Senior journalist Gauri Lankesh shot dead at her residence in Bengaluru, India

[sandensea]

Gauri Lankesh, a senior journalist and activist in Bengaluru, was shot dead outside her home in Rajarajeshwari Nagar on Tuesday evening. Police said her body was found on the verandah of her home in West Bengaluru.

"We learnt that the victim was shot dead from close range when she was standing outside her house in Rajarajeswari Nagar (in the suburbs) around 8.00 p.m.," a senior police officer said.

Lankesh had just reached home and was about to enter when unidentified men shot at the 55-year-old journalist seven times from close range; three bullets hit her on the neck and chest. Her body has been taken to the Victoria Hospital for a postmortem.

She ran the weekly Lankesh Patrike, a Kannada tabloid. Like her father, noted Kannada writer P. Lankesh, Gauri Lankesh faced opposition and criticism of her journalism. She was part of a group that worked for communal harmony, and her views were considered Leftist and anti-Hindutva.

In November 2016, she had been found guilty of defamation in a case involving right-wing MP Prahlad Joshi and had been sentenced to six months in jail; she was out on bail.

Lankesh was a vocal opponent of Prime Minister Narendra Mori, whom she slammed for asserting last year that "women don't own anything."

"No one owns me," she said. "I might not have gold; but I have independence, self-respect, and freedom of thought. I guess a man like you could never understand that."

At: http://www.ndtv.com/bangalore-news/senior-journalist-gauri-lankesh-shot-dead-at-her-residence-in-bengaluru-1746480

Gauri Lankesh, 1962-2017.

[shenmue]

1. Rest in peace

[niyad]

2. requiescat in pace, brave soul.

[Phentex]

3. a terrible loss

may she rest in peace

[sandensea]

4. A terrible loss - but not to everyone:

The Rising Tide of Intolerance in Narendra Modi’s India

Kennedy School Review - July 27, 2016

The Modi “wave” that swept India cannot be chalked up to his political platform alone. It was the result of artful public relations and dogged hard work, which gave the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) the biggest majority for any single party in thirty years.

One of the advertising gurus who played an instrumental part in the BJP’s media strategy told me in an interview in July 2014 that Prime Minister Modi’s election campaign was modeled along the lines of a U.S. presidential one. “This was a situation where Narendra Modi equaled the BJP,” he said.

But his past casts a shadow over his will to quell religious violence. Over one thousand people (mostly Muslims) were killed in religious riots in 2002 during his tenure as chief minister of the western state of Gujarat.[v]

Some critics say he did not do enough to stop the violence; others believe he strategically engineered the massacre of Muslims. Modi, in a New York Times interview he gave in 2002—his last one—offered no consolation to the state’s Muslims and expressed satisfaction with his government’s performance. The only regret he voiced about the carnage was that he did not handle the news media well.

India is one of the globe’s most diverse countries, with a historical commitment to secularism tracing as far back as 270 BC, when Buddhist emperor Ashoka ruled a largely Hindu country.

The Hindu right in more recent times has worked to thwart this history of plurality. With Modi at the helm today, senior politicians make bigoted remarks with distressing frequency, stoking perpetually simmering embers of a fear that India’s government prescribes to a bigoted brand of Hindu nationalism.

http://harvardkennedyschoolreview.com/the-rising-tide-of-intolerance-in-narendra-modis-india/