Tag: writer

Producer of incendiary song, “Jo na bole jai shree Ram,” claims its writer is a “patriot”

Source: caravanmagazine.in

These are the opening lyrics to a new song uploaded on YouTube on 23 July, on a channel called “Varun Bahar official.” The three-minute-long song, titled, “Those who will not chant victory to lord Ram, send them to the graveyard,” is by a Bhojpuri singer, Varun Bahar Upadhyay. The video features Bahar dressed in an all-saffron outfit, sporting rudraksh beads—seeds that are used as prayer beads, usually by followers of the Hindu god Shiva—against a fixed backdrop splashed with images of the Hindu god Ram. The video switches between Bahar singing, images of young men carrying swords and threatening bystanders, and groups of saffron-clad boys and girls dancing. An unidentified graveyard—the cemetery is dotted with Christian crosses—makes an appearance every time Bahar sings the chorus, accompanied by some fist-pumping for added effect. The hashtags accompanying the song are equally unimaginative: “#saffron#terrorist#varun.” The description has a single line in Hindi which translates as “after singing this song, the media has declared Varun Bahar as a saffron terrorist.” A casual search on Google did not reveal any such media reports.

The song has, however, been shared widely on social media, drawing sharp reactions, and scathing criticism for inciting lynching and mob violence against minorities. The unequivocal exhortations in the song’s lyrics are undeniable. Bahar’s YouTube channel, which had 549 subscribers as of 6 pm on 24 July, has been online since 2013, but the oldest video is from just a year ago. The channel is an absurd mix of devotional songs, Bhojpuri love songs, videos proclaiming and seeking support for the prime minister Narendra Modi and content that can only politely be termed titillating.

Bahar’s mobile phone has been switched off since the morning of 24 July, following the furore on social media, and I could not get in touch with Santosh Singh Yadu, the writer of the song and a co-curator of the channel. Rajesh Verma, who runs a YouTube channel called Janta Musical And Pictures, produced and directed the video. Verma told me that the video was originally uploaded on his channel “two or three days ago, but we removed it from Janta music because it became controversial.” He said that some “Pakistani channels and local channels” contacted him and told him that “it’s wrong to say ‘send them to the grave,’ and so we took it down.”

Verma denied that the lyrics were inflammatory and said that “the singer did not take names” of any religion. He argued that “both Hindus and Muslims use graves.” When I pointed out that Hindus are cremated and so the song targets minority communities who bury their dead, Verma claimed that “only married Hindus are cremated, unmarried and single Hindus are buried.” He appeared to have forgotten that the Bharatiya Janata Party patriarch, Atal Bihari Vajpayee—an avowed bachelor—was cremated with full state honours. “I am not anti-Muslim,” Verma told me, when I pushed him to explain the anti-minority lyrics of the video. “I visit dargahs every Thursday and do pranam whenever I go past a mosque.”

Verma’s Janta Musical channel has released 598 videos as of 24 June. One song is titled, “’If you don’t like saffron, get out of India” and boasts of 5.5 million views. Another is called “Every Hindu’s call: Temple first, government only after that,” and has 252,000 views. All the songs feature violent imagery of men dressed in saffron, carrying swords and other similar tropes of majoritarian assertion. The channel also contains several videos supporting Modi and the BJP.

“Bahar and Yadu came to me with the idea of the song,” Verma said. He added that Bahar hails from a village called Mankapur, “near Ayodhya.” He noted that he had heard the song before uploading it but justified the offensive lyrics and its call to violence. “Some people are saying we won’t let the Ram temple be built,” Verma told me. “We are devotees of Ram, so we have made a song in praise of Ram.”

Verma was puzzled by the objection to providing a platform to the song: “If it was a matter of hurting anyone, why would we upload it?” When I asked him who the video was addressed to, he blithely responded, “The writer of the song is a deshpremi”—a patriot—“and he may have had the stone-pelters in Kashmir in mind while writing the song.” Verma also denied any connection to a political party or group and said he was an “independent music producer.” Janta Musical has a Twitter account, which tweeted on 23 July, “We apologise for the rumours spread due to the song of one singer. It was not the intention of Janta Music to hurt the religious feelings of any group.”

While Verma claimed that he removed the video soon after uploading it, the song was available on the “Varun Bahar official” channel till around 6 pm on 24 July. It has now been removed but is still being shared widely on other social-media platforms. The singer and writer, though unavailable, seem to have no regrets about the song or its content. Just hours before the video was removed, at around 3 pm on 24 July, Bahar and Yadu posted this statement, from their official account, in the comments section:

Abdullah Khan, author of ‘Patna Blues’, on his long struggle to become a writer

Source:-thehindu.com

omeone had once asked Abdullah Khan, the author of Patna Blues, which team he rooted for during an India-Pakistan cricket match. The thoughtless query is par for the course for most Muslims in the country. “I was born in a Muslim family, so I’m Muslim; I was born in India, so I am Indian. The two don’t have to be contradictory: I am both Muslim and Indian,” Khan remembers answering.

This is one of the many instances where the author and banker had been made to realise his status as a minority. I meet Khan at an al fresco café a few metres away from an Axis Bank branch in Mumbai where he works in the compliance department. We discuss his debut novel, Patna Blues, published last year, that had taken two laborious decades to finish. It’s the tale of Arif Khan, a young Bihari Muslim who dares to desire a Hindu woman. Running through this love story are strands of caste, discrimination and nationalism. Born in Pandari, a village near Motihari in Bihar, the author studied in an Urdu-medium school before encountering English at the age of seven. But he was so bewitched by the language that he took it upon himself to write a novel in English. Excerpts from an interview:

When did you first encounter stories?

I was always hungry for stories. If an aunt would visit, the first thing I would ask is if she knew any stories. If they didn’t have anything ready, they’d make something up with Sheikh Chilli, a fictional character who was a mischief-maker. When I was seven or eight, my father gifted me a Hindi Bal Bharti. I thought it was a text for the next academic year, but then he explained it was a book of stories.

What sparked the desire to become a writer?

I was helping my brother with an English assignment and I came across an excerpt from George Orwell’s Animal Farm. I started thinking that since such a great writer was born in my home town, I must follow in his footsteps. I must have been 21 then: I felt a great urge to be a writer.

How did Patna Blues happen?

It was the day Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things won the Booker Prize in 1997. The same day, I purchased a fancy spiral-bound notebook and a fountain pen. The first chapter was mostly inspired by Amit Chaudhuri’s writing style (chuckles). I was able to finish five to six chapters quickly. I got it typed for ₹25 per page and sent it to Mary Mount, an editor at Picador, by registered post, for ₹90. She wrote back saying, “You have fire in your writing, but it’s not ready for publication and you should work hard.”

Why did Patna Blues take so long to reach the bookshelves?

I stopped writing after getting a job in Bank of Baroda. After my wedding in 2002, my wife was dusting the house one day and she found my [manuscript] and the newspaper cuttings of old articles. And she almost blackmailed me to continue. I used to write long-hand with pen and paper and she would type it out. I then wrote to literary agent and author Noah Lukeman, who wrote back and told me about Joseph Conrad who didn’t know English till the age of 20. Lukeman said only those people are published who work hard and persevere. It was 2005 and I kept rewriting the first few chapters — I rewrote it 200 times. I would finish writing, then I would read something by a big writer and feel low. In 2009, I finished the first draft of the book. I sent it to [literary agent] Kanishka Gupta. The feedback I got was devastating. Finally, I signed a contract with Juggernaut in 2016. The book was published in September 2018.

There’s now news of Patna Blues being adapted into a web series…

A big Bollywood director called to tell me that he loved the book and wanted to make a web series for an international streaming platform. It’s in the works. The contract is such that I can’t talk about the details of the project — it’s under consideration.

You’ve also written for television and the big screen. How did that happen?

I’ve always been interested in films and I’ve also tried to get into acting — tried to become a hero when I was in college. In 2015-16, a well-known author posted on Facebook about a Channel V project, which was planning to adapt classics for Indian television — Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, etc. Mine was called Rehaan meets Jamila based on Romeo and Juliet. They liked three stories, one of which was mine. I started staying in touch with producers and directors. In a stroke of bad luck, the channel head left and the project was scrapped. Now, people get in touch with me. Earlier, I used to chase them.

What have you worked on so far?

I wrote a project for Shashanka Ghosh (director of Veere Di Wedding); I’ve worked on a spy thriller for Ekta Kapoor, but nothing worked out in the end. I wrote the story for the movie Viraam (2017), which my brother, Ziaullah Khan, directed. It was released in 400 to 500 theatres, but didn’t do very well.

What are you currently working on?

Right now, I’m working on a web series about an American ex-commando who’s half-Scottish and half-Indian. He falls in love with a Bihari journalist when she lands up in Goa. There are two-three other projects that are under consideration. And I’m working on my next book, Aslam, Orwell and a Porn Star. It’s about a man who was born in the same room as George Orwell in Motihari. But people are already objecting to the title.

Why?

I’m not really sure. There have been so many films made on courtesans, they’re human beings. I’m writing about their human side. I’m not writing pornography (laughs). It’s the truth of life, and they exist.