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On 9/8/17 8:45 AM, Marla Vijaya kumar via Marxism wrote:
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In India, RSS had become bold enough to eliminate anyone who raises a voice
against the, and declare publicly that she was killed because she had
criticised the Hindu Fundamentalists. India is on its leg of Democracy, it
seems.From silence to speech
From silence to speech
Those who want to silence dissent are trying to force people into making the
reverse journey | |
From silence to speechThose who want to silence dissent are trying to force people into making the reverse journey
Written by Shashi Deshpande | Published:September 8, 2017 12:15 amVijaya Kumar
Marla
Vijaya, your message had formatting problems and you failed to supply a
link:
http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/from-silence-to-speech-gauri-lankesh-journalist-murder-4833497/
For background on the murder of an anti-Modi journalist:
NY Times, Sept. 7 2017
In India, Another Government Critic Is Silenced by Bullets
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN and HARI KUMAR
NEW DELHI — Gauri Lankesh, one of India’s most outspoken journalists,
was walking into her house on Tuesday night.
It was around 8. The night was warm. She was alone.
As she stepped through her gate, just feet from her front door, several
gunshots rang out.
She was killed instantly in what political opposition officials say
appears to be yet another assassination of an intellectual who publicly
criticized India’s governing party and the Hindu agenda it has pursued.
In recent years, at least three other anti-establishment activists have
been silenced by bullets.
Ms. Lankesh’s death, which monopolized television news coverage on
Wednesday, set off protests across India, a country increasingly
polarized by supporters of the Hindu nationalist governing party and its
detractors.
Some of Mrs. Lankesh’s friends say they have no idea who killed her. But
among government opponents, the circumstances of the shooting fueled
suspicions that governing party backers, emboldened by their leaders to
wipe out their enemies, were behind it.
“Anybody who speaks against the RSS/BJP is attacked & even killed,’’
Rahul Gandhi, an opposition leader, said in a Twitter message. (R.S.S.
is a Hindu organization that is closely connected to India’s governing
Bharatiya Janata Party.) “They want to impose only one ideology which is
against the nature of India.”
Nitin Gadkari, a cabinet minister, said the accusation was “baseless”
and “false.” The governing party and its affiliates, he said, had “no
relation to the murder of Gauri Lankesh.”
Ms. Lankesh, 55, would rarely back down from a fight, but was also known
for her humorous touch.
Rana Ayyub, a friend and fellow writer, said that the last time they
spoke, about a month ago, Ms. Lankesh was furiously flipping through a
dictionary, trying to figure out the proper pronunciation of
“nincompoop.” (She planned to use the word against her critics.)
“She was fighting a very unpopular battle with the right wing of
India,’’ Ms. Ayyub said, “but she had this ability to convert everything
into satire.”
Many people, though, did not find it funny. Ms. Ayyub said Ms. Lankesh
had received death threats every day, far too many to count, from
different sides of the political equation. Those, too, she did not take
seriously, Ms. Ayyub said.
“She didn’t have the faintest idea that somebody could pop bullets into
her,’’ Ms. Ayyub said.
Ms. Lankesh, who lived by herself in Bengaluru, in southern India, was
known as a “rationalist’’ — a term in India for people who stand against
superstition and the use of religion in politics.
Lately, the rationalists have been pretty busy. Some followers of
India’s governing party have attacked Muslims and pushed a hard-line
Hindu agenda. But many Indians don’t share this outlook and have tried
to fight back, arguing that India is losing its multicultural identity
and becoming more of a one-party, Hindu state.
The three other activists killed in a somewhat similar manner in the
past four years had also opposed the rise of hard-line Hinduism.
The daughter of a celebrated poet, Ms. Lankesh was the editor of a
self-named weekly magazine. She wore her silver hair short and favored
long shirts and jeans. She specialized in feminist politics and
literature, and lashed out at
