“होंठो को सिके देखिये
पछताएंगे आप
हंगामे जाग उठे हे अकसर
घुटन के बाद।”
– Shabana Azmi after Gauri Lankesh’s murder.
As children, we could never imagine that the real monsters in this world were humans. Gauri Lankesh, a senior journalist and activist, was shot three times outside her house on the fatal evening of September 5, 2017, by an unidentified killer on a motorbike. However, her death spoke volumes. It has ruffled many feathers, the result of which was impacting and dynamic.
Several intolerant voices found strength in the voices of the journalists being silenced. Shantanu Bhowmick, a 28-year-old full-time journalist with the local TV network Din Raat, was beaten to death in the Mandai area of Tripura, by miscreants owing allegiance to the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT). Despite proving his identity as a journalist, he was dragged by the mob and attacked from behind with sharp weapons, fatally murdering him while he was covering the political agitations surrounding the demand for a separate tribal state, Tipraland. Surprisingly, this act of impunity came only a few days after the heinous Gauri Lankesh murder.
Pen vs Bullet: There is no safe haven for journalists even in the so-called progressive 21st century.
Following Bhowmick’s death, the media fraternity had issued a statement, “It is a reckless, inhuman act to silence the voice of free press in the country and an assault on the freedom of the press.”
Senior journalist KJ Singh was stabbed to death, and his mother strangled at their Mohali residence in Punjab on September 23, 2017.
“While Hindu nationalists try to purge all manifestations of ‘anti-national’ thought from the national debate, self-censorship is growing in the mainstream media,” Reporters Without Borders said in its 2017 World Press Freedom Ranking.
Journalists with their spines of steel are finding places in the graves. The question is ‘to say or not to say’. As one of my friends, Meghalee Mitra, quoted, “In a country of Gharwaapsi, Lankesh and Kalburgi were killed in their own homes.”
Idol-worship is a sham and browbeats the society, thought academician MM Kalburgi. How dare he mix modern sensibilities with tradition? Rationalist, they call him, is it? God or goons rained a hail of bullets in him, silencing him and his argument forever. The deaths of Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare’s followed, mainly because of their criticism of Hindutva and their anti-desi cosmopolitanism.
Nazimuddin Samad, the Bangladeshi activist and blogger, was hacked to death in 2015 in Dhaka for his anti-Islamist post on Facebook. He had been on the 2013 hit-list of 84 atheist bloggers (I fail to imagine how such a list exists) that was drawn up by a radical group of Islamists and sent to the Bangladeshi ministry. His crime? Speaking up against corrupt religious fundamentalism and being a scathing critic of Islamic intolerance, despite being a Muslim himself. The difference – he was a liberal while his killers weren’t. Witnesses claim that the murderers shouted “Allahu Akbar (God is greatest)” while they attacked him on a busy street.
Samad, you were so naive. What did you think? Perhaps, our God favours ‘them killers’. Oh, how I abhor such fake spirituality!
Journalists and secular bloggers alike have always faced the heat – for being idealistic rebels and sceptic enthusiasts.
“Ours is a democracy, not a Stalinist state or a theocratic republic that stifles other voices,” elucidated an Economic Times opinion piece. The atonement of such non-conformists is not justifiable.Their suppressed voices is the suppression of many a thought, an outlook, an intention, a voice that has antagonised the corrupt seat of power. But well, that is how it should be, isn’t it?
Gauri Lankesh had once said, “In Karnataka today, we are living in such times that Modi Bhakts and the Hindutva brigade welcome the killings (as in the case of Dr MM Kalburgi) and celebrate the deaths (as in the case of Dr UR Ananthamurthy) of those who oppose their ideology, their political party and their supreme leader Narendra Modi. I was referring to such people because, let me assure you, they are keen to somehow shut me up too. A jail stint for me would have warmed the cockles of their hearts.”
Asserting how death threats have become a common phenomenon in Karnataka, Lankesh staunchly protested against the saffron-clad right-wing hypocrites, by endorsing the minority Lingayats who wanted autonomy by removing themselves from under the umbrella of the Hindu faction. Despite being convicted in a defamation case, Lankesh never backed down. She mentioned how her conviction had less to do with her article titled “Darodegilada BJP galu” and more to do with her political views.
“We can’t be so dead. It is human to express and react. What we feel impulsively is usually our most honest response,” she said.
‘Journalism is the fourth pillar of democracy’ is what we are taught in journalism courses in colleges. However, the truth lies bare before us.
Firebrand journalists and writers like Shantanu Bhowmick, Gauri Lankesh, Sudip Datta Bhaumik, MM Kalburgi have been subdued by the grip of death. However, their voices still ring in our ears. They did what they could; they said what they should have. Nothing deterred them; nothing could stop them from espousing their beliefs. And they were killed. Why? Only because they dared to be different, dared to cross their limits. These were vociferous people and in their deaths, several other Lankeshs, several other Bhowmicks will be born. They will be gutsy; they will prove to the world that journalism is synonymous with bravery and how every negative controversy will ensure positivity in the lives of others. There is no stopping them.
What do you wish for, now? Let all the journalists be mum forever?
No. Journalism isn’t the place for the meek, the silent. The euphoria will be preserved as long as the 1.324 billion people of this nation speak up in protest. Because in their deaths, they gave several others voices.
In the end, I wish to quote Agha Shahid Ali:
“My book’s been burned
Send me the ashes, so I can say
I’ve been sent the phoenix
In a coffin of light.”