Gauri Lankesh murder: Why it's not shocking

Lankesh was shot dead outside her home with her murder having similarities with those of other intellectuals in the recent past.

The proverb "live by the sword, die by the sword" seems to be taking a new form in India. With increasing number of murders and growing threats to journalists and activists turning it into more of a case of "live by the pen, die by the bullet."

This is the new normal, with the cold-blooded murder of Gauri Lankesh, 55, a well-known journalist who took on governments, central and states, on a host of issues ranging from the Naxal problem to freedom of press, just the latest example of this.

And while this violent act might have some common elements, such as the weapon used or how the assassins executed their plan, with the murders of others intellectuals like M.M. Kalburgi, Govind Pansare, and Narendra Dabholkar in the recent past, the environment of threat that has been created in India which allows such killings of those who use the pen to voice their opinions and concerns go beyond these.

As political parties across the spectrum, governments at all levels, cultural and religious groups, owners of media houses, and even journalists themselves have help create an atmosphere where happenings such as direct threats to journalists and writers, retraction of stories after political pressure, loss of jobs for publishing inconvenient stories, barrage of abuse and personal attacks, among others, have become common.

Though these groups might not be the direct cause of such killings, the fact that these can be treated as the next step and culmination of their actions is hard to miss, given their prevalence not only gives the audacity to those who pull the trigger but also hand them the gun.

New 'nationalism' test

This by no means is a creation of just India or the present actors in its corridors of power, but it's difficult not to notice the increase in all of these. And this has started from the top. With the biggest 'crime' of a journalist or an activist in today's time is being anti-national, meaning to take a stand contrary or inconvenient to the government.

Somehow nation and government have become synonymous when it comes to reporting or having a view on the work of the latter, with any negative report on it termed as an insult to the former. Lately, this can be seen in statements of various ministers of union or state governments, and most importantly by those of the leadership of what is the most powerful party in the country, Bharatiya Janata Party.

With the party president, Amit Shah, and former senior minister and now Vice President of India, Venkaiah Naidu, having very openly stated that press freedom cannot be used to challenge "the nation's interest". Giving enough impetus to the foot soldiers carrying and conveying the message to the opposition as was done by Amit Malviya, the head of BJP's Information Technology, who tweeted that he hopes other journalists "take note" following Lankesh's conviction in a defamation case.

With the trolls of the ruling party going even a step further as seen in the ugly reactions of self-proclaimed 'nationalists,' including those followed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on twitter, who went on to call Lankesh names and celebrated her death.

And the doubts that these might be aberrations can be cleared by looking at the induction of Anant Kumar Hegde, into the Union government as a minister. The leader from Karnataka has not only used words like 'presstitute' and spewed hate towards religious minorities on Twitter but has also asked the government to keep journalists like Rana Ayyub and Barkha Dutt under surveillance due to the nature of their reporting.

Numbers and law don't bode well for journalists

The increase in such incidents though alarming for any country becomes worse for India's press given the already dismal state it finds itself in the case of freedom enjoyed. The country's ranking in the Global Press Freedom Index has slipped three places from that in 2016 to reach 136 out of 180 countries, in the report released by Reporters without Borders.

A major disappointment for the world's largest democracy especially since India did just better than some of its volatile neighbors like Pakistan (139), Sri Lanka (141), Bangladesh (146) and worse than others like Bhutan (84) and Nepal (100).

Though many would want to counter such a low ranking, the reality, which has never been too friendly for journalists during the reign of any political party, has only become worse in the recent past.

As is clear from examples of the pressure put and the treatment met out to journalists when it comes to certain states and issues like Vyapam in Madhya Pradesh, Naxal and police coverage in Chhattisgarh, organized crime in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, protests in Kashmir etc. Or from the raids on channels like NDTV owners, a one-day ordered by Naidu when he was the Information and Broadcasting minister, among others.

Along with other technical points in law that help put pressure on the media, such as defamation being a criminal as well as civil offense, filling of such cases against publications and journalists in far away states among others or the example restrictions brought in by the first constitutional amendment to restrict free speech, which exist till date, following stories published by news publications that the first government of independent India found inconvenient.

Apathy of their own

Though such pressures, maybe not so blatant and crass in their manner, on journalists and critical writers have always existed, the change that has hurt those in the field the most or helped them gain the most, depending on which side they chose to be on, is that of a divided house.

The choice of the 'nationalist' media to meet the criteria set out by the powerful leaves the ones who want to stand by journalistic standards, no matter which party is in government, sticking out like nails with the whole government machinery coming down like a hammer on them as those in power either, in government or otherwise, know that any backlash to it would be minimum leaving them almost no deterrent.

Examples of these being those media groups that take down stories after phone calls from the party offices are made to them or just don't publish them leave the ones that don't toe the party line more vulnerable. The deletion of the story of the rise in value Shah's assets being the latest one.

While the carrot and stick treatment of the government and powerful is one cause of division within the media, the other has been and still exists on its own. That is between the English language media and those of other languages, which the latter has rightly complained about. So when the same issue comes up for the mainstream media, the hue and cry, is much more than when it happens at a state and local language level.

All these differences, and the strength they give to those who want to keep the media under control, come across openly in cases such as Karnataka assembly using its 'privilege' to hand out journalists jail terms instead of letting the law of the land take its own course or senior journalists like Paranjoy Guha Thakurta or Nikhil Wagle getting forced out of their jobs one way or the other.

Yet the worst of these, even if a logical next step to such realities, are the murders of those who think and write differently to the conventional understanding and widely accepted, freely or forcibly, unwritten rules.

So even if the killers of such men and women might not be the same, the reality that these incidents happen in India should hardly be shocking, along with the identity of those who are ultimately guilty of making these incidents possible by normalizing attacks of verbal, psychological and physical nature on 'others' who are not considered on the right side.

OneIndia News