Rein in forces of hate, before they eat us up

Most journalists, like people in other professions, die normal deaths. Among those who die unnaturally, more journalists die because of their work. More often than not, they would have annoyed or offended someone so terribly that the person either issued a contract, delegated the task to retainers or acted on their own. Indians pride themselves for being citizens of the world’s largest democracy but the country ranks a dishonourable 136th out of 180 nations in the press freedom index. The malaise of distrusting the media, portraying it as the enemy of the people and the nation cuts across parties and is conspicuous in its consistency over several governments. In the past 25 years since international watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists began tracking attacks on Indian journalists, 71 of them have been murdered. Gauri Lankesh was the latest to die in harness. As police investigations are underway, it is premature to rush to conclusions and blame specific political forces. But is highly unlikely that she would have been killed for petty rivalry, business jealousy or mistaken identity. Almost certainly, Lankesh would have paid with her life for her views, writings or actions. For most media professionals, actions are often an extension of their professional selves. Her self-characterisation on Twitter had two absolute words: “journalist-activist”.

Readers of these pages are well aware that writing styles, topics, interests and political and social orientation of no two journalists are similar. For every writer who chooses to understate viewpoints, there are others who like wearing opinions on their sleeves. While there are many who prefer being nuanced in their approach and argumentative, there are an equal number who prefer using a sledgehammer. In a nation where cricket remains the only religion that doesn’t divide its people, an apt simile is that for every Virender Sehwag or Shikhar Dhawan, there is a Rahul Dravid, V.V.S. Laxman or Cheteswar Pujara. Gauri Lankesh was cast in the mould of Virender Sehwag or his kind, specially in her avatar as the custodian of her father’s magazine Lankesh Patrike. Friends and colleagues who knew her body of work well enough testify that subtlety was not her best strength. Not many would have endorsed her decision to run the story that saw her losing the defamation case against a BJP legislator last year. Journalism is not the only profession where those who walk the razor’s edge continue earning respect for the impact of stories and for their integrity, courage and honesty.

Gauri Lankesh’s brutal assassination comes just days after the tale of the murder of another journalist resurfaced. In the wake of the surreal events preceding and following self-proclaimed “baba” Gurmeet Singh being held guilty of rape and sentenced to 20 years in prison, public memory was refreshed by reports that the trauma of the two women would have stayed obscure if not for the daring action of Sirsa journalist Ram Chander Chatrapati, who ran the Hindi eveninger Poora Sach. Gauri Lankesh’s murder proves that there is no escaping if one falls foul of someone in authority or with sufficient clout regardless of city or social class. Bengaluru, after all, is not a remote Sirsa, Rajpura or Rosera, backwaters where journalists are mostly targeted. The city is after all one of the country’s most progressive and developed cities and not trapped in conflict like Srinagar, where many journalists have fallen. While the cause of Lankesh’s murder is still presumptive, the CPJ’s figures are illustrative — of the 71 journalists killed since 1992, 20 died due to political causes, 16 from corruption-related matters and 10 due to crime, nine for business reasons and nine due to cultural causes. Only two died in war or conflict.

Journalists were high on the list of targets of this regime even before it acquired political power at the Centre. Gen. V.K. Singh, now a minister whose performance has passed the “4Ps” assessment framework in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s latest expansion-cum-reshuffle on Sunday, had lustily popularised the term “presstitute”. In speech after speech from when he was Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi vilified the media, specially the English press. Journalists, barring those embedded in the system, are regularly branded as antinationals.

Trolling of journalists is well-documented and it is an established fact that templates of trolls are created and circulated among the faithful.

In the past three years, there have been umpteen occasions when the Prime Minister has attempted to rein in the fringe forces, without any success They in turn replicate these messages on various social media sites, using varied user names. The previous regime too had its favourites and those it disparaged, but the campaign never took on the organised character that it has in the past three years.

Predating the slander of the media, a systematic campaign has been run over the past three decades arguing that indignity was heaped on Hindus, first by foreign invaders and subsequently by their agents. This template has acquired permanence in every political assertion and the argument runs — enough is enough, Hindus will no longer take it lying down and will hit back. Journalists face this line of attack as they are painted as “enemy agents”. Consequently, just as wild shrubs begin greening at the hint of rain, foot soldiers of this campaign acquire belligerence at the suggestion of regime change. Remember the enthusiasm with which Yogi Adityanath led the campaign for the byelections in 2014 in Uttar Pradesh in the weeks after Narendra Modi became Prime Minister. In the past three years, there have been umpteen occasions when the Prime Minister has attempted to rein in the fringe forces, without any success. It is still too early to determine if the tiger he rode to power has devoured Gauri Lankesh or not, though the chances are that it is indeed this scourge that plucked another victim. But the free run that the tiger has been given risks consuming this system too.

Journalists may not have MFN status with Mr Modi, but on this occasion he would serve his cause best by recognising that he needs to act, if only for his own sake.

The writer is the author of Narendra Modi: The Man, the Times and Sikhs: The Untold Agony of 1984