NEW DELHI — Gauri Lankesh, one of India’s most outspoken journalists, was walking into her house on Tuesday night.

It was around 8. The night was warm. She was alone.

As she stepped through her gate, just feet from her front door, several gunshots rang out.

She was killed instantly in what political opposition officials say appears to be yet another assassination of an intellectual who publicly criticized India’s governing party and the Hindu agenda it has pursued. In recent years, at least three other anti-establishment activists have been silenced by bullets.

Ms. Lankesh’s death, which monopolized television news coverage on Wednesday, set off protests across India, a country increasingly polarized by supporters of the Hindu nationalist governing party and its detractors.