Gauri Lankesh

Sivaraman B

Day in and day out people are experiencing what fascism is on the Indian soil and its communal dimension makes it all the more deadlier. Day by day they are getting more brazen.

What is needed is a broad left and democratic unity. In fact, the Left parties had called for a joint protest meeting against BJP and Sangh Parivar in Bangalore on September 5, 2017 and Sitaram Yechuri of CPM also addressed it though prominent leaders from other left parties could not find time to be present.

Incidentally, RSS-BJP and other Sangh Parivar outfits had taken out a motorbike rally from Bangalore to Mangalore on the same day, ostensibly against alleged targeted killings of Sangh activists, to whip up communal passions in the run-up to the polls. Siddharamaiah however did not permit the rally. It is no chance coincidence that the targeting political assassination of Gauri occurred on this day of the bike rally.

Gauri Lankesh had also been invited and reports indicate that she was busy writing edits on Rohingya refugees and on other democratic issues against Saffron for her magazine and reached home alone late in the evening to become target of waiting motorcycle borne hit men. Had she gone for the meeting along with her co-workers, the Saffron extremists who were tracking her move would have found it difficult perhaps and she perhaps would be still living. Anyway, it is really very sad such a fiery and bold activist is no more.

She went hammer and tongs against the mining mafia and real estate mafia, exposed the mutts and other Hindu orthodoxy outfits and she also incurred the wrath of Veerashaiva mutts as she supported the Lingayat demand for recognition as a separate religion different from Hinduism. The RSS was very angry with her. Because she exposed real estate mafia of K J George, a Congress minister from Bangalore, Sidharamaiah government also harassed her by allowing the police to arrest her for a defamation case filed by a BJP MP and sort of "externed" her from Bangalore for a couple of months under conditional bail. All vested interests had ganged up against her. It is a Saffron-crime mafia nexus that has taken her out as a common enemy.

Fascist forces are growing in this country with the BJP coming to power. One after another critics of Sangh Parivar and rationalists are murdered.

It is pity that at this crisis in Indian society and polity left & all right thinking people are so disunited. There is an urgent need to unite all against the fascist onslaught.

Frontier
Vol. 50, No.16, Oct 22 - 28, 2017