The British have left many legacies like the systemic hate template built along the lines of their rabid anti-semitism; none as enduring as their Divide and Rule Policy. Today, only a feeble subgroup does not subscribe to identity politics, hate and delusional yearning for mythical past glory. While social media amplifies this phenomenon, not enough scholarly study has been done on the domain, the belief systems, the foot soldiers and the pay-off. And Kunal Purohit’s H-Pop: The Secretive World of Hindutva Pop Stars is pathbreaking; investigative journalism at its finest, lifting the veil on torchbearers of hate. Purohit investigates the answer to three basic questions. “Can a song trigger a murder? Can a poem spark a riot? Can a book divide a people?”
Nothing describes a phenomenon as succinctly as real-life itself. There’s immediacy in how the three pop stars of Hindutva are delineated: YouTube sensation Kavi Singh, firebrand poet Kamal Agney and Sandeep Deo of India Speaks Daily. The author dives deep into ideologues who indoctrinate audiences through their art form. Each subject is dealt with respect and humanity while dismantling the over-simplifications and the fudged data of their belief systems.
Kavi Singh is an accidental superstar; found crooning in the kitchen by her adoptive father. It led to recording and sharing of her song overnight on WhatsApp audio before a hasty video was shot for YouTube; to fame and thousands of subscribers overnight. Much about her is manufactured: costume, career graph, “family” and lyrics. While she admits she has received grace and generosity from Muslims, they are the target of her propaganda. To her, they are the enemy who must be run out of India if Hindus are to remain safe. The flipside of meteoric social media sensations is that the audience consumes and remains still hungry for the next big thing.
Kamal Agney vocalises on stage what hardliners wish to believe—secularism is evil. And so, it is Nathuram Godse, who is his hero. And to prove this point Mahatma Gandhi is to be pilloried for every evil that befell pre-Independence India. Agney is portrayed as a diminutive man with the talent for presenting as poetry everything that is considered too base to be enunciated. It is also his mentor-promoter and the social set-up within which he operates that is sketched to perfection. On the issue of cow slaughter, a Hindutva flashpoint, the conversation turns interesting. “Shambhu insists that bovine slaughter is driven by economic reasons and opposition to it is merely ‘political noise’.” The doublespeak is evident. Kamal too had Muslim friends growing up in Gosaiganj, the outskirts of Lucknow. Things soured and Kamal also figured out the monetary benefits of writing to prompts suggested by VHP officials. “Yet, as the months rolled in, Kamal started to make peace with the unfairness of being a foot soldier.”
Sandeep Deo views things differently and that propels his viewership. “‘If there was love within the family, the parents would have never sent the child to sit behind in the child seat,’ Sandeep says.”
Quite unaware of how automobile etiquette works. And yet his completely offtrack takes were once accepted as knowledge and wisdom by the fold. Among his ambitions is the desire to start Alt Tech firms. Currently he is an influencer and a publisher hoping to steer his fledging far right political party Ekam Sanatan Bharat Dal to victory in the 2024 elections.
None of these stars have evolved in isolation. It is ironic that this phenomenon occurs among the poorest in states so backward the rest of India call them bimaru (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and UP). Within that community there are systemic rewards, power and money to be had. Yet it is the dynamics of their smalltown adolescence that Purohit sketches out succinctly. Without this crutch of rage and the gullible public looking for inciters of hate for motivation, none of them would have escaped squalor and anonymity. This path offers the only recourse to making it big in life. They are but foot soldiers in a sinister world with dreams of stardom. And the 2024 elections promise just that.
H – Pop: The Secretive World of Hindutva Pop Stars
By: Kunal Purohit
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pages: 278
Price: Rs 499