Poison Pop
A still from a music video by Upendra Rana.
Saurabh Sharma explores the rising wave of propaganda music on Indian airwaves, anti-Muslim songs filled with jingoism, religious bigotry, and xenophobia masquerading as art.
Editor’s Note: The author, Saurabh Sharma, was commissioned this piece by the News9Live website (TV9 Network) in June 2022. It was published on 4 September 2022, but within 24 hours, it was pulled down from the website without any further clarification given to the author by the editors or the website’s management. After the author received no further communication regarding this issue from News9Live, The Chakkar accepted a revised version of this essay.
Lyricist, music composer, and singer of devotional songs Upendra Rana enjoys a huge fan following on YouTube. As of September 2022, he has 395K subscribers. But he doesn’t produce your run-of-the-mill devotional bhajans. His songs—if they qualify to be called so—are either warnings and threats towards the Muslim community, or outright lies that are increasingly getting the approval stamp from the present dispensation.
But he isn’t the only person producing such music. Lucky DJ, who has over a million YouTube subscribers, released a track called “Khatarnak Hindu Dance” on Independence Day. The video’s description includes the following keywords: “Jai Shree Ram”, “Bajrang Dal”, and “Hindustan Zindabad.” The comments underneath are all appreciative of his “mixing” of Jai Shree Ram sloganeering alongside hate-filled and polarizing messages made by the current Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath.
There is no dearth of people like Upendra Rana and Lucky DJ. The question, however, is: Are they getting legitimacy to produce such ‘music’? What do these music composers want by saying they want to ‘recover’ land, make temples, and send ‘mullahs’ to Pakistan? Why is their narrative so similar to the ruling party’s and its several affiliates, who openly call for violence against Muslims?
Back in January, during an interview with Karan Thapar for The Wire—the founding president of Genocide Watch Dr. Gregory Stanton warned that India is on the brink of (anti-Muslim) genocide. He also said that “it won’t be committed by the state, but by [the] mobs organised by [the] RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh] and the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] militants.”
One is tempted to question the tenacity of the argument; however, there’s a need to focus on what Dr. Stanton said before making this concluding remark. He noted that “genocide is a process.” The real question then becomes: Has this process started in India?
The answer, if the reader hasn’t yet realized, is that this wheel began to spin long ago. Messages like the Prime Minister suggesting that those creating violence can be ‘identified by their clothes’ or foot-soldiers of the government echoing that Indian Muslims are ‘descendants of Babur’ have further accelerated this process. There has been a tremendous rise in casual demands of anti-Muslim genocides by a variety of leaders, directly or indirectly associated with the ruling party.
“Music is being used insidiously to influence young minds and normalize hate and violence in the everyday fabric of our societies.” And because lyrics of these songs and bhajans are “open call for violence against minority communities”, they should be amounted to hate speech.
While subtler tactics were employed previously by the Hindutva forces to permanently install animosity against Muslims, the latest medium of communication is the arts. From hagiographic films made to eulogize the prime minister to an attempt to rewrite histories to anti-Muslim music production, each method is yielding the desired result: increased tension between religious, regional, and ethnic groups.
Reporting on the nature of the eruption of communal clashes in multiple locations in India on 10 April (on the Hindu festival of Ram Navami), the Los Angeles Times noted that “incendiary songs directed at Muslims have become a precursor” to attacks on them. In June, Al Jazeera also tied the anti-Muslim music production in India to the “rising Islamophobia”. Many more media outlets covered this phenomenon post the Al Jazeera story. But as the situation at hand involves art, we connected with four artists to understand how they view the increasing production of anti-Muslim pop music and ‘devotional’ songs.
“We are already witnessing a slow-motion genocide in our country,” says author and filmmaker Natasha Badhwar. Enlisting an array of states where atrocities against Muslims are either rampant or have registered a spike, she notes that this “Violence is being perpetrated not only by [the] lynch mobs but also by instruments of the state like the police. There seems to be complete impunity for perpetrators and victims are being systematically criminalised and crushed.”
According to Badhwar, “Music is being used insidiously to influence young minds and normalize hate and violence in the everyday fabric of our societies.” And because lyrics of these songs and bhajans are “open call for violence against minority communities”, they should be amounted to hate speech.
Echoing Badhwar’s thoughts, human rights activist Zainab Patel emphasizes the a “steady rise both in terms of intensity and the magnitude of using not only popular songs, but also folk media to depict Muslims as anti-India and traitors, instead of being patriots.” However, she feels that “this hate was always simmering in the background.” The only difference now, according to Patel, is that people have amassed enough “courage to be their true selves, without having an iota of shame of being seen as anti-Muslim or anti-secular. Hence, the demonization of Muslims continues unabashed in this country.”
This “demonization,” according to the Lahore-based Pakistani-American writer and doctor Usman T. Malik, is getting increasingly normalized. Underlining that “it’s reminiscent of what the Israelis have done to the Palestinians for decades,” Malik juxtaposes India’s current dispensation’s attitude with the Nehruvian-Gandhian idea of secular India.
“It’s way more insidious than [what] a lot of other dog-whistling extremists do,” says Syed Ahmed, a media professional. “Some of the tunes are rather catchy,” he observes, “or based on [popular] songs. Even I have found myself inadvertently humming one of them as I kept hearing it in memes. People who might not agree with the lyrics might have the song stuck in their head just because it’s playing everywhere.”
Sharing the example of Vivek Agnihotri-directed film The Kashmir Files (2022), Syed notes that “the movie did little to arouse sympathy for Kashmiri Pandits, but there were a lot of hateful comments and calls for violence against Muslims among people who watched the movie.”
Then, isn’t there an obvious link between the consumption of such media and the looming threat of genocide? Syed is unsure about that but certainly feels that it “is part of a larger ecosystem setting the ground for genocide, which even Gregory Stanton, the founder of Genocide Watch, talked about.”
Malik, however, says that “jingoism, religious bigotry, and xenophobia masquerading as art is certainly not new in the world’s history. Holocaust survivor testimonies confirm that the Third Reich used loud music as [a] form of torture, as did the Americans in the cells at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. So, I would put using Hindutva songs and anti-Muslim lyrics to evoke passion, anger, or pain in the same category, for it serves two purposes: incite violence by the majority and simultaneously hurt the sentiments of the minority.”
But is it really a new phenomenon in India—this otherization of Muslims? Patel takes us back in time. She says, “Starting off from the Babri Masjid demolition to the Mumbai riots and subsequent riots across the country, you’ll find an extremely polarizing messaging. It’s always the ‘us versus them’ and ‘Hindustan versus Pakistan’ talks … that logic by definition attributes anything anti-India and anti-Hindu to the Muslim community.”
If that’s the case, then shouldn’t this potentially dangerous “art” be considered inflammatory? “In all probability, yes,” Patel says. However, she also adds that “it all depends on the usage of existing legislation to curb violence.” Because “it’s [the] selective implementation of existing laws by those in the bureaucracy, elected representative chairs, and police, and, of course, those in the judiciary as well [that] selectively target[s] Muslims.”
According to Ahmed, “labelling such music as hate speech won’t make any difference” because, as even Patel noted, “elected representatives and members of the government [too] use it, [and] without any consequences whatsoever.” Though he is “fairly accustomed” to anti-Muslim prejudice ever since he was a child, what’s more worrying for him today is that his “house could be bulldozed, I could be lynched for carrying meat, I could be arrested for no reason like Kappan Siddique was. And dating or marrying someone who’s Hindu might be a death sentence.”
According to Ahmed, “labelling such music as hate speech won’t make any difference” because, as even Patel noted, “elected representatives and members of the government [too] use it, [and] without any consequences whatsoever.”
Assessing from across the border, Malik finds such fears among Muslims “becoming commonplace and popular in India. [It] is reflective of deliberate sectarianism and ever more pervasive state-sponsored violence against the Indian Muslim: a dismal reality that becomes demoralizing and more frightening by the day.”
With nostalgia, Malik recollects a discussion he had had with his friends in the early 2000s when they were in awe of India because of “the direction India was taking”, thinking “Pakistan should similarly work towards secularisation, better systems of democracy, and [move] away from religious fanaticism,” he says. “Alas, the India that was becoming a beacon for us to follow seems to have evaporated, leaving behind this disgruntled, self-righteous, and persecutory country that doesn’t care about the needs of the modern world and which seems to be regressing.”
While Malik acknowledges that his country has “manifold problems that include religious intolerance, violence, corruption and a military-feudal complex, in India’s stability and political and scientific maturity there was a model and hope for the entire region. The current religio-political situation in India is not promising either for her or her neighbours.”
It’s this atmosphere that has made it reasonable “for us to fear for our safety, our future, and our families—and all prospects of enjoying socioeconomic political benefits,” Patel concurs with Malik’s viewpoints. And yet, she adds that she continues to remain hopeful.
And so does Badhwar, who says that she, “refuse[s] to allow my imagination and my capacity for hope and repair to be diminished. I feel pain and rage at each attack on the people of India, be it emotional, systemic, or physical violence.”
Malik also hopes that “India rights her course soon and rejects all forms of sectarian violence, for in her strength and love there is strength and love and peace for the entire region.” Ahmed, however doesn’t “see the hatred, prejudice or violence abating anytime soon. In the “abstract sense or in the extreme long term”, he says, he’s still hopeful for Indian democracy.
Amidst all this, it appears that Badhwar’s optimism remains unshakeable. She says, “There are a significant number of people who are countering the downward spiral of Indian democracy and polity. I feel confident that despite the dark times we find ourselves in, we will be able to summon the energy and wisdom of our civilizational consciousness and resist this march towards destruction.”
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Saurabh Sharma is a Delhi-based queer writer and freelance journalist. You can find them on Instagram: @writerly_life and Twitter: @writerly_life.
