How did you come to write this book on the murder of Gauri Lankesh?
I am coming to India to report for this The New York Times Magazine For more than a decade with focus on South India. I was fast spending time with my family in Bangalore. We just spent a month there and when I received the news that Gauri Lankesh was killed.
I never met Gauri. I heard about him, and I knew many people who knew him, but it came in a very shock that he was murdered as it was done for so many people in Bangalore, Partly because it did not just seem that it was not so. There is possible there. Bangalore has a very low rate of gun crime. I had a police officer who tells me that sometimes an entire year goes without discharging a gun, let someone shoot alone. So, the fact of a woman in this middle -aged woman is coming home after a day’s work, shot and killed at her door, just a huge shock. It looked like a bad omen about the direction of political violence in the country.
I was interested in trying to find out the secret of who shot Gauri Lankesh and why, and used it as an opportunity to investigate the rapidly changing country. I first wrote about his murder The New York Times MagazineBut although it was a long article, I felt as if I was just scratching the surface and there was much that needed to find, not only about the investigation but about Gauri myself and about her life. I quickly realized that I would like to write a book about it. Similarly it started.
Your personal relationship with India (to marry South Indian) deepened your understanding of the incidents around Lankesh’s murder?
My wife is from Kerala, born there and grew up. If my wife had no input and knowledge, it would have been a very bad book. I report a major loss in India. I do not speak any Indian language other than English. I am an outsider. In some ways I think as an outsider can be a minor advantage, that you come in things with a fresh eye and a fresh perspective, but for the most part it means that I will have to hold a lot a lot . I always need a lot of help in correcting it. My wife is also a writer and she always reads my work and protects me from mistakes. There are many other Indian writers and journalists who have helped me on the way, either spend their time, resources and connections, reading my draft or only to give me generously.
We are using books as a unique writer, and this is not my experience. My name is the only name that appears on the cover, but I see this process as a deep collaboration. Dozens of people helped me in this book.
You write that “Gauri Lankesh’s life also used to tell those people who knew him best.” Why was it such a deep shape?
I talked to so many people who knew Gauri throughout my life, and those who knew her was younger and when she knew her, she knew that she often describes a different person. Those who knew her that she was younger often describes her as a party girl. She loved to have fun – she preferred to have fun until the end of her life, but there was a change where she became a much more politically fundamentalist. Over the years, she moved herself from a professional journalist to a journalist-worker to activist-journalist and finally thought of herself as a worker first, although she was always doing journalism. It was a big innings. She was always emotional about justice, but it was not until she captured her father’s newspaper, Lankesh PatrickThat she started thinking about herself as a worker, and with a political agenda that she wanted to pursue.
When she was younger, she was famous for her home parties. Later in life, some of his friends also described him as almost ascetic. She was a function. He never ate enough. She is just dedicated every hour during the day and loses sleep to run the reasons for her newspaper and her worker. I was really interested in that innings, and I was just interested in him as a person. This is a book that is about an investigation into a murder, but for me which was really the most interesting and most powerful thing, this other person was getting to know that unfortunately I had never met – live life Learning from the example of Gauri about the way of. He had this extraordinary talent to connect people. As the year passed, it really flourished. And even when his paper decreased in circulation – and he was killed at that time, it was actually struggling; It was suspected that if it would live for a long time – he had quietly created this huge network of people who was involved in the work of his worker and only in his life.
After killing her, to understand that she was a very successful journalist. It is not that she was unsuccessful, but as I said, her paper was actually struggling at the end of her life. And even some people admit her closest to her that she was not the most polish writer on the necessary scene. But his real talents were these talents for friendship, these talents to connect people, these talents were really for the creation of the community. It is a very important task that people only notice when the person doing this disappears. And this happened in the case of Gauri.
There was no really no one to take the place, and you could see that this incredibly exit in Bangalore after being killed, where thousands of people from every imaginative community came to mourning with him because he Many people from so many different communities were connected. I found that it is notable, and it really changed the way you think about their life and what are my priorities and what should be.
Did you face some challenges while researching the book as an outsider?
I do not speak Kannada, so I was highly dependent on translators, and in fact Gauri’s parents wrote to the memoirs that were never translated from Kannada. I really commissioned a translator to fully translate both the two books and till date I think I am the only person who reads English translations that I commissioned. But I could not let it go. I could not write a book about Gauri Lankesh without reading my parents’ memoirs. They are attractive books, and I hope that English translations are published.
In the case of a special investigation team investigating Gauri’s murder, because I was coming from outside, I think it took longer to get them. I think it says how careful their investigation was, how carefully, how royal it was. It was really a few years in my own investigation that he started talking to me. They wanted to wait until they felt that they would actually torn the matter. Once they did, they were very generous over their time.
Do you think Gauri Lankesh will have the most permanent heritage?
Many of Gauri’s friends told me that she had never imagined while Gauri was alive that her work would be anthological in books as it is. Writer, translator and scholar Chandan Gowda quickly came out with an excellent anthology of Gauri’s writing, when she was murdered. I recommend a book for Gauri and anyone interested in her life. But yes, her work has taken it to a stunning life because she died.
A remarkable example was at the height of the protest movement against citizenship laws. About five years ago I started seeing a quotation of the Gauri periphery: “I will do what I can do and I would say what I should do. These intolerant voices get strength in our silence. Learn to debate them using words instead of dangers. “I think it suggests the kind of heritage that he stood for.
What is the current situation of investigation in Gauri Lankesh’s murder?
The investigation seems to have become very good. The Special Investigation Team gave a huge amount of evidence against the men, which they eventually accused of a charge sheet of more than 9,000 pages. And he eventually accused 18 men, 17 of whom were arrested, one of which is still absconding, and it took a few years to start the test. Most of them were arrested in 2018. The trial in his murder case did not begin until the summer of 2021. It is now three and a half years after the test starts and the end is still not passed. In some ways it seems that the matter is being separated. All 17 people arrested for conspiring to kill Gauri have been released on bail. This is not a good sign for the possibilities of a murder case when the suspects are released on bail. But some people close to Gauri, including her long -standing lawyer BT Venkatesh, seems optimistic. I will avoid them and also expect for the best.
Majid Maqbool is an independent journalist located in Kashmir.
