“Agar chhua mandir to tujhe dikha denge, Tujhko teri aukaad bata denge”
(Don’t you dare touch the temple, Or else we will show you your place)
At a time when the shift from bhakti to aggressive politicisation of religiosity has taken another leap and is blatantly visible on street corners and militant marches, reading Kunal Purohit’s H Pop: The Secretive World of Hindutva Pop Stars seems particularly, prescient. The aggressive ultranationalism that is being carefully constructed owes considerably to the cult of hatred and violence being built song by song, poem by poem and video by video. Distributed on social media platforms, this cult gets a propulsive force from algorithms which appear to exacerbate rather than censor the modes of hate speech. As this year rolls forward towards the General Elections, it is a given that cultural propaganda will play a key role in mobilising sentiments and turning them into votes. More pertinent is the fact that this propaganda is shaping the country well beyond the cycle of elections in ways in which changes at the hustings will have little impact, a phenomenon that is mapped by Purohit.
The idea for the book was born in 2019 while Purohit was on a reporting trip to Gumla in Jharkhand. Locals recounting a past incident of vicious communal violence in which a Muslim youth was tied up and beaten to death described the anti-Muslim songs that had been playing on loudspeakers at that time. As with many journalists who stumble on a story behind a story, Purohit decided to dig deeper into the role of cultural propaganda. While journalism demands the quick churning out of stories before the reporter moves on to the next thing, Purohit decided to stay with this story, digging deeper and deeper over months and even years. Thanks to his decision, we have H Pop, a book that gives us an insight into an area that has not been given the attention it deserves.
Awareness of the use of culture in the propagation of Hindutva is not new, even outside academia, not least because the launch of big budget films by Hindutva proponents are becoming events in themselves. The publication of vitriolic books and those seeking to provide an alternative version of facts is also being increasingly mapped and reported in articles. Specific channels of such propaganda are being documented in books such as Akshaya Mukul’s book Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India which marks a milestone in this genre. There are also occasional reports on individual pop songs, theatre pieces and poetry which are espousing hate.
But where Purohit breaks new ground is by taking us right into the heart of the production process of Hindutva cultural productions and the veins of its distributive course. What we ‘know’ is happening behind the scenes is brought to the foreground by Purohit’s reporting, showing us that it is not quite behind the scenes at all as only beyond our own purposefully limited gaze. Purohit’s other stellar contribution is in combining ground reporting and analysis with a narrative arc that makes for absorbing reading about a difficult subject.
The story of Hindutva’s lay proponents unfolds around three characters - pop star Kavi Singh, poet Kamal Agney, and publisher/author/YouTuber Sandeep Deo. The three personalities also illuminate three distinct aspects of the propaganda. Purohit’s slow reveal of the characters – a departure from the nut graph style of journalistic reporting works well to hold our attention as more layers are added or peeled away. While reports – few until now – have focussed on the songs and their impact, H Pop shows us the step-by-step process by which these songs and the singers become phenomena.
The book begins with Kavi Singh’s emergence into the world of Hindutva Pop, a journey as fascinating as it is disturbing. The life story we hear (one that Purohit has been told, not necessarily verified), is also quite bizarre. Singh purportedly began singing only in 2019 when her father, Ramkesh Jiwanpurwala, heard her humming in the kitchen and decided she was a singer. As the narrative progresses, we learn that Kavi was ‘adopted’ as a daughter by Ramkesh who saw her when she was a schoolgirl. As a 14-year-old, she moved to Rohtak to be closer to his family. It is in 2019 when Kavi is in her early twenties and married to Ramkesh’s adopted son ‘Prince’ that Ramkesh begins making Kavi into a singer. But, as we learn, he doesn’t just want to make her into a singer but an instant star, and the means to that are songs with resonate with Hindutva themes. Barely weeks after the discovery of his daughter as a singer Ramkesh has created a studio recording of Kavi singing a song on the Pulwama terror attack and sent it out, leading to the song becoming viral.
Kavi’s songs portraying the Muslim as a figure of hate and scorn is not a result of her own experience, as the Muslims she has met are the ‘good ones’. Her widowed mother in Alwar, lives rent-free in a house which belongs to a Muslim family friend. Her retrospective attempt to feel differently about her past friendships feels forced, as does Ramkesh’s story in which his family was warned against selling land to a Muslim family, by a member of the same family who was a friend.
Equally puzzling is the transformation of the second character, poet Kamal Agney, whose father counted a Muslim man and his family at the top of his list of friends in his hometown of Gosaiganj in Uttar Pradesh. Despite a business relationship souring the friendship, Kamal’s father defends his friend against his son’s aggressive moves. And though Kamal was regularly sent to the RSS shakhas as a young boy (as a form of getting some discipline instilled into him), Kamal’s first vote was cast for Akhilesh Yadav. Were the seeds sown in the shakha drills, the seeds which sprouted in the fertile soil of an aggressive resurgent Hindutva politics? Or is it a convenient career move? Ambition is certainly a common thread binding Ramkesh and Kamal. Kamal’s abiding childhood memory is of the disappointing lack of ambition of the poet whom he saw as his guru. Why the themes of fear and incitement to violence lend themselves to ambition becomes clear from the course of the career trajectories that Purohit teases out.
After her first viral song about the Pulwama terror attack, Kavi Singh was in danger of disappearing as a one-hit wonder as her songs about historic Hindu figures, etc. did not get traction. It was when a song on Article 370 once again hit a nerve that Kavi was established as a singer of Hindutva themes.
The performers have all inched closer to the ruling BJP through their art and both Kavi and Kamal have been invited to perform for BJP leaders and at their political events. Ramkesh was all set to get Kavi Singh a ticket for the 2024 elections, and Kamal has been campaigning for Uttar Pradesh’s incumbent Chief Minister Ajay Bisht ‘Yogi’. In this endeavour of pursuing career objectives in tandem with the promotion of the ruling party’s interests, they are part of the wider macrocosm of the middle and upper middle class who have seen competitive professions of loyalty to the ruling party leaders and their causes as a means of insurance for their careers if not upward mobility. Ramkesh at least makes no bones about the reasons for the choice of his themes: “Hindutva is the right thing to say in this mahaul (political climate).”
The symbiotic relationship that Purohit reveals is a win-win. “For Hindutva to survive and flourish, it seeks enemies, and hence, needs to constantly produce newer enemies,” Purohit writes. “Kamal reinforces the old enemies, helps single out new ones and helps the Hindutva ecosystem sustain both, the villainisation of these enemies and the glorification of ‘real’ heroes, like Godse…For Kamal, constructing enemies through the telling of real and imagined injustices is an essential part of his craft. The enemies that he creates are in line with critics and dissenters who find themselves in the crosshairs of the BJP.”
The importance of these pop stars to electoral campaigns is evident. Kanhaiya Mittal, who has written songs specifically for Yogi, traverses the country by jet to perform at election meetings. As cultural performers, the party can call upon them to say things that they cannot and Kamal tells Purohit he ratchets up the vitriol according to his audience. When he is called upon to perform at party rallies, he is told whether to dampen or stir up the heat. A tool for political leaders, hate speech in the form of songs and verses is also easier to absorb. Calling for rivers of blood, throwing acid in the eyes of students protesting against the CAA, or valourising the killing of Mahatma Gandhi becomes more palatable to a wider audience when combined with a catchy tune than in prosaic speech. It can also make leaps of logic with greater agility.
Purohit quotes Elisabeth Kendall, who, writing on Jihadist propaganda, points out that “In the practical function of argument, poetry has the added advantage of papering over cracks in logic or avoiding the necessity of providing evidence by guiding an argument into an emotional rather than intellectual crescendo.” Cultural products are also allowed greater leeway, while plain speech invoking the same sentiments may attract greater censure and censorship.
Purohit uses the historical examples of Nazi propaganda and the Rwanda genocide to make his case regarding the role of song and poetry in the service of propaganda and as a call to violence. In Rwanda, the link of racist music to the genocide was so stark that singer and songwriter Simon Bikindi was among those indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Purohit quotes from a body of academic work on this subject, perhaps even belabouring the analytical point somewhat.
What differentiates propaganda now from that of the 1930s or even the 1990s, is the implosion of social media. Mass indoctrination is taking place one handheld device at a time. The mob is being shaped in private rooms individual by individual, as much as through high voltage public spectacle. In the hands of the profit-oriented social media giants, the checks on hate speech and incitement to violence are poorly policed, while algorithms to promote content are designed to gravitate towards the lowest common denominator. The malleability of social media is a factor propelling the porosity of the content. The speed of internet-propelled social media allows for no checks, and high-decibel commentary can become a truth well before facts have been ascertained and disseminated.
Notwithstanding the ‘virality’ of the content – the more rabid the better – it would be pertinent to understand how much of this content is being pushed by an army of trolls – whether volunteers or employees of internet cells set up for political purposes. Is the virality simply an outcome of the politically fertile ground, or is it being assiduously pushed using the services of the tech industry and an army of bots? One Hindutva footsoldier who eventually feels the sharp decline in his reach after criticising BJP leaders is Sandeep Deo, the third of the stars profiled in the book.
Deo, who has a YouTube channel and a publishing house dedicated to promoting hardline Hindu nationalism gives us a glimpse of another kind of ambition within the Hindutva fold. For this cohort, Modi is not enough and Yogi is the answer. But Deo’s efforts are not just for the next electoral bout or even the fast track to his own popularity. His fight is for the next 1,000 years. Adi Shankaracharya will not come, he says, so people like him have to take on the role of protecting Sanatana Dharma. He makes no differentiation between good and bad Muslims, even asking a restaurant owner if he employs ‘those people’ before he will have a meal. In this battle everything is grist for the mill: the rape of an 8-year-old Muslim girl, an OTT platform screening a show that includes a divorcee or an alcoholic are both part of a conspiracy against Hindus.
International publishing platforms offer space for his views. On Bloomsbury’s platform, Deo’s book on a communist conspiracy around the freedom struggle and involving Nehru becomes a historical and sociological study. The publishing house may have dropped a book on Delhi Riots written by right-wing authors under pressure, but not Deo’s. In fact, it is he who has withdrawn books from Bloomsbury in protest. Deo eschews distribution channels like Amazon and Flipkart, terming them ‘Hindu-haters’, but uses YouTube extensively despite having been shut down twice by the video-sharing website. Deo claims this was because of his use of the word ‘Rohingya’, which is clearly untrue (as Purohit points out) because YouTube hosts hundreds of programmes that are about the Rohingya. What seems more likely, though Purohit doesn’t say so, is that YouTube employs algorithms to search for specific words to try and weed out incendiary commentary, such as against the Rohingya, and Deo’s use of the word would have flagged his post for further scrutiny. The limited effectiveness of such censorship mechanisms is clear from the fact that Deo continues to post the same content while leaving out the triggering words.
By the end of the book, Deo has moved away from the BJP though not quite in the way that might seem obvious. Giving more details would amount to a spoiler and a shame for a book that is eminently readable.
Purohit discloses that his interlocutors were well aware he was a journalist and writing a book. The use of first names throughout the book suggests an ease of familiarity and trust gained over time. It would be interesting to know whether they were aware of his views and if so, couldn’t care less. Or did he, as other upper-caste journalists have confirmed during their reporting, get far more leeway as one who is essentially within the fold despite having odd ideas?
A few small annoyances that have more to do with the publisher than the author: it is really annoying that the publisher has chosen to put all footnotes online instead of in the book, especially irritating for those who are interested in the subject beyond the book. A more rigorous edit could also have edited out repetitive passages in a few places.
But as stated, these are small quibbles for what is a must-read book for those concerned with what Purohit describes as a “tectonic shift” in the way people are constructing their realities. The book might more aptly have been named ‘The Hidden World of Hindutva Pop Stars’, since it’s a world that is far from secret, and perhaps only hidden from an audience that wilfully chooses not to see it. H Pop, written over several years of researching and following the trajectories of the four characters it portrays, doesn’t so much plug a hole in the narrative on Hindutva as opens a window into this world that needs to be explored much further.
Aunohita Mojumdar is a journalist who has lived and worked in India, Afghanistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka. She is the former Editor of Himal Southasian. She currently lives in Bengaluru.