Born in 1962, Gauri Lankesh would have completed sixty-two years on 29 January, if she was still alive. Sadly, she was brutally gunned down on the night of 5 September 2017, just outside her home in Bangalore; her only crime: she had the courage to face the fanatics of the country: those who were determined to destroy the secular and pluralistic fabric of the nation and all that is sacred in the Constitution of India. 
    
Gauri was a journalist-turned-activist from Bangalore. She worked as an editor in Lankesh Patrike, a Kannada weekly started by her father P. Lankesh, and ran her own weekly called Gauri Lankesh Patrike. She was a fierce critic of right-wing Hindu extremism and was not afraid to lambast their ideology of hate, discrimination and divisiveness. 

In 2003, she vehemently opposed the Sangh Parivar's alleged attempts to Hinduise the Sufi shrine Guru Dattatreya Baba Budan Dargah located at Baba Budan giri. In 2012, while participating in a protest demanding a ban on communal groups in Mangalore, she stated that Hinduism was not a religion but a "system of hierarchy in society" in which "women are treated as second-class creatures". 

She endorsed a minority religion tag for the Lingayat community and headed the ‘Komu Souharda Vedike’, a communal harmony platform for the oppressed communities. She was also of the view that the followers of the philosopher Basavanna were not Hindus. All this certainly rankled the Hindutva elements- and they did away with her!

On 28 January, the eve of Gauri’s birth anniversary, the well-known human rights organisation ‘Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) together with the Gauri Lankesh Foundation organised an excellent webinar to celebrate the memory of Gauri. The programme ‘Facing the Fanatics’ brought together celebrated writer and activist Arundhati Roy and the internationally renowned human rights activist Teesta Setalvad, who is also the secretary of the CJP in an engaging conversation on the reality which grips India today and the need to take on the fanatics who try to stifle every voice of reason and sanity.  Kavitha Lankesh, Gauri’s younger sister was a special guest on the programme.

The underlying message of the webinar was loud and clear: Gauri represented the very best of a free and fearless India, which respects the rights of her citizens, which celebrates pluralism and above all, defends the highest values of democracy! Gauri had the courage to take on the clear: fundamentalist, fanatic and fascist forces including the Sangh Parivar and all communal-minded people; she abhorred the caste system, she fought for the emancipation of women, she took up cudgels for the poor and marginalized and she was a relentless crusader for the freedom of speech and expression! She spared none, when injustice was the issue! 

Roy read a passage from the 2020 Clark Lecture in English Literature instituted
by Trinity College, Cambridge, which she delivered on 12 February 2020, ‘What is the Role of the Writer in a Time of Rising Nationalism?’ She said, “for some of us, every sentence, spoken or written, real or fake, every word, every punctuation mark can be torn from the body of a text, mangled and turned into a court notice, a police case, a mob attack, a television lynching by crazed news anchors—or, as in the case of the journalist Gauri Lankesh and so many less well-known others, an assassination. Gauri was shot dead outside her home in Bangalore in September 2017. The last message she sent me was a photograph of her holding The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.

Most people, I imagine, believe it would restrict a writer’s range and imagination, steal away those moments of intimacy and contemplation without which a literary text does not amount to very much. I have often caught myself wondering—if I were to be incarcerated or driven underground, would it liberate my writing? Would what I write become simpler, more lyrical perhaps, and less negotiated? It’s possible. But right now, as we struggle to keep the windows open, I believe our liberation lies in the negotiation. Hope lies in texts that can accommodate and keep alive our intricacy, our complexity and our density against the onslaught of the terrifying, sweeping simplifications of fascism. As they barrel toward us, speeding down their straight, smooth highway, we greet them with our beehive, our maze. We keep our complicated world, with all its seams exposed, alive in our writing”.

Gauri Lankesh was not the first one to be silenced by the fascists in our country; several have been killed before her and many more after her. It continues today with frightening regularity.  Those who are visible and vocal in taking a stand against anti - people and anti-Constitutional policies are muzzled, denigrated, charged under draconian laws like sedition and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and even killed. The nation experienced this post the violence in Bhima-Koregaon on 1 January 2018; sixteen innocent persons Sudha Bharadwaj, Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves, Fr Stan Swamy and others are languishing in jail, incarcerated under the UAPA. Then last year, several of those who protested against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) were slapped with cases and even jailed; several of them were students and also prominent citizens from all over. 

Recently more than one hundred organisations collaborated together through the initiative of the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties and the Jesuits of India (Stand with Stan campaign) for five online events to highlight how the UAPA was being misused against human rights defenders in the country. The first one (on 15 January) focused on hundred days of the incarceration of Fr Stan. Among the speakers was Mary Lawlor the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders who said, “India is a state which doesn’t properly protect human rights defenders. I’m appalled by the treatment of human rights defenders such as Father Stan Swamy who embodies solidarity; It is clear that there are severe challenges to promoting and protecting human rights in the country. Make no mistake, the state is responsible for protection of human rights defenders.” She also criticised the UAPA, saying its “definition of a terrorist act is not precise or clear, and fails to provide legal certainty; the law has led to a highly concerning conflation of human rights advocacy with terrorism; defending human rights is not terrorism”. This was followed by three programmes (January 20 to 22) demanding the ‘Repeal the UAPA’. Several eminent lawyers, victims, relatives of those incarcerated and human rights defenders spoke at these events. Finally, on 24 January, a book on ‘Sudha Bharadwaj’ was released and entire event focussed on the grit and determination who has spent the best years of her life selflessly serving the poor and marginalised of the country. 

The farmers protest in and around Delhi for the immediate and unconditional revocation of the three anti-farmer laws, designed to help in profiteering of the corporate friends of the ruling regime, is regarded as one of the biggest ever peoples protest in the world. For more than two months now the farmers have protesting non-violently. 

Violence however broke out in some parts on 26 January – all objective media are unanimous that the violence was engineered by the ruling regime and their henchmen with the police being complicit. However, on 28 January the Uttar Pradesh police booked some politicians and journalists, including Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, India Today journalist Rajdeep Sardesai, National Herald’s senior consulting editor Mrinal Pande, Qaumi Awaz editor Zafar Agha, The Caravan magazine’s editor and founder Paresh Nath, The Caravan editor Anant Nath and its executive editor Vinod K. Jose, under sedition laws for sharing unverified news during the farmers’ tractor rally in Delhi on Republic Day.

The First Information Report (FIR) states that the accused persons “instigated violence” on January 26 through their posts on social media. It said that despite the large-scale attack on the police causing injuries to hundreds of policemen, the accused persons circulated fake news in a coordinated and well-planned manner alleging that the police have shot a person dead. The FIR alleges, “it was done deliberately so that it causes a large-scale riot and communal violence among various communities,”; adding, “this act of theirs tried to build insurrection against the Indian Republic and tried to sow the seeds of enmity, violence and create a riot-like situation between communities.” Earlier, Rajdeep Sardesai (a popular Senior Journalist and anchor) was taken off the air for two weeks and a month’s salary deducted from him by his employers the pro-Government ‘India Today Group’ for his tweet and on-air announcement that the police shot a farmer. 

On 18 December 2020, a bench led by Ashok Bhushan issued contempt notices to popular stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra on a batch of petitions filed against him over his tweets attacking the top court for granting bail to Republic TV Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami after his arrest in an abetment to suicide case. In an affidavit to the Supreme Court on 29 January, Kamra offered no defense for his jokes saying they were based on a comedian’s perception, and used to make the audience that shared that perception, laugh. 

His brilliant and timely affidavit has been going viral; among other things he courageously states the plain truth, “I believe there is a growing culture of intolerance in this country, where taking offense is seen aa a fundamental right and has been elevated to the status of a much-loved national indoor sport. We are witnessing an assault on the freedom of speech and expression, with comedians like Munawar Farooqi being jailed for jokes that they have not even made, and school students being interrogated for sedition. At such a time, I hope that this Court will demonstrate that the freedom of speech and expression is a cardinal constitutional value, and recognise that the possibility of being offended is a necessary incident to the exercise of this right. Should powerful people and institutions continue to show an inability to tolerate rebuke or criticism, we would be reduced to a country of incarcerated artists and flourishing lapdogs. If this Court believes I have crossed a line and wants to shut down my internet indefinitely, then I too will write Happy Independence Day postcards every 15th August, just like my Kashmiri friends”.

Every year on the feast of St Francis de Sales (24 January), the Pope gives his message for World Communications Sunday (16 May). This year the Popes message was released on the vigil of the Feast St Francis de Sales. Appropriately titled, ‘“Come and See” (Jn 1:46). Communicating by Encountering People as They Are’, the Pope challenges Catholic communicators in a way which is his trademark. 

He highlights the reality of today saying, “journalism too, as an account of reality, calls for an ability to go where no one else thinks of going: a readiness to set out and a desire to see. Curiosity, openness, passion. We owe a word of gratitude for the courage and commitment of all those professionals – journalists, camera operators, editors, directors – who often risk their lives in carrying out their work. Thanks to their efforts, we now know, for example, about the hardships endured by persecuted minorities in various parts of the world, numerous cases of oppression and injustice inflicted on the poor and on the environment, and many wars that otherwise would be overlooked. It would be a loss not only for news reporting, but for society and for democracy as a whole, were those voices to fade away. Our entire human family would be impoverished”.  Sadly, very few Catholic communicators take the words of the Holy Father seriously and would prefer being in their comfort zones by not taking a courageous stand on the critical issues facing the country today.

In 2018, CJP published a book of poems, ‘Akka’ which Kavita composed in memory of her martyred sister Gauri; in one of them ‘My Sister, My Soulmate’, she writes,
“She raved, she ranted,
Many times she burst out....
Uppercaste this... Brahmincal that...
At the inhumanity of it all...
At the injustice of it all..
Wait a minute..
Is it the same woman?
Who spoke soft words, and tenderly hugged
And embraced
Little kids,
The untouchables,
The Muslims,
The  women,
The minorities...
The Maoists..
Few rabids  barked she is a bitch,
some even called her prostitute,
just because she was single
and lived her life the way she wanted to...
……………………….
Silence Gauri?
Ha raids!! What a joke!!
She burst like sunflower seed
scattered all over 
In India
And across the seas...
Now the silence is chanting .... echoing,
“ We are all Gauri!!”

Yes, “We are all Gauri!” There are writers and media personnel, human rights defenders and activists, academics and others, from every corner of the country, who despite all odds, face fascists fearlessly. They are the ones genuinely concerned about what is happening in the country today. Some of them, like Gauri Lankesh have given their lives already; some like Fr. Stan Swamy and others are languishing in jail. Those mentioned in the media and here are the more well-known ones; there are thousands of others – all unknown but courageous Indians- who are jailed, hounded and harassed because they have dared take on a fascist regime.  In all these women and men, lie the future of our democracy, the India of our tomorrow! We all must face the fascists fearlessly!

*(Fr. Cedric Prakash SJ is a human rights & peace activist/writer Contact: cedricprakash@gmail.com )