‘We are not friends of those who killed Gauri Lankesh’

Published - September 06, 2026 08:41 pm IST - Bengaluru:

Filmmaker Kavita Lankesh, national spokesperson Ashutosh Ranka, national joint secretary Aishe Ghosh and JNUSU joint secretary Danish take part in ‘Gauri Day as Gen Z Day’, organised by the Gauri Memorial Trust in Bengaluru on Sunday. | Photo Credit: SUDHAKARA JAIN

Rejecting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attempt to address young people as friends, All India Students’ Association (AISA) Joint Secretary Danish Ali said, “We (the youth) are not friends of the people who are responsible for killing people like Gauri Lankesh.”

Speaking at a Gauri Memorial Trust event to mark Gauri Day as Gen Z Day, Ms. Ali said the younger generation was in a continuing political struggle with the present BJP government and would remain so until it could reclaim democratic India. “We (Gen Z) are in the middle of a struggle with you, and we will continue this struggle until we reclaim our victory. Until we make this country actually democratic in reality,” she said.

Ms. Ali recalled that she was a school student when Gauri Lankesh was murdered in 2017, and how the killing made her understand the cost of speaking against the growing Hindutva extremism in the country. Gauri, she said, was among those targeted because she opposed “fascist“ forces and the forces of “extremism and terrorism.“

Ms. Ali said Gauri’s killing should also be remembered alongside other instances of violence and repression involving people who challenged the same ideological forces. Referring to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, she said he too was killed by people belonging to the same ideological stream. “It is the ideology that we need to fight right now,” she said.

She also referred to the deaths of Govind Pansare, M.M. Kalaburgi, G.N. Saibaba and Father Stan Swamy, while pointing to the continued incarceration of student activists Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam as examples of the wider struggle over dissent and democratic rights.

Student Federation of India (SFI) National Joint Secretary Aishe Ghosh, who also spoke at the event, described Gauri Lankesh’s life as a testament to the importance of speaking up against injustice. Gauri, she said, was someone who did not merely write about her political convictions but lived them. For young people, Gauri’s example had become a source of strength in asserting their right to hold opinions, exchange ideas and dissent, she said.

Ms. Ghosh said young people entering educational institutions after 2014 had increasingly found it difficult to speak up, particularly on issues involving marginalised and minority communities. She argued that those who raised their voices for socio-economically marginalised sections were increasingly targeted, while young people were being made to believe that the politics they chose had to conform to what those in power considered acceptable.

This, she said, had pushed many towards “neutrality,” with people believing that staying away from political positions would keep them safe.

The speakers also raised concerns over extreme communalism and the growing commercialisation and privatisation of education.

CJP national spokesperson and co-convenor Ashutosh Ranka said if Gauri was alive, she would have been a “proud cockroach”. He then turned to the state of government schools, arguing that their condition could not be explained just by a “lack of funds but purely reflected a lack of political will”, he said, questioning why politicians would be concerned about the public education system when many of them themselves own private schools.

Published - September 06, 2026 08:41 pm IST

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