Journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you’re at it.
Horace Greeley
A monsoon of blood has arrived in Indian journalism where bylines have become epitaphs. Gauri Lankesh, the feisty 55-year-old editor of her family-owned news weekly, Lankesh Patrike, has become the new martyr of vocal journalism. Her passion for the truth in both language and tone was driven by conviction and not convenience. Unlike most other scribes, she carried her ideology on her sleeve. She spoke with substance and wrote with authority.
When her voice could not be stilled, her unidentified adversaries used bullets to silence her forever. Her murder has raised questions about the idea and idiom of Indian journalism. She was a journalist first, anything else later, period. Then why is her death being exploited by admirers to score political points? Why has her murder been turned into a confrontation of belief systems? Nobody knows yet who killed her and why. But both her friends and foes claim it were her ideological convictions that finished her in the end; not a genuine commitment to reporting the truth.
Karnataka is ruled by a liberal, secular party. Its chief minister has never been part of a communal dispensation. He swiftly appointed a SIT to probe the Lankesh murder. He also ordered senior police officials to nab the killers and expose any possible ideological conspiracy to obliterate Lankesh from the platform of journalism. Lankesh Patrike, with its insignificant circulation, hardly posed a threat to any institution, ideology or individual. However, Lankesh’s towering reputation and credible voice had the power to influence movers and shakers in the society.
She was an avowed liberal, opposed to anything and everything saffron. But her rebuttals relied on logic, though varnished with her own ideological gloss. She rarely used language calculated to attract violent retribution. Unfortunately, the fiery debate over her death has converted journalism into a season of conflict between political parties, liberals and nationalists. Journalism is meant to disseminate the truth and unite everyone everywhere against its suppressors. Of late, sadly, it has acquired avoidable acronyms such as presstitutes, fake news, paid news, anti-national media, Bhakta media and what not.
Lankesh’s death is not the first time a journalist has met with a brutal end for doing his or her job. According to a study by The Hoot, a media portal, about 25 journalists were threatened and 54 attacked in various parts of the country in the past 18 months. As of last week, eight journalists have been killed. Globally, 122 journalists were murdered in 2016. Lives of journalists have never been in greater danger in India than in any other part of the world. Though there are no definite conclusions to the motives behind the murders, journalists were eliminated to stop them from exposing corporate corruption, a deviant cult leader or a dodgy political party.
In India, over 90 journalists were killed between 1992 and 2017. Barring sporadic condemnations, not one of these deaths made prime time news or was a front-page story of a national daily. The journalist who first exposed Ram Rahim’s sexual peccadillos was gunned down years ago, but became news only after the godman was convicted. Over half a dozen local journalists have been murdered in Kashmir over the past 25 years, but the national media has never bothered to investigate the motives, money and mercenaries behind their deaths. Not one of the dozen-odd journalists who fell to bullets in the Northeast and Bihar were officially mourned or given a gun salute by the state governments.
Nothing is more demeaning for a journalist for his or her death to be milked for vote bank purposes. While liberal and elitist journalists justifiably protested against Lankesh’s death, their silence on the murders of small town, regional journos raise doubts about the efficacy of a joint struggle against the slaying of free and fair journalism.
Lankesh’s admirers have done her great injustice by allowing various political parties to indulge in blame games rather than banding together to punish the perpetrators of her heinous killing. The National Herald, a Congress-owned publication, blamed the BJP by writing “since the saffron forces do not have recourse to the administrative and police machinery in states not ruled by the BJP, they have to kill to silence opposing voices”. The Sangh Parivar held the Congress state government responsible and hinted at Naxal involvement in Lankesh’s death.
A senior Vishwa Hindu Parishad functionary told a newspaper: “Killings have so far in India been a festival for the left over which they have celebrated their politics. They jump at killings and jump at conclusions and their associates, like organised mafia, exploit it. Either Gauri’s murder or that of another scribe in Bihar, no one should be killed; it is regrettable. But playing politics over this is all the more regrettable. Gauri was working recently on cases of corruption and scams by Congress leaders in the state. She was having an ideological clash with Naxalites. In the last one year 22 scribes have been killed. Who did they raise their voice at?”
Millions of Internet warriors and social media soldiers converted Twitter, Facebook and numerous websites into abusive online battlefields instead of suggesting an effective mechanism to curb the foes of freedom. Lankesh could never have imagined that her life, spent in protecting the rights of the masses, would in death ignite a turf war between classes.
It seems cynically evident that the freedom of the press is endangered only when a scribe from a cosmopolitan city, with known political moorings and formidable backers, is put to unacceptable harm. The media is regularly mauled and maimed in many of India’s small towns and tehsils by mafia of all colours and calculations. Small and local news organisations there kill or dilute umpteen stories of rape, corruption, unnatural deaths, breakdown of civic infrastructure, unholy links between the bureaucracy and contractors to avoid physical harm to journalists.
The vertical divide among the Media Megaphones clearly indicates that the threat to press freedom comes from the media itself. India needs to protect the Institution of Media and not the rhetoric of a few individuals whose identity as media mavens is questionable. The Indian press needs to prove CNN’s former president Jim Walton’s claim wrong that “at CNN, our view is that good journalism equals good business.” For Lankesh, fearless journalism turned out to be a bloody business, while for the Indian media it was business as usual with ideological fulminations and conspiracy theories.
Prabhu Chawla
prabhuchawla@ newindianexpress.com
Follow him on Twitter @PrabhuChawla