Dehradun After Dark: No Beats, No Bhajans, Just One Controlling Dal

Dehradun used to be a sleepy town of boarding schools and retired folk. It had one respectable watering hole – the Polo Bar, in the basement of Hotel President, and a ragtag bunch of dim-lit dives.

Things began to change post-liberalisation, with the arrival of malls and coffee shops and MNC pizza chains. Several private universities and institutes set up shop, creating a cohort of young people who were all dressed up and had nowhere to go.

Enterprising locals got into the act, opening pubs and bars, which also doubled as venues for live music. Sensing an opportunity, Indian chains like Social, Raasta and Pyramid entered the market. The metros were getting saturated; there were avenues for growth in so-called tier 2 cities.

DJs and indie bands from around the country began turning up for shows: Madboy/Mink, Purple Cassette, Disco Puppet and Seedhe Maut. The trickle never became a flood but it marked a beginning.

§

There was another shift taking place, a political one. Uttarakhand – celebrating its 25th year of statehood this year – became a BJP stronghold, a laboratory for Hindutva, a guinea pig of sorts, where radical saffron ideas could be tested before being applied nationwide.

This January, it became the first state to implement the Uniform Civil Code. One of its more contentious pieces of legislation involves mandatory registration for live-in couples, raising the spectre of a nanny state, especially for mixed-faith partners.

The saffronisation of Uttarakhand has been accompanied by the proliferation of Hindutva outfits, the most prominent being Bajrang Dal (the youth wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, and a member of the Sangh Parivar, led by the RSS) which pursue an agenda of cultural “purification”, achieved through the brute power of vigilantism.

Lying dormant earlier, they’ve become increasingly assertive and disruptive under the current regime. When the odd indie band turns up, so does the Bajrang Dal, with alarming frequency; the two are on a collision course. The fledgling local entertainment scene is being nipped in the bud for, as we shall see, no good reason except imagined slights.

Also read: Bajrang Dal Disrupts College Party at a Mangaluru Pub; Police Refute Reports of Attack

The latest casualty was a concert by the duo, Seedhe Maut, slated for November 15 at the Himalayan Cultural Centre. In a viral video, the leader of the Bajrang Dal mob can be heard saying that they don’t approve of the “concept” of SM’s “vulgar” lyrics, that they will not allow any artiste to disturb and corrupt the “maryada” of “Devbhoomi”, the abode of the gods.

Seedhe Maut issued a statement: “Our team and partners worked endlessly over the last few days to try (sic) find a solution, however, all their efforts met with a brick wall.”

The show was cancelled.

I was there the last time the Delhi rap duo performed in Dehradun; it was a high energy gig, a blend of angst, rebellion (“Gharwaalo ko pata tha chathi [Standard 6] se, ladka ye mandir me maatha nahi tekega.”) and unadulterated mischief, delivered in Delhi street Hindi, with not a hint of frippery. The 4,000-strong audience was a refreshing mix of the working- and middle classes.

The numbers speak for themselves: The hit single Raat ki Raani has over 3.8 crore streams, while their album Lunch Break boasts of over 21.9 crore streams on Spotify, where they have 28.5 lakh monthly listeners. Their YouTube channel has 921K subscribers, with another 891K followers on Instagram. They attract huge crowds everywhere, from Lucknow to Bhopal, Bangalore to Mumbai, and, of course, their hometown, New Delhi.

Earlier this year, they were a part of the official line-up at Glastonbury Festival, going on to do gigs in Manchester, Birmingham, London and Dublin. At most, one can say their lyrics are laddish – not a crime: “Haan, Khora ke launde hai street smart/ Gharoli ke launde hai desi/ Haan, Kondli ke launde hai kaandi,/ Nahin sehte hai Noida ke bezzati/ Kabhi Majnu ke tille pe momos/ Kabhi Shahdara ke station pe pastries.”

Delhi is a protagonist in many songs: “Tu ban chuki hai dharam aur raajneeti ki jageer/ Vaha pe chalti ni mohabbat jaha pe chalti hai laathi/ Marte Hindu, martе Musalman, marti teri santaan hi/ Par terko pade ni fark tu khaati namak hai sarkari.” They certainly don’t promote guns or drinking as claimed by the Bajrang Dal. And even if they did: so what? As for vulgarity, one half of the band, Siddhant Sharma a.k.a. Calm, put it bluntly in an old podcast: “Hip-hop cannot be sanitised.”

One can raise the point that it’s not only the Hindu Right; in Hyderabad, the Congress government asked Diljit Dosanjh to remove references to alcohol in his live concert; he replaced “daaru ‘ch lemonade” with “Coke ‘ch lemonade.” Ridiculous, no doubt, except that the Congress doesn’t have any ideology as to what constitutes pure Hindu culture, nor a bunch of affiliated outfits to push a covert agenda, unlike Hindutva, which, to use the Russian Matryoshka Doll analogy, has doll within doll within doll. The Congress’ cultural conservatism comes more from moribundity and stupidity.

§

Okay, so if Seedhe Maut is destroying our culture, how about fusion bands that sample Indian elements in their music? In August, Kochi group Thaikkudam Bridge performed in Doon Valley for the first time. They’ve performed over 600 shows in more than 25 countries around the globe, including major venues in the US, Singapore, Canada and the Middle East.

Also read: Over 300 Instances of Violence Against Christians Were Reported in Nine Months of 2021: Report

The day after the gig, a Hindu Right outfit gathered outside the venue to protest. Someone had seen an Instagram Reel and tipped them off. The crime: the use of a well-known shloka in one of the songs. The protesters argued that shlokas should not be used with western instruments, and should never be uttered in a bar setting, where people are imbibing alcohol and smoking. By that logic, kanwariyas should stop playing bass-heavy techno beats and stick to bhajans.

We have a situation where you cannot use colloquial Hindi gaalis in a song (as Seedhe Maut discovered), nor can you use shlokas in a fusion band. What are the kids supposed to do? Latch on to the trend of fake wedding parties that were all the rage among Gen-Z’ers of big Indian cities during the monsoon season. These parties mimic the grandeur of the big fat Indian wedding, without the emotional and social baggage of a real wedding. No pandit, rituals, bride, groom and relatives; only DJs, drinking and the dance floor.

Alas, this too ran into trouble. The TOI reported: “Police stopped an event that sought to celebrate a ‘wedding without a bride and groom’ at a mall in Dehradun after protests by right-wing groups” that it ‘denigrated Hindu culture and tradition’.”

The mother goddess of all ironies is that the kids who turn up for these events and concerts are mostly pro-Modi/BJP. In their heads, there is no link between Modi and the rise of fringe obstructionist Hindu Right outfits. They profess their love and loyalty for Modi, while at the same time lamenting the lack of freedom. As a local Gen Z DJ, a committed BJP supporter, told me: “How are we supposed to create our own scene in this town, Palash sir?”

This festive season, a new trend took off: Bhajan clubbing. News18 reports, “Across social media, clips show groups of Gen Z and millennials gathering in halls, sitting cross-legged on the floor, swaying and clapping to devotional songs. The special thing about these gatherings is that they are not quiet prayer meetings. They look and feel like music gigs – with bhajans replacing electronic beats.”

Also read: Right-Wing Groups Disrupt Namaz in Gurgaon Once Again

While this hasn’t reached Dehradun yet, saffron activists are already making their displeasure felt online: How dare the audience not take off their shoes and chappals while participating in bhajan jams at Backstage Siblings’ gigs, the Siblings being pioneers of the bhajan clubbing scene.

It’s clear that it’s not clear what these self-styled custodians of Indian, read Hindutva, culture expect of us. When a scholar like Francesca Orsini dedicates a lifetime to studying Hindi literary culture in the heartland, the general tenor of criticism from the Right is that we don’t need someone coming from “outside” and teaching us our own language and culture.

When Indian kids draw on their own tradition of shlokas, weddings, bhajans and colloquialisms, that too is a problem. Which is why I tell my young friends to only consume western culture, from British punk (the Lambrini Girls) to American hardcore (Turnstile). At most, you will be criticised for being polluted by foreign cultural forces, but at least you won’t be accused of mauling your own culture. Hinduism has become Hindutva, a joyless, culture-less fossilised artefact. The only culture that remains is the culture of not allowing culture to flourish. The seeds of parasitic plants sown by the saffron brigade keep flowering in the oddest of places.

One is reminded of the great Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, whose stories and plays were often censored by the Soviet government. Speaking of those times, she said in a Paris Review interview, “I lived in a prison! Nothing was allowed. It didn’t matter what I actually wrote – the people who stood in my way were using ideology as an excuse to advance their own careers. I was banned.”

While Seedhe Maut fans on Instagram called the Bajrang Dal men “unemployed” good-for-nothings, fact is that the rise of Hindutva has, in a manner, created employment for them, given them an identity and something to do: basically, throw a saffron spanner in the art works. The machinery of the state backs them. Meanwhile, Dehradun’s nightlife, after a brief flirtation with the cutting edge, has returned to the safe sounds of bands singing Eagles covers and evergreen Bollywood hits.

The writer is the author of The Butterfly Generation: A Personal Journey into the Passions and Follies of India’s Technicolor Youth; editor, House Spirit: Drinking in India; and former Contributing Editor, Rolling Stone.

The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.