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's research interests include social theory, Indian normative traditions, caste, and Kannada literature and cinema. In addition to his academic publications, he has written for newspapers and published translations of Kannada fiction and non-fiction in English. Before moving to APU, he was Associate Professor of Sociology at the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion, National Law School of India, Bengaluru, between 2008 and 2011. He is presently completing a book on the cultural politics of development in old Mysore state.