Ramachandra Guha a historian residing in Bangaluru was sent a legal notice by the BJP alleging that journalist Gauri Lankesh’s killers could be from the Sangh Parivar.
The legal notice quotes the eminent historian as telling last week: “It is very likely that her murderers came from the same Sangh Parivar from which the murderers of Dabholkar, Pansare and Kalburgi came.”
The Sangh Parivar is a group of organizations led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP’s ideological mentor. Mr Guha has been warned of civil and criminal action if he doesn’t offer an unconditional apology within three days for his comments, the BJP has said.
In retaliation, the historian took to twitter tweeting an essay he wrote on threats of freedom of expression in India. “In India today, independent writers and journalists are harassed, persecuted, and even killed. But we shall not be silenced,” he tweeted.
The notice says: “Your deliberate, false and calculated statement against our client’s organization has caused great anguish in the minds of thousands of its members and sympathizers.”
Gauri Lankesh, one of India’s most fearless and outspoken journalists, was killed outside her Bengaluru home last Tuesday, shot dead at close range by unknown bikers.
Mr Guha is among those who have flagged a pattern between this murder and three others over the past four years, those of renowned scholar MM Kalburgi in Karnataka and Leftist thinker Govind Pansare and rationalist Narendra Dabholkar in Maharashtra. All were shot dead right outside their homes by unknown bikers believed to be hired killers.
In the legal notice, the BJP pointed out that none of these murders have been solved so far. A BJP leader in Karnataka said the RSS is the “world’s largest voluntary socio-cultural organization” and the BJP is the “world’s largest democratic political party”.
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