Yes...all violence must be condemned unconditionally, whether it is of a senior journo or the 34 year old RSS 'Karyavahak' Rajesh who was killed at Trivandrum...
Death Doesn’t Recognise Political Ideology, Nor Should We
Yesterday (6 September), senior journalist and activist Gauri Lankesh was shot dead by unknown assailants just outside her residence in the capital of the Congress party-led Karnataka. Understandably, the murder of a public figure in the heart of the capital sent shock waves running through the city and, by night, social media was abuzz with the usual blame games, insinuations and accusations.
As an ordinary citizen, the breakdown of law and order ought to be the primary concern for all of us, and for that, a critical examination of the event and some of the stakeholders is important.
In the past, the mainstream media has often been accused of contextualising crimes based on the party in power. Even after taking the confirmation bias of the accusers into account, there is a grain of truth in this accusation. So while the lynching of a man in Samajwadi Party-led Uttar Pradesh was largely projected as a fringe Hindutva hate crime, similar crimes in the Bharatiya Janata Party-led states have been projected as a failure of law and order and governance. It is time for the mainstream media to consistently hold the Congress government’s feet to fire over this breakdown of law and order in their state. Any attempt of the media to project Lankesh’s murder as a hate crime committed by the right wing, will be considered, correctly, as covering fire given to a government with which the media is somewhat friendly.
As Bill Crawford once said, “Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.” In this context, there is no doubt that the state government has completely lost focus of the things they were elected to do. From the chaos in Bengaluru after a single night of rain and the hacking of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) workers to the murder of an Indian Police Service officer and yesterday’s killing, the Congress government has shown its ineptness at handling infrastructure and law-and-order-related issues. With the murders of Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare during the Congress rule in Maharashtra, and that of M M Kalburgi and now Lankesh in Karnataka, the Congress party too needs to introspect and fix their inability to enforce law and order at the state level. Sadly, rather than working on this problem, Siddaramaiah and his team are focused on identity politics issues like removing Hindi-language signboards from metro stations and opening canteens named after the late prime minister Indira Gandhi. It is high time the Karnataka Chief Minister is made to realise that as long as citizens are getting gunned down in broad daylight, nobody cares what language the signboards use.
Read more at: https://swarajyamag.com/ideas/death-...-nor-should-we
Death Doesn’t Recognise Political Ideology, Nor Should We
Yesterday (6 September), senior journalist and activist Gauri Lankesh was shot dead by unknown assailants just outside her residence in the capital of the Congress party-led Karnataka. Understandably, the murder of a public figure in the heart of the capital sent shock waves running through the city and, by night, social media was abuzz with the usual blame games, insinuations and accusations.
As an ordinary citizen, the breakdown of law and order ought to be the primary concern for all of us, and for that, a critical examination of the event and some of the stakeholders is important.
In the past, the mainstream media has often been accused of contextualising crimes based on the party in power. Even after taking the confirmation bias of the accusers into account, there is a grain of truth in this accusation. So while the lynching of a man in Samajwadi Party-led Uttar Pradesh was largely projected as a fringe Hindutva hate crime, similar crimes in the Bharatiya Janata Party-led states have been projected as a failure of law and order and governance. It is time for the mainstream media to consistently hold the Congress government’s feet to fire over this breakdown of law and order in their state. Any attempt of the media to project Lankesh’s murder as a hate crime committed by the right wing, will be considered, correctly, as covering fire given to a government with which the media is somewhat friendly.
As Bill Crawford once said, “Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.” In this context, there is no doubt that the state government has completely lost focus of the things they were elected to do. From the chaos in Bengaluru after a single night of rain and the hacking of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) workers to the murder of an Indian Police Service officer and yesterday’s killing, the Congress government has shown its ineptness at handling infrastructure and law-and-order-related issues. With the murders of Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare during the Congress rule in Maharashtra, and that of M M Kalburgi and now Lankesh in Karnataka, the Congress party too needs to introspect and fix their inability to enforce law and order at the state level. Sadly, rather than working on this problem, Siddaramaiah and his team are focused on identity politics issues like removing Hindi-language signboards from metro stations and opening canteens named after the late prime minister Indira Gandhi. It is high time the Karnataka Chief Minister is made to realise that as long as citizens are getting gunned down in broad daylight, nobody cares what language the signboards use.
Read more at: https://swarajyamag.com/ideas/death-...-nor-should-we