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.
Monday, February 26, 2018
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
10383 Bunche Hall
Abstract: 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.
Chandan Gowda teaches at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. He has edited The Way I See It: A Gauri Lankesh Reader (Navayana and DC Books, 2017) and Theatres of Democracy: Selected Essays of Shiv Visvanathan (HarperCollins, 2016). He has also translated UR Ananthamurthy’s novella, Bara(Oxford Univ Press, 2016) and edited, The Post Office of Abachooru, a book of short stories of Purnachandra Tejasvi (forthcoming, HarperCollins, 2018). A Life in the World, a book of autobiographical interviews he did with UR Ananthamurthy will be published soon (HarperCollins, 2018). He writes regularly for newspapers, including a weekly column on culture and politics in Bangalore Mirror. He is presently completing a book on the cultural politics of development in old Mysore state.