The past few months did not augur well for guys named Sidhu. One went to jail in a decades-old case of road rage — or is it because of a hug he gave across the Kartarpur crossing a couple of years back? The other got killed in a broad daylight gun attack in the Indian Punjab. Personally, speaking no love lost for the former, either for the sport, he played or his political antics. The latter, it must be said was a talented artist, a seemingly down-to-earth, people’s person mowed down in a hail of bullets in the prime of his life.
One feels sad for his fans, kin, and particularly his elderly parents. However, whether you live by the gun or not, if violence is the gospel you preach, the grim reaper will come a calling sooner than later. The genre of music that Sidhu Moose Wala practiced; rap, language notwithstanding, tends to be violent in its verbal and visual content. Even female rappers go about extolling: “Jat ne aa ghorey rakhey dou: Ek bhajey duja hik vich wajey” (The Jat keeps two horses: one for the races, the other to hit in the chest with). (“Ghora” is a vernacular for both a horse and a hammer on the gun).
Popular music and violence are no strangers to each other. The “King” who refuses to die or “leave the building” called his groupies the Memphis Mafia. The “Killing Me Softly” magician, the timid looking “Ol’ blue eyes” not-so-secretly aspired to be a gangster and rubbed shoulders with the “wrong crowd” routinely. The 50 Cents, the Snoop Dogs, the Notorious Bigs, the Tupac Shakurs, the wannabe bad-boy, Will Smith – lest anyone forget, he too is a rapper — all bear witness to the fact that hip-hop celebrity, machismo, and violence almost go hand in hand.
Coming back to Sidhu Moose Wala’s murder, nowhere do the boundaries of the real and the make-believe crisscross as it does in the world of rap music. The genre feeds off violence and ends up slap bang in the middle of it more often than is usually imagined.
Moose Wala, an unheard-of town in the Indian Punjab was made famous by Sidhu; he sang about love and guns in equal measure; became the face and the voice of the Indian farmers’ protest against the crop price legislation that barricaded Delhi for months on end; contested elections on the Indian National Congress ticket was cut down on May 29 in a hail of bullets, riding a black SUV that has become the second-most mentioned object of desire among the rap artists, next only to the gun in this music genre popular across continents. Their love interests have unfortunately been pushed way down the list under drugs, bling, rivalries, and gang warfare. No more “good guys,” everybody wants to be a “bad-ass.”
That his VIP security was withdrawn along with five hundred something others just in the Indian state of Punjab only 24 hours before the gangland-style fatal shooting, raises many questions in and of itself. Why should the taxpayer, whether in India or Pakistan or anywhere else for that matter, foot the bill for providing round-the-clock security to someone who can very well afford to hire better security out-of-pocket? That such a facility can be provided and withdrawn on a whim, makes it even more tenuous to justify. We will return to Sidhu and his tragically sad end in a bit.
Illaqa Ghair in India?
For the longest time, the illegal arms trade and the resultant violence in Pakistan were laid at the doorstep of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). The northern badlands where the writ of the Pakistani state did not extend, and the unfinished business of the withdrawal of the British from the subcontinent in 1947 along with the tenuous Durand Line between Pakistan and Afghanistan gained infamy for its cottage gun industry. India, on the other hand, was applauded for its strict handling of feudalism and princely states and for bringing the entire country under a singular, constitutional law.
While Pakistan was awash in Kalashnikovs and heroin thanks to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and our desire for gaining “strategic depth” beyond the Jamrud Pass and the Chaman-Spin Boldak crossing, India went about its villainy business with the good old .303 Lee Enfield rifles and the Bollywood Gabbars and Thakurs still went after each other with machetes. Till recently the silver-screen goons carried crude pipe guns called “Katta” and the policeman, even of the “encounter-specialist” variety, had to make do with revolvers. Where then are all these automatic weapons coming from in the absence of any FATA-like no man’s land in India?
Amidst all the restrictions on people-to-people contacts and cultural exchange between the two countries, it has always been a matter of great satisfaction that no amount of official narrowmindedness has ever stopped the people on either side from enjoying each other’s films, teleplays, and music. Before an album is released or a single is “dropped” by the artists on either side, its “pirate” copy is almost always doing the rounds at Mehndis and Giddas on both sides. Are we now trying to outdo each other in picking up bad habits?
The dark side of globalization?
Protection and extortion rackets, gang warfare, drive-by shootings, juvenile delinquency, drugs-related turf war, prostitution rings, gambling dens, crimes against children, sexual violence, the dark-net fed fetishes, law enforcement brutality, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, ethnic, racial, and religious intolerance, you name it, and it is rampant across the globe. Technology, especially communication platforms like social media are said to be the harbingers of empowerment. The so-called Arab Spring was galvanized by social media. But so are countless hate and other crimes against humanity.
Recently, the NYT ran – apparently a premature requiem – for the last pay phone on the Big Apple’s streets. The 911-type emergency services are no more beholden to that coin-fed and operator-assisted contraption. Cities and towns worldwide are now equipped with CCTV cameras, and cops and citizens are wearing bodycams. Yet George Floyds of this world gets strangled by bigoted cops and journalists still get waylaid and murdered in broad daylight. The cameras almost always become blurred or dysfunctional at the exact wrong time.
While the erstwhile FATA has been merged with the neighboring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and brought under the country’s law, the small-scale weapons industry is surging ahead rapidly, taking advantage of automation and 3D printing, the types of weapons’ alteration and “upgradations” openly being advertised through the social media and informal e-commerce mechanisms are enough to send shudders down the spine. Easy to conceal and carry handguns are being “pimped” to fire automatic bursts; magazine capacities are being raised to carry hundreds of rounds; all dischargeable at a single press of a trigger. Amidst dime-a-dozen laser-assisted gunsights, silencers, night vision devices, bulletproof vests, and armored vehicles, some politicians are talking about an impending civil war and an on-again, off-again “Khooni” (bloody) March. They should not be dismissed as mere “dimwits” as they have friends and backers in all sorts of places. Like Sidhu Moose Wala foretold:
Bhavein time hoya change
Thale ohi same Range
Vich ohi same yaar sade,
Ohi same beef ne
(times may have changed
ride same old Range [Rover]
with same old buds
fight same old thugs)
Only he was riding a black Mahindra instead of a “Range,” and the “four horsemen” that followed him, all rode a “pale” mount. No one knows if he will be more famous in death than he was in life. For now, his words ring true:
Sidhu Moose Wala, Moose Wala
Hoi paee ae
(You hear Sidhu Moose Wala, Moose Wala
All around!)
The writer is a poet and satirist. His latest publication is a collection of essays, titled “Rindana.”
He can be contacted at Shahzadsharjeel1@gmail.com
- Sidhu Moose Wala - 17/07/2022
