One of the most stark examples of the expanding tide of authoritarianism worldwide was the 2017 murder of Gauri Lankesh, an Indian journalist and activist, allegedly assassinated by a far-right religious group in India for her fearless journalism.
Joining host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report is Rollo Romig, a journalist whose Pulitzer Prize-finalist book, I Am On the Hit List: A Journalist’s Murder and the Ruse of Autocracy in India, examines the historic and political context of Lankesh’s murder.
Romig chronicles the rise of Hindu nationalist extremism in India, linking it to India’s current authoritarian policies under Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The group accused of Lankesh’s assassination, Sanatan Sanstha, operates on the vision “of making India an officially Hindu country and, equally importantly, relegating all non-Hindus to second-class citizenship and ostracizing, particularly, Muslims from Hindu society,” according to Romig.
Much like in the United States, Romig and Hedges argue that such fringe groups serve a strategic purpose of mainstreaming extremist ideologies that ultimately benefit the ruling class. Gauri’s work represented a threat to far-right political movements in India and she was often subjected to fierce intimidation campaigns, including, as the title of Romig’s book suggests, being placed on murder hit lists.