South Asian Studies Council Lecture Series: The Way She Saw It: Introducing Gauri Lankesh, Chandan Gowda

The talk introduces the life and work of Gauri Lankesh, the courageous journalist, and activist who was assassinated in Bangalore last year. After a fifteen year stint in mainstream English journalism, Gauri became editor of Lankesh Patrike, a major Kannada weekly, in 2000. The subsequent years saw her emerge as an important social and political activist in Karnataka. What were her political concerns? What forms did her activism take? An engagement with these questions illustrates the challenges and dilemmas of being a secular activist in India. Examining the public responses to her death, the talk also attempts to grasp the changing political culture in India.