How death of a girl has put the focus on violence, misogyny and alcoholism in Punjabi music
A 22-year-old woman was killed in a celebratory firing, which was part of a pre-wedding ceremony, in Hoshiarpur on Saturday (February 10).
The incident happened when people on the dance floor, many of them drunk, were dancing to a Punjabi number. Ashok Khosla, the main accused and father of the bride, too was inebriated. Suddenly, he pulled out his licensed .32 bore revolver even as he was tapping his feet to the song that was being played by the DJ in the background. Khosla, then with an unsteady hand, fired a bullet which tore apart Sakshi Arora’s forehead. She died at the spot.
Apart from him, another accused named Ashok Sethi too had a pistol and was also firing indiscriminately. The firing stopped only when they realised that a girl had been killed. This is one of the many such deaths amid dance, music and celebration.
But finally, the Punjab Police have woken up to the root of such violence. The police force has made an appeal to Punjabi singers, who through their songs "profess" violence, to shun the use of such words.
To understand the root cause behind the violence in Punjabi songs it is important to revisit the socio-cultural history of the land. Punjab has always celebrated masculinity. Masculinity was directly associated with the commerce of the state.
In medieval Punjab, masculine bravado meant business. Masculinity meant to be able to stand up to the invading plunderers - save your land from them - since this was the first porous state on the western Indian border. Only if you were strong enough to be a gutsy fighter in a battle or in a guerrilla-type war, were you man enough. To be a man was a celebration itself.
The currency for the male child was probably the reason why Punjab accounted for the highest female foeticide and infanticide and demand for dowry cases.
But with liberalisation, came a conflict many couldn’t see coming. New businesses flourished, real estate prices soared, money trickled in and financial profile of people changed. Suddenly, with this change in a society, which appreciated manhood, new ideas were explored, which laid stress on celebrating the arrival of a daughter or girl child. That this would lead to a conflict no one could anticipate.
The songs celebrating violence is one of the many reflections of this conflict, where a man has money but still is rendered powerless to celebrate his masculinity, since it stems from the denial of the basic right of a woman: The right to liberate. When this girl-child grew into a woman she was different from the older generation; not the docile and subjugated one, who would perform a "gidda" once in a while or dance to songs like "Latthe di Chadar" or "Mera Laung Gawacha" at a marriage function.
This woman was more urbane, educated, independent, and wore the latest sunglasses, clothes that made her look desirable, drove a luxury vehicle, and if raw masculinity of the men wooing her didn’t appeal to her, she said no to their advances. Indirectly, it questioned the raw masculinity of man. And this question is answered quite helplessly through songs mostly written by men of deeper pockets in Punjab.
In Honey Singh’s song, "Kudiye ni tere brown rang ne", the lyrics treats woman as a thing of desire to an intimidating extent: “Excuse me miss…kiss kiss kiss….,” and few lines down, “Ban mitran di hor (read whore) I mean mitran di ho,” a deliberate use of the word "hor" which rhymes with the English word whore, and then a clarification in the lyrics itself that what it means is "not whore".
People thought of Honey Singh lyrics and songs as an aberration. But they were wrong. When he went for a hiatus due to illness, there came dozen other singers to fill the void, and most of them sang songs which glorified masculinity, and its by-product, violence.
Sidhu Moosewala song, “Dukki tikki puri thok thok rakh daan, danger te jaan levaan shok rakhda, doori foot di bana hai mandeer rakh di dub vich bhar ke Glock rakh da, casually interpreted it is another form of intimidation, and it means: “I am used to living dangerously, people stay away from me, because I carry a Glock (pistol) with me.”
These songs complement the state of affairs in Punjab. The land holdings in the state have decreased, the population has gone up. In a state which celebrates the arrival of male child, these male children have turned into young men. But these young men have aspirations that are too high to plough the land or be a farmer, and since the industry is leaving the state, education is in the doldrums, the young population adding each day, remain unemployed, thousands addicted to drugs and some simply directionless.
Honey Singh or Sidhu Moosewala, Mankeerat Aulakh or Badshah songs are an escape for these youth to forget their worries and even assert themselves at times with not a drink or two, but a bottle or two. And this assertion takes place, in brawls outside liquor vends, on Saturday nights, behind the rashly driven wheels and many a time in marriage parties. Such youth are walking arbitrators in the towns and cities of Punjab, self-proclaimed judges of situations, who decide whom to thrash, why, when and where. Sometimes they take the mantle of protecting the woman they desire against her wishes. The Ninja song: “Mein kalla kalla thokda reha (I thrashed each person who tried to chase you)" reflects that.
A Mankeerat Aulakh song, “Jail cho phone haun ge, tu parkhi na paunch Jatt di”, when loosely translated, means: “Do not underestimate my power, calls will be made from the jail to chase you down”. This reflects just the way gangsters operate in Punjab and it is often to the tune of this number, people dance to at marriage functions and fire gunshots.
According to an IIM-Ahmedabad study, 60 per cent of the songs sung in recent times have lyrics which celebrate violence, liquor, gun and denigrate women. To really bring the youth of Punjab back on track, they need to change the thought that leads to it - the kind of thought that goes into song writing. And the moral police of that thought are the song writers of Punjab, the Honey Singhs, the Moosewalas, the Badshahs.