‘I Am on the Hit List: A Journalist’s Murder and the Rise of Autocracy in India’ by Rollo Romig

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I Am on the Hit List by Rollo Romig

Famous in the Indian state of Karnataka for journalism that ferociously attacked the powers that be, Gauri Lankesh became known worldwide after she was shot dead outside her home in 2017. Although the journalist was a casualty in a profession ill-liked by authoritarians of all persuasions, the identity of her assassins and their motives remained unclear. 

Rollo Romig’s I Am on the Hit List is a gripping investigation of Lankesh’s murder as well as a fascinating tour of the culture and corruption of the South Indian state where she lived. The Hindu nationalist agenda of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi also gets close scrutiny.

No one took credit for killing Lankesh and everyone had a theory. Some blamed the local Maoists, some a corrupt swami called Lankesh whom she had exposed and others named an extremist sect called Sanatan Sanstha. Many thoughts turned to Modi’s party, the BJP, or one of its affiliates. After all, Lankesh was a fierce critic of Hindutva, the BJP’s agenda to remodel India according to its fundamentalist version of Hinduism. As Romig remarks, if there was a message behind her killing, it was cryptic. But perhaps ascribing a precise message to the killers credits them with more sophistication than they deserve? Maybe it was simply a hate crime directed at an outspoken woman?

The India of I Am on the Hit List is not a land of ashrams and enlightenment but a bitterly politicized nation whose demonization of opponents is comparable to the U.S. but aggravated by an enduring caste system and sectarian tension. Many Indians are hooked to a “never ending drip feed of hate,” according to a journalist Romig interviewed. Although India’s press is free, journalism has become a dangerous occupation and its deadliest beats—crime, corruption and politics—were the red meat of the periodical Lankesh edited.

Get I Am on the Hit List at Amazon here.

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