently on bail. She fre­quently crit­i­cized the state’s atroc­i­ties on the trib­als of Chhat­tis­garh and Jhark­hand which earned her a ‘Maoist’ tag from her de­trac­tors. Her fear­less­ness in tak­ing on the ma­jori­tar­ian Hin­dutva forces was worth rev­er­ence. Tak­ing on her fel­low jour­nal­ists she tweeted a few hours be­fore her death “why do I feel some of ‘us’ are fight­ing be­tween our­selves? We all know our ‘biggest en­e­my’. Can we all please con­cen­trate on that?” Dur­ing the last three months, her Kan­nada tabloid had car­ried many sto­ries crit­i­cal of the cen­tral gov­ern­ment and its lead­ers par­tic­u­larly the de­por­ta­tion of Ro­hingya Mus­lims and the deaths of ba­bies in Gorakh­pur in Ut­tar Pradesh.

“The US am­bas­sador to In­dia MaryKay Loss Carl­son also con­demned the killing un­der the hash­tag #Press­Free­dom. What more in­sult­ing can it be for those claim­ing to be cit­i­zens of the world’s largest democ­racy?”

In her mur­der, she joins Naren­dra Dab­holkar and Govind Pansare, the two pub­lic thinkers and MM Kalburgi the ra­tio­nal­ist who chose to chal­lenge brah­mini­cal su­per­sti­tions and sup­pres­sion of the lower castes which did not go well with those as­pi­rat­ing for a Hindu Rash­tra. All were gunned down for com­mit­ting the crime of ex­press­ing their views which no longer seem to be the fun­da­men­tal right of an In­dian cit­i­zen.

The scene on so­cial me­dia af­ter her mur­der was dis­turb­ing, to say the least. Her de­trac­tors who are sup­posed to be ‘fol­lowed’ by top BJP lead­er­ship had a field day re­joic­ing her killing and post­ing vile hate mes­sages against her and those who ex­pressed out­rage against her killing. It is no se­cret that the BJP has a ded­i­cated IT cell led by a sup­pos­edly US re­turned IT ex­pert which keeps on churn­ing fake sto­ries and com­mu­nally harm­ful ma­te­r­ial on a reg­u­lar ba­sis. Every Hitler has his Goebbels.

While the gov­ern­ment has asked Twit­ter and Face­book to crack­down on Kash­miri ac­tivists, these paid so­cial me­dia users run scot free even af­ter post­ing abu­sive and hate-filled ma­te­r­ial against in­di­vid­u­als and re­li­gious groups.

Who­ever may be the ac­tual hand that shot her out­side her house, the mes­sage is loud and clear that those who fight hate and big­otry, those who stand for dis­sent are not go­ing to have it easy in the new emerg­ing In­tol­er­ant In­dia. The British tools of Un­law­ful Ac­tiv­i­ties and sedi­tion con­tinue to be used with im­punity by the rulers of this new In­dia.

The ques­tion now is will the killing of Gauri have an ef­fect on fear­less­ness jour­nal­ism and the courage to speak against the pow­ers that be? 14 years ago renowned Au­thor, writer and colum­nist Khush­want Singh in his book The End of In­dia wrote “Every fas­cist regime needs com­mu­ni­ties and groups it can de­mo­nize in or­der to thrive. A move­ment built on hate can only sus­tain it­self by con­tin­u­ally cre­at­ing fear and strife.” Yet we can find so­lace in the fact that in the past too many jour­nal­ists and writ­ers have been threat­ened and in­tim­i­dated but it failed to de­ter them from dis­charg­ing their pro­fes­sional du­ties. Also en­cour­ag­ing was the me­dia cov­er­age of Gauri Lankesh mur­der in the in­ter­na­tional me­dia in­clud­ing New York Times, BBC, Wash­ing­ton Post and Guardian. The US am­bas­sador to In­dia MaryKay Loss Carl­son also con­demned the killing un­der the hash­tag #Press­Free­dom. What more in­sult­ing can it be for those claim­ing to be cit­i­zens of the world’s largest democ­racy?

It is the moral duty of our jour­nal­ists and writ­ers to stand up against such naked fas­cism else this fa­mous say­ing of Mar­tin Niemoller, will be­come a re­al­ity for us all:

First, they came for the So­cial­ists, and I did not speak out-
Be­cause I was not a So­cial­ist
Then they came for the Trade Union­ists, and I did not speak out-
Be­cause I was not a Trade Union­ist
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-
Be­cause I was not a Jew
Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me