Fifteen days after her assassination three years ago, the staff of Gauri Lankesh Patrike came together to put out one last edition. They dedicated it to their slain editor, and pulled down the shutters for six months.
In April 2018, they tried to launch ‘Naanu Gauri’, a newspaper for paid subscribers. However, the Registrar of Newspapers for India rejected their application, and the weekly was only circulated privately. On September 5, a year after the assassination, the staff of the erstwhile Gauri Lankesh Patrike put out the first ever edition of ‘Nyaya Patha’ (Way of Justice). It is a weekly tabloid in Kannada.
At the moment, the newsroom is working on a special edition to mark the third death anniversary of Gauri. “She had started her magazine in the footsteps of her father P Lankesh. The magazine was both a continuation and a rebirth of her father’s legacy,” says Dr HV Vasu, editor of the tabloid.
The decision to reshape the magazine was in the offing when she was shot dead. “The last 15 days of her life were spent in organising funds and planning the changes. She couldn’t complete the task, so we are doing that on her behalf,” he says.
Apart from the print weekly Nyaya Patha, the team runs two websites: Gauri Lankesh News (www.gaurilankeshnews.com) in English and Naanu Gauri (www.naanugauri.com) in Kannada.
The Gauri Lankesh Memorial Trust was formed in December 2017. V S Sreedhara, professor and close friend of Gauri, says, “We are working towards the ideals that she stood for, be it freedom of speech or the right to dissent.”
The trust annually hosts two events: the one on September 5 is called ‘Gauri Day’ and honours her political legacy. Her birth anniversary, January 29, sees people from across the world come together for a cultural event.
This year, the September 5 event is being held virtually. The ‘Gauri Lankesh Memorial Award for Journalism’ was presented to well-known TV journalist Ravish Kumar last year. This year, the trust could not meet, and hence has not chosen a recipient.
Protest week for civil liberties
The People’s Union For Civil Liberties (PUCL) is observing a protest week from August 28. It concludes on September 5, the day Gauri was killed. The organisation is calling for the release of rights activists — Sudha Bharadwaj, Gautam Navlakha, Varavara Rao, Arun Ferriera and Vernon Gonsalves, and raising a clarion call against the several instances of violation of civil rights in the recent past. “Our silence is our complicity in all these shameful acts of oppression,” reads a call put out by PUCL. “Write letters to the authorities. Share photos, videos, tweets. Organise meetings, big or small,” an appeal reads.