Girish Karnad was under-round-the-clock armed security for the last one-and-a-half months. The police cover came after the State police discovered that his was the first name on a “hit list” recovered from the alleged killers of writer-activist Gauri Lankesh.
“Investigations revealed that his house was recced and the conspiracy to kill him had progressed,” said a senior officer with the SIT probing the murders of Gauri Lankesh and M.M. Kalburgi.
A strong critic of the Hindutva right and communalism, Karnad, along with U.R. Ananthamurthy, were often targeted by the Sangh Parivar and its affiliates.
His first brush with activism probably came in the wake of Babri Masjid demolition. Lankesh and Karnad entered public activism together on the same issue — they were part of a fact-finding committee on Baba Budangiri, a syncretic place of worship in Chikkamagaluru that the Sangh Parivar groups were keen to establish as an exclusively Hindu shrine in 2002.
Karnad was supposed to lead a communal harmony march to the shrine in December 2003, but he and Lankesh were arrested before that, said K.L. Ashok, of Komu Souharda Vedike, which organised the march.
The playwright and actor was a constant presence in many protests against communalism since then— against lynching of people from the minority and dalit communities, against the murders of Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh and so on.
He also took the lead in several protests against the Karnataka Prevention of Cow Slaughter and Preservation (Amendment) Bill 2012, brought by the then BJP government.
But the trigger for him becoming the target of an alleged rightwing plot came in April, 2015, when he participated in a protest against the beef ban in Maharashtra.
“This put him on the hitlist,” said a senior police official close to the probe. At the event Girish Karnad said he was not himself a beef eater but supported beef eating as it was part of several cultures. The same year, he suggested the city’s airport could be named after Tipu Sultan. This came even as the government’s decision to celebrate Tipu Jayanthi was being opposed. His remarks soon snowballed into a controversy and protests were held across the State and began receiving death threats. He was warned that he would meet the same end as Kalburgi.
But this did not deter him. In September, 2018, he participated in a programme to commemorate the anniversary of Lankesh’s murder with a placard hung around his neck that read: “Me Too Urban Naxal.” He was protesting the arrest of seven activists branded “urban naxals” by Pune police in an alleged plot to assassinate the Prime Minister. Hindu right wing groups lodged two complaints after the event.
Never shying away from taking a political stand, he along with other writers opposed BJP and its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi in both 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections and supported the Congress. He had campaigned for Congress candidate Nandan Nilekani in the city in the 2014.
