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The use of DJs at Hindu religious or Hindutva political processions, playing at full volume outside mosques, has recently become a cause of communal tension, the most recent case being the violence in Bahraich, Uttar Pradesh in October.
Over the years, this ubiquitous music has pushed the sonic boundaries of India’s already saturated sound landscape.
Music is hard to miss. The catchy beats and pounding music almost drown out the lyrics until you really hear them. And once you do, it is often difficult to forget the lyrics as many of the songs are steeped in anti-Muslim rhetoric.
Whether you call it saffron pop, Hindutva pop or H-pop, it has become an integral part of the cultural, social and political mobilization of the Hindu right.
While the use of DJs is a new phenomenon, the interconnectedness of music, marches and violence has a long history, with incidents recorded as far back as the 19th century. The recent book by (2024) has brought this topic to the fore, while earlier works such as the stories in (2022), (2010), and (2019) exist.
In this article, I will look at how music and processions have been central to the history of communal hatred in India. Basically, what was ‘H-Pop’ before it became ‘H-Pop’?
Music and Hindu rights
Music is not just one of the mediums employed by the Hindu right, it has been central to the procession politics of the Hindu right since its early days.
This is not just a case of the Hindu right abandoning traditional methods to spread their message and adopting pop culture to connect with Gen-Z. The Hindu right may be culturally conservative, but they have been quickest to use technology and popular culture to advance their agenda and chart new territories geographically and demographically. It has flourished in every medium, be it print, television, cassette, video or digital media.
However, all this is beyond the scope of this article. Here, I will focus only on the primacy of music as a marker of difference and its weaponization as a catalyst for fueling latent Islamophobia and sometimes inciting violence.
Identity and social markers, many of which were largely cultural/regional, took on religious overtones, in which music played an important role. But how does music play such an important role?
If we look at recorded cases of communal violence, some of the earliest examples of them have been recorded in the 1850s. Around the same time, the Bombay Court outlined the conditions under which Hindu processional music could be played in front of the mosque. The court said this:
For the government, whether in colonial or independent India, it was mostly dealt with as a matter of law and order, where individual police persons could act according to their own prejudices. Since the police officers were mostly ethnic Hindus, cases of violations were not prosecuted due to their own political biases. Even today, the demography of our police forces in terms of caste, gender and religion determines the nature of policing which inherently works against women, minorities and marginalized castes.
It is noteworthy to remember that in 1893, when Tilak introduced Ganesh Chaturthi with quasi-religious-nationalist motives, the lyrics of the songs had communal overtones, such as“What boon has Allah given you that you have become a Muslim today? Do not make friends with someone whose religion is alien; Do not leave your religion and do not fall.”
Another song says, “There have been disturbances at many places and Hindus have been beaten. Let us all strive in unison to demand justice.”
The seeds of what we know today as H-pop or saffron pop lie in these 19th century compositions.
These claims of communal violence were also picked up by the emerging print media of that time. Thus, these localized disparate incidents soon came to be seen as a pan-Indian phenomenon. This process strengthened religious identity, transcending regional, linguistic and caste identities, to such an extent that, at the time of mobilization, religious identity began to take precedence.
Later examples such as those in Calcutta (1924), Nagpur (1926), Surat (1927), and many others have shown how music in religious processions has been linked to communal violence.
For example, in 1924, the Arya Samaj procession reached Dinu Chamrawala’s mosque in Calcutta when the muezzin was about to start the azaan. The police forced all the drummers except one to stop their music. It was the same drummer who instigated the attack from the mosque, which led to the horrific incidents. Three similar incidents took place in front of Khalifapatti Mosque in Pabna.
Every passing year some incident of violence adds a few more bricks to the wall dividing our society. Sonic dominance through H-pop music has been an ongoing project for over a century, but contemporary digital technology and political environments mark the coming of its age.
h-pop boom
The rise of social media as a part of organized political campaigning and mobilization has accelerated this process. The translation of digital into the real world through live, paid performances, along with monetization and influencer culture, has also attracted many older devotional singers to this music.
(Watch this video from The Quint to see how H-pop has become a lucrative industry)
In the current political climate, there is a lot of incentive for content creators, interest groups and audiences to come up with such songs. With the expansion of local religious events like Ganesh Chaturthi, Kanwar Yatra and numerous pilgrimages in different regions, this network is highly integrated and dense. Music acts as an electrifier in this network. In these collective spaces, music sometimes creates and incites division rather than spreading devotion, equality and unity. These acts may reflect the Hindu right’s real or perceived claim of sovereignty over the Son’s territory. Its purpose is to give Hindus a feel of Hindu Rashtra and to express dominance over Muslims, at least in terms of soundscape.
The communal conflict comes in the form of competition between the right of Hindus to celebrate their festivals with loud music and the right of Muslims to pray peacefully. The competing groups are never equal, and this is made worse by the way state or quasi-state institutions choose to favor one over the other.
The question is not about general civil unrest but about related religious practices. A call made by a human being on a regular loudspeaker for a few minutes a few times a day cannot be compared to multiple drums, loudspeakers and DJs. The issue is not about banning or even protesting. But one should not encroach on the religious practices of others. Despite the song, the front of the mosque is not necessarily a site of Hindu religiosity, as we see loud music on several occasions. There are many examples where people of different religions cooperate and organize.
With many regional and local festivals now becoming a national, pan-Hindu phenomenon, the frequency and scale of processions has increased rapidly and so has the deployment of loud music. It is natural that incidents of violence will also increase.
During my fieldwork in Bikaner, Rajasthan, I asked a resident why youth participate in such processions. A resident associated with caste organizations said, “We involve students in education, youth in sports and workers in some unions, though very few, yet a large section of our young caste brothers are present there and active, and Visible. How do we connect with them? They like DJs, selfies and high-beat music, but many of us don’t like that, but this kind of procession brings people together.”
Asserting your identity or attacking another, accompanied by catchy beats and pounding melodies in the background, connects with people on a deep, visceral level and makes them feel part of something bigger.
(The author is a PhD candidate at UCLA, working at the intersection of popular religion and music in India.)
