Madhu Bhushan, Rollo Romig and Teesta Setalvad

Gauri Lankesh Remembered

In 2017, Gauri Lankesh, an activist and bilingual journalist, was shot dead outside her home in Bengaluru by unidentified gunmen. A veteran of Karnataka’s social movements and a tireless campaigner for interreligious harmony, Lankesh had been longtime target of the Hindu supremacist movement, which is almost certainly responsible for her murder.

Part of what made Lankesh so threatening to the fascists was that she wrote primarily in Kannada, thereby reaching a vernacular readership and public, rather than merely a minority anglophone elite. From 2000 until her death, she edited Lankesh Patrike, a pioneering journal founded by her father, P. Lankesh, which both served as a forum for intellectual discussion – Banu Mushtaq, who won the Booker International Prize in 2025, was a contributor – and a platform for investigative reporting.

In this Zoom event, three of Lankesh’s comrades will commemorate her work and legacy. Rollo Romig is an American journalist whose book-length investigation into Lankesh’s murder, I Am on the Hit List (2024), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Teesta Setalvad is a human rights activist and journalist, who did more than anyone to expose the genocidal violence of the 2002 pogrom in Gujarat – and has since unwaveringly advocated on behalf of its victims. Madhu Bhushan is an independent activist, scholar, writer and documentary filmmaker, who has been part of the women’s movement in India for many years.

The event is presented in collaboration with Navayana, the progressive Indian publishing house, which has published The Way I See It, a selected volume of Lankesh’s writings.

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