New Delhi: Gauri Lankesh would have turned 58 years old today if she had not been shot dead September 5, 2017. Born in a Kannada Lingayat family January 29, 1962, her father is the poet-journalist P. Lankesh, who established the Kannada-language weekly tabloid Lankesh Patrike.
Gauri initiated her career as a journalist with ‘The Times of India’ in Bangalore. Later, she shifted to Delhi with her husband, Chidanand Rajghatta. She again returned to Bangalore, where she worked as a correspondent for the Sunday magazine for at least nine years. At the time of her father’s death in 2000, she was working for the Eenadu’s Telugu television channel in Delhi.
She almost had spent 16 years of her life as a journalist.
Lankesh, then the editor and publisher of the Kannada-language newspaper Gauri Lankesh Patrike, the newspaper was a conduit for speaking truth to power at a time when many other news outlets in India felt condemned to self-censorship after the election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014 saw a rising tide of Hindu nationalist sentiments was shot dead outside her home in Bengaluru.
The murder of Lankesh, a staunch advocate of secularism and critic of right-wing political ideology, sparked protests across India.
Gauri Lankesh’s birth anniversary is an occasion for us to introspect on how people, who expose the truth, including journalists, are increasingly under attack in India.
PNN