The Murder of Gauri Lankesh: Lawlessness in Karnataka

It’s certainly a gruesome way to die right in front of your own house with multiple bullets riddling your body. That much can be said about the unfortunate murder of radical Naxal sympathiser, Comrade Gauri Lankesh by unknown assailants.

Barely minutes after the news broke out, politico-ideological scavengers of all hues colouring the entire Communist-Left-Liberal-Secular spectrum, cutting across various hierarchical rungs descended upon the nation in full force. What we’re witnessing even as I write this is a tour de force of the highest standards of the Pavlovian Theatre of Secular Absurdity perhaps not equalled since the era of lusty scavenging over the dead bodies in the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat riots. The stage, script, directors, actors, and technical crew all remain unchanged in intent, intensity, and insanity.

Indeed, even George Orwell’s brilliant imagination and creativity couldn’t have conjured up the surreal scenario that’s playing out in reality in India: from “bedroom eyes” Shashi Tharoor to alleged historian Ramachandra Guha to artful Shekhar Gupta to roadside ruffian Rajdeep Sardesai to his intellectually-challenged wife, Sagarika Ghose to cabinet-ministry midwife Barkha Dutt to Radia stenographer Vir Sanghvi to literary parasite Javed Akhtar, every historical milker of the mammaries of the Indian taxpayers have opened overnight Kangaroo courts on social media, in print, and in various press clubs and forums across the nation.

Showing zero restraint, having abandoned journalistic and other ethics long ago, these judges cum juries cum executioners delivered the same, predictable verdict: this is the work of Hindutva forces. Never mind that the police had just reached the murder spot and had issued no statement. But then, these Pavlovian actors have repeatedly demonstrated that they’re above pesky annoyances like due process and the law.

Here are a few samples spouted by some of these disgraced malcontents:

“The climate of hate and intolerance that has been promoted by this current (BJP) government, aided by television channels and freelance goondas, is complicit in this murder. It is chilling. We are becoming mirror images of Bangladesh and Pakistan, where writers are killed for what they say. This is an attempt to silence all of us, all of those who believe in democracy and decency.” — Eminent Distorian Ramachandra Guha

If we set aside the sheer, naked lies that these practiced tricksters continue to peddle, it’s incredible how members of this species actually think that their airborne pieces of ideologically-tainted turd will still fly in an age of free, open, and borderless era of instant Internet communication. The answer is rather simple: they know it won’t fly anymore but then history shows us that the ideologically-obstinate have always elevated wishful thinking over reality. And so, in a post-Congress, post-Communist India, especially in a post-2014 India, some like the aforementioned are desperately clutching at the straws.

The Contours of Secular Scavenging

It’s been over three years since the summer of their discontent dawned upon their decades-long career of freeloading off the Indian taxpayers. The nation has since witnessed their frantic antics — fake stories of Church attacks, intolerance, award returns, hospital deaths etc — which have yielded reverse harvests in each case. Yet, they continue to nurse wet dreams that “this is one incident which will bring Prime Minister Narendra Modi down, and we’ll be proud of having ushered it.” And it’s this precise factor that underlies the ongoing savage secular dance around Gauri Lankesh’s unfortunate murder.

Consider this: how many of the selfsame Rajdeep Sardesais, Nidhi Razdans, Sagarika Ghoses, Shekhar Guptas, Shashi Tharoors, Ramachandra Guhas, and Javed Akhtars had even acknowledged that someone like Gauri Lankesh even existed given that all of these have had long careers? But barely minutes after her ghastly shooting, Gauri Lankesh was suddenly everybody’s mentor, friend, philosopher, guide, rationalist, colleague, courageous journalist, champion of the downtrodden, firebrand (sic) anti-Hindutva voice…

One only needs to be completely blind, an ideological fanatic, or an utter imbecile not to notice the near-uniform “commentary” about her murder emanating from this Vulture Class of Journalism/opinion. She is posthumously, unanimously hailed with variants of such epithets as “vocal critic of Hindutva/Right Wing, fearless, independent journalist,” and so on. What this also shows is their finely-honed ignorance about the state of Karnataka as also the absence or silencing of genuine, objective voices from the state, which find no space in the English (so-called) mainstream media.

For starters, Gauri Lankesh wasn’t a mere “critic” of Hindutva, she regularly spewed toxic hate. Here’s a small selection (video of Gauri Lankesh’s speech in 2012) of her choicest abuses in one of her public speeches:

• Hinduism is a bastard Dharma with no father and mother
• The RSS is a multi-hooded poisonous snake that killed Mahatma Gandhi
• RSS members are sexual perverts and molesters of women because its ideology tells them to behave as such.
• Using extremely crude language (untranslatable in English for its appalling level of profanity) against former RSS Sarasanghachalak Sri Sudarshan dubbing him insane, mindless, and deserving of the abuse she heaped upon him.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

It’s my conviction that both God and the Devil truly lie in the details. Which is why, unless you’ve lived in Karnataka for some length of time or at least have followed the scene in the state closely, your eyes would rarely look for details like the aforementioned video. Which is also why it’s paramount to place her regrettable murder in the context of history and the ideological and political climate in Karnataka to arrive at a reasonable level of objective public discourse.

And so, unlike the self-appointed, freelance Secular-Left-Liberal judges running amok in the country, I shall refrain from making any comment about Gauri Lankesh’s murder having full faith in our justice system and instead, focus on providing some contours of the said context.

The Decline and Debasement of Karnataka

The first and important factor is the existing political climate in Karnataka under the chief ministership of Siddaramaiah.

Whatever the faults and corruptions of successive Congress (and to an extent, other) governments since Independence, there were some lines that even the vilest of power-politicians simply didn’t cross. But it’s for the first time that the state witnessed a spree of wanton political murders ranging from IAS and IPS officers and policemen to writers to intellectuals to RSS and BJP members to anti-cow slaughter activists…indeed, if a deceased police officer M K Ganapathy names a (then) sitting Home Minister, K J George as the reason for his suicide, you know what the state is faced with.

The first high-profile case of political murder in Karnataka still remains that of the Kerala-based lawyer, Rasheed whose body was found on a railway track in 1988. This singular incident almost instantly extinguished the political career of then Home Minister R L Jalappa. From that until Siddaramaiah took over in 2013, the state hasn’t witnessed anything even remotely similar. And within five years, Siddaramaiah has truly driven Karnataka to the ground: indeed, what does it tell you when you observe that Gauri Lankesh whose politics isn’t dissimilar to that of Siddaramaiah was herself killed so brazenly?

To put it bluntly, the law and order situation has almost reached the level of Bihar under Lalu Prasad Yadav’s criminal regime in the 1990s.

This apart, there’s a deeper factor to this state of affairs. Siddaramaiah is perhaps the first and only Chief Minister to rule Karnataka based not only policy, but on ideology of the Far Left kind.

Even when he was on his political ascent, his ideology became crystal clear when he attempted to takeover the Mysore palace, and most recently, when he used derogatory language against the former Maharaja of Mysore, Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV widely revered and respected in the state as the architect of Modern Mysore.

Equally, one of the first things Siddaramaiah did after becoming Chief Minister was to visit and pay respects to his ideological mentors and compatriots like Girish Karnad, Devanoor Mahadeva, and Baragur Ramachandrappa, some of who found their way into his NAC-style kitchen cabinet. Needless, all of these eminences are clothed in various hues of Red. Gauri Lankesh too, figured at various intersections of this Communist ideological Venn diagram. What message does the fact that she had massed up the kind of political clout required to negotiate with Naxals on behalf of the Government send us? Why does the media, intelligentsia, and the secular illuminati treat this dangerous phenomenon as normal?

But this fact partially explains why Gauri Lankesh was given a 21-gun salute with full state honours reserved only for the most distinguished people who’ve contributed positively to the Indian nation, society, culture and so on. Are we to seriously believe that Gauri Lankesh shares the same stature as say, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam?

In fact, on the contrary, and to put it bluntly, she has zero accomplishments to her credit unless your definition of accomplishment includes a brazen and sustained support for violent Naxalism, a fact that Gauri Lankesh’s brother, Indrajit Lankesh (as a tidbit, he launched the celluloid career of Deepika Padukone) obliquely alluded to in the wake of her unfortunate killing:

Gauri Lankesh, the senior journalist and activist whose murder on the doorstep of her west Bengaluru house…had received hate messages from naxalites, her brother Indrajit Lankesh told NDTV,

But the roots of Gauri Lankesh’s incurable love for Naxalism and Naxals go far back and exploded into limelight in February 2005 in an incident that’s largely forgotten now: the encounter of the high-profile Naxalite, Saketh Rajan or Comrade Prem.

Continued in the next part