Saying The “Right” Thing: Mainstream Desi Hip-Hop And All That We Imagine As Its “Culture”

There is a propensity of rappers within the Desi Hip-hop hindi raposphere to brand themselves as "conscious" artists, and doing an immediate turn around by weaponising the identity of artists already marginalised in the country.

By Saptaparna Samajdar Dec 11, 2024 6 min read

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It has been some time since Hanumankind’s Big Dawgs infiltrated our psyches and took over our consciousnesses almost inescapably, resolutely, and eventually — quite disappointingly. Here was a track, finally, that was breaking the internet, was recent, was rap, had motorcyclists in the familiar Well of Death. It is a good story, especially when you look at the lyrics — one that stretched into a larger analogy for the Indian rap and Desi Hip-hop scene finally getting a seat at the world rap-music table.

The rapper has since performed at multiple famous venues, drawing throngs of people, including the Modi and Us event held in Long Island, New York to an audience of Indian diaspora, and was pictured hugging the Prime Minister soon after.

The rapper has since performed at multiple famous venues, drawing throngs of people, including the Modi and Us event held in Long Island, New York to an audience of Indian diaspora, and was pictured hugging the Prime Minister soon after. More recently, on MTV’s Hustle Season 4, a Lil Bhatia performance had resounding bellows of ‘Jai Shri Ram‘ as the judges gave the rapper a standing ovation.

Neither of these events have been a surprise for anyone who has worked slightly within the Desi Hip-hop sphere for even a bit. They are aware of how it nurtures right-wing sentiments, and know of the carefully constructed system of blurring the boundaries between being provocative and downright inflammatory and malicious. It is an alternative system of behavior that is at play, one must remember. While pop artists have more stringent codes of behavior enforced upon themselves, maintaining a clean, sanitised and apolitical image, rap artists have constantly been lauded for showing transgressive behavior and subverting ideas of enforced decency.

It is here that one of the cruxes to the problem with Desi Hip-hop as a whole starts shaking shape. Hip-hop, born out of resistance, and a foundational part of protest culture, made by black artists when placed in the hands of brown people, particularly Indians who form the crux of this research, does not sound inherently wrong. However, when one considers the domination of the upper caste, Hindu narratives in all forms of media even when it comes to crisis depictions of the middle class, the problem becomes clearer.

» Also read: Indian Hip Hop Is A Man’s World

While the essence of desi hip-hop does attempt to be the same, with rappers tapping into their psyches and creating their own labyrinthine, complicated myth-making, interspersing their own narratives with cultural commentary – be it the lack of employment, allusions to current socio-political conditions, their own deprivation and the like, — the ecosystem nestles and cradles within itself the consuming ideology of the burning national, which is Hindutva and an affiliation to the right wing.

Ghor Sanatanis: the expanding bubble of Hindutva rap

Uttar Pradesh’s Panther, or Anubhav Shukla has a decent listener base on Spotify – with a whopping number of 1 million monthly listeners. An MTv Hustle 2.0 alum, he has called himself a “proud sanatani”, and has released a song titled UP Se, where he lauds Yogi Adityanath for his contribution to the “prosperity” of the state. This is just the tip of the iceberg, there exists an entire niche of Hindutva rap on YouTube, with its own resounding fanbase.

In a video titled Sanatani featuring a rapper named Saad Kapoour, one sees a narrative of how the 21st century Indian man has been led astray and no longer listens to the preaching of the Bhagavad Gita. The music video features a chanting of ‘sab propaganda hai‘, while a montage of the crew holding signages of ‘Error 404 Hindu Rashtra Not Found‘ and ‘Dog = Family Cow = Food‘ flashes past your eyes. Accruing 1 million + views on YouTube on almost every video, one finds multiple videos from channels like Narci, Ghor Sanatani, etc. who exclusively focus on making rap music based on the proliferation of the sanatan dharma.

Titles like Sanatan Vaani, Satya Sanatan, and the like leap at you. It is jarring, this bubble, this ecosystem, that prevails. The comment section has ‘Jai Shree Ram‘ reverberations all over, repeatedly, accompanied with the appraisal of Sanatan Dharma and red flag emojis.

» Also read: Wild Wild Women: India’s First Female Hip-Hop Collective

While this burgeoning niche in itself is concerning in its existence, with its teeming number of super fans, what is particularly discomfiting is the endorsement of similar sentiments into “mainstream rap.” Within the echo chambers of Desi Hip-hop artists and their protective fans, a number of transgressions fly under the radar – there are a few discussions on the subreddit, a few tweets flying on X before someone dismisses the concern as being “too woke”. [The rap fanbase, internationally, is reputed for being hard, above criticism that might be based on progressive politics, and a favouring of the ideal of being problematic for fun]. Words like “chamar” and “chapri” float around in rap circuits with relative ease – and with minor criticism.

Kya Hai Beef: Seedhe Maut Vs SOS

In June of 2024, there was the unfolding of one of Desi Hip-hop’s biggest rap beefs. Delhi rap duo, Seedhe Maut, now synonymous with being the faces of Delhi Hip-hop, went head to head with SOS, or Straight Outta Srinagar, a Kashmiri Rap duo. While both parties threw allegations at each other, although not substantiated by any evidence that was not made publicly available – what surprised onlookers, perhaps, was the downright branding of the Kashmiri duo by Seedhe Maut as pattharbaaz, repeatedly in their song Kaanch Ke Ghar: ‘Inme se ek ka hai naam Aatankki par doosra hai aatankwadi/Bro ye pattharbaaz hai/Army pe patthar hai fekta aur chidhtaa hai bharat se/Bhosdika pattharbaaz hai/Chhaati pe nishaan hai iski, ye doston pe flex hai karta/Ye pattharbaaz hai/Bharat mein hai ye kamaata aur ussi pe patthar maare/Haan ye pattharbaaz hai‘.

A lot of fans found this sudden turnaround of the Delhi rap duo to fundamentalist nationalist values in the face of a more personal, internal beef, when they had spent years cultivating an image where they believed in more socialist ideals of kraanti.

The strategy, here, is not unfamiliar — although yet not seen as significantly in the Indian rap space as it has been within the political sphere of the country. A lot of fans found this sudden turnaround of the Delhi rap duo to fundamentalist nationalist values in the face of a more personal, internal beef, when they had spent years cultivating an image where they believed in more socialist ideals of kraanti. After all, these were the people who released a track like Scalp Dem. It is almost comical, this propensity of rappers within the Desi Hip-hop hindi raposphere – their investment in branding themselves as “conscious” artists, and doing an immediate turn around and weaponising the identity of artists already marginalised in the country.

It seems that to align oneself with the aesthetic of being anti-establishmentarian only ever runs up to the point when the opponent you are faced with does not conform to the expected ideal of the grateful marginalised person. What had followed this incident, was a coterie of rappers who believed themselves to be the duo’s proteges, consistently harassing the Kashmiri duo. This country is hostile as it is towards any minimal sense of self assertion from Kashmiris — it is therefore not unexpected that when the actors in question within this beef are Kashmiri Muslims, any inkling of dissent / anger towards the Indian State would be branded as anti-national behavior.

Questions for the culture of Desi hip-hop

The solution, many Desi Hip-hop fans ask rappers to avoid controversy, or an apolitical standing — or ignore the politics of their favorite artists. What is baffling, is that rap, and hip-hop, has always been very political. While post 2000s hip-hop has drifted away from its roots, even in the American landscape.

» Also read: The Transition Of Desi Hip-Hop: Rap Concerts With Genderqueer Resistance

The preaching of “culture” is what cuts through, because what culture do we centralise, if anti-establishmentarian rap is seen as a passing trend, criticism is seen as “wokeist” interjection, and oppression is seen as a forgivable offence, if not a bandwagon jumped onto immediately? The culture that swears it is protective of all its artists, that the criticism that they levy is an inside-job, a family business, only protects the artist which posits the most ambiguous, un-specific critique of the state, one that can still be neutralised and tranquilised to the mainstream convenience.

Note:

This piece does not mean to state that there are no subversive voices within the scene, a huge chunk of Mumbai hip-hop is based on the politics of class and caste, and one can list off artists like DIVINE, Naezy and Maharya. Hip-hop in Malayalam has seen the emergence of some of the most creative, critical work spanning across introspective and societal threads of discourse. However, what one sees is that the work of these artists, work that is progressive often gets marked as “subversive” and “disruptive” but never fit into the “popular” ideal.

One also has to remember that the political air that DIVINE and Naezy rose to fame in is very different from what we are working with today. Using the existence of these voices to negate the intensifying problem would be only stupid and reductive, and in the end, ignorant.

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