Barpeta/Guwahati, Assam, India – For greater than 15 years, truck driver Imam Hussain discovered solace in singer Zubeen Garg’s voice and music as he drove his car on quiet and lonely nights alongside the Himalayan hills and plains of the northeastern Indian state of Assam.
It was a interval by which Bengali-speaking Muslims – the group 42-year-old Hussein belongs to – more and more got here below assault in Assam. They’ve been accused of being outsiders – even infiltrators – in their very own dwelling.
Amid hovering Hindu-Muslim tensions, the music of Garg – a Hindu – served as a uncommon unifier. “His music was my interior peace,” stated Hussain.
On September 19, Garg died by drowning close to Lazarus Island in Singapore, the place he was scheduled to carry out on the Northeast India Competition, an occasion that celebrates the artwork and tradition of the Indian area.
The sudden demise of the 52-year-old artist, who loved a cult-like standing amongst thousands and thousands of his followers in and outdoors Assam, triggered an enormous outpouring of grief that additional cemented his stature as a public determine whose enchantment spanned divisions which have in any other case fractured the state. The singer’s spouse, Garima Saikia Garg, issued an announcement, saying her husband “suffered a seizure assault” whereas swimming within the sea.
Whereas Hussain was mourning Garg’s demise, so was Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Social gathering (BJP) is accused by critics of fanning Hindu-Muslim divisions nationally and in Assam.
“He will probably be remembered for his wealthy contribution to music,” Modi stated in a condolence message. “His renditions had been highly regarded amongst folks throughout all walks of life.”
Assam’s Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who belongs to Modi’s occasion, stated the state “misplaced considered one of its favorite sons”.
“Zubeen’s voice had an unmatched potential to energise folks, and his music spoke on to our minds and souls. He has left a void that may by no means be crammed,” Sarma stated.
The Assam authorities declared 4 days of state mourning as Sarma flew to the capital, New Delhi, to obtain Garg’s physique when it returned from Singapore.
A polarised backdrop
Two days later, on September 21, tens of hundreds of Garg’s followers gathered exterior the principle airport in Guwahati, Assam’s greatest metropolis. They waited as state officers acquired Garg’s physique after it landed.
Then, they marched behind a convoy carrying the physique to a stadium some 30 kilometres (19 miles) away for public viewing, singing a few of his most well-known songs in unison. Some held his posters, whereas others walked teary-eyed with candles of their palms. After 4 days of state mourning, Garg was cremated on September 23 with full state honours and a 21-gun salute.
These scenes of unity had been a break from the non secular and linguistic fractures which have deepened in Assam lately.
The fault strains between the Indigenous Assamese-speaking and the principally migrant Bengali-speaking communities in Assam aren’t new: They return almost two centuries, when the British introduced giant numbers of Bengali-speaking Hindus from Bengal to run the colonial forms, creating resentment among the many Indigenous Assamese who feared the outsiders would take their jobs and occupy lands.
A second wave of migration of Bengali-speaking Hindus and Muslims to Assam began in 1947 with India’s independence and the formation of Pakistan, which included the territory that in 1971 declared itself the unbiased nation of Bangladesh. Hundreds of thousands of individuals migrated from Bangladesh to Assam in these years, triggering backlash from the Indigenous Assamese, which frequently turned violent.
These ethnic and spiritual tensions proceed to dominate Assam’s politics even immediately as suspicions over the id and citizenship of primarily Bengali-speaking Muslims – pejoratively known as “miya” – deepen, with hundreds of them declared “Bangladeshi infiltrators” and lots of of them despatched to detention camps or compelled to cross over to Bangladesh by Indian safety forces.
Garg was composing his music towards this polarised backdrop, responding to the communal fissures together with his verses and voice.
On many events, the singer described himself as an atheist and a “social leftist” as he distanced himself from the state’s mainstream events, the centrist Congress and the right-wing BJP.
He was additionally a vocal critic of India’s deeply entrenched caste system.
In an undated video now viral after his demise, an individual on stage is seen teasing Garg for not carrying the sacred thread worn by different Brahmins, who sit on the high of Hinduism’s complicated caste hierarchy.
Garg shot again, saying, “I’m only a human. I’ve no caste, no faith, and no God.”
In one other occasion, Garg in 2018 inspired well-known feminine Assamese Olympian, Hima Das, to devour beef with the intention to “achieve power” to compete in worldwide and nationwide sports activities occasions. Many Hindus belonging to privileged castes revere the cow, and its slaughter and consumption are banned in a number of Indian states. It’s unclear whether or not Das accepted Garg’s recommendation.
He was additionally on the forefront of a 2019 marketing campaign towards India’s controversial new citizenship regulation, which made faith a foundation for expediting citizenship for immigrants from neighbouring nations, excluding Muslims. The regulation led to nationwide protests towards Modi’s authorities, whereas the United Nations known as it “basically discriminatory” and urged a assessment.
Assamese social media creator Dr Medusssa advised Al Jazeera that as anti-Muslim hate permeated Assamese society, Garg’s public positions stood out, turning him into an emblem of Hindu-Muslim concord.
“It’s exactly due to Zubeen’s persona of being inclusive, and the way he represented marginalised communities via his songs, that his legacy is being claimed by all,” stated Medusssa, who requested to be recognized by her social media identify.
“He refused to belong to any specific group. He was for all.”
For Akhil Ranjan Dutta, a political scientist at Gauhati College in Assam, the celebration of Garg by Modi and Sarma – regardless of the dissident artist’s opposition to Hindu majoritarianism – is partly because of the manner the singer approached the politics of dissent.
“Whereas he [Garg] would overtly criticise the insurance policies and the actions of the federal and state-level BJP governments, he would seldom assault BJP leaders [personally],” Dutta advised Al Jazeera. “This makes it simpler for the BJP to applicable his legacy as not mourning him would in any other case put them below public scrutiny.”
One other political commentator who didn’t want to be named – fearing reprisal from the federal government – was extra blunt in his view of Garg’s potential to bridge political divisions.
Whereas Garg was dismissive in regards to the BJP as a political occasion, “he wouldn’t rattle their nerves by criticising their anti-Muslim insurance policies or the assaults on Muslims very overtly”, the commentator stated. “That manner, the Hindu nationalist occasion by no means really feel too alienated by him.”
‘Inventive tour de power’
Born in 1972 to Assamese author Mohini Mohan Borthakur and singer Ily Borhakur in Assam’s Jorhat city, Garg started singing on the age of three and was quickly considered a toddler prodigy by his lecturers. He moved to Guwahati to construct his profession as a singer and obtained his first main breakthrough in 1992 with the discharge of his debut Assamese album, Anamika.
It was the start of an illustrious profession that noticed Garg singing greater than 38,000 songs in dozens of languages and dialects. He additionally sang a number of songs for Bollywood movies, bursting into the nationwide scene in 2006 together with his Hindi hit, Ya Ali, for the movie Gangster: A Love Story.
The subsequent 12 months, Garg gained the nationwide award for composing songs for the non-feature movie, Echoes of Silence. Affectionately referred to as Zubeen Da amongst different sobriquets, he later ventured into performing and path.
However greater than Garg’s physique of labor, says Angshuman Choudhury, a joint doctoral candidate on the Nationwide College of Singapore and King’s Faculty London, what made him a musical phenomenon was his refusal to evolve to the archetype of a “tamed” and “cultured Assamese artist”.
The state’s common tradition, for essentially the most half, based on Choudhury, was formed till the Nineties by artists like musician Bhupen Hazarika and singer Janyata Hazarika, who “revered norms of social civility, by no means deviated from the script, and lacked the audacity to be that iconoclast that Garg was”.
“Garg, alternatively, was an inventive tour de power in Assam. He disrupted and distorted the very picture of a public performer and artist,” says Choudhury, whose doctoral analysis focuses on the ethnicity and politics of northeast India.
“He would use verbal expletives whereas on stage, sing below intoxication, and on many events, present overt defiance towards established norms and tradition.”
For example, he as soon as refused to carry out at an occasion to mark Bihu – arguably Assam’s most vital competition – after the organisers stated that he couldn’t sing in Hindi.
Prithiraj Borah, a sociologist from Assam who teaches on the Nationwide Academy of Authorized Research and Analysis in Hyderabad, stated that Garg’s artwork additionally touched deeper, emotional and philosophical questions.
“Zubeen’s songs didn’t merely entertain,” he advised Al Jazeera. “In addition they addressed the depths of what it means to be human, to like, to endure, and to search out which means in an often-absurd world.”
Borah cites Garg’s music, Pakhi Pakhi Ei Mon (My coronary heart is sort of a feather), by which he explored themes of freedom and captivity.
“The feather turns into a metaphor for the human situation, caught between the will for liberty and the truth of assorted constraints,” Borah stated.
Accessible to all
Abrar Nadim, a well being officer in Assam’s Barpeta district, says he has memorised most of Garg’s songs since he was 4.
“His music, Aei Mayar Dhorat [In this world of earthly pleasures] introduced me closure to spirituality,” stated Nadim, 30, as he stood subsequent to a garlanded poster of Garg, whereas carrying black in mourning.
“The music describes non permanent happiness on this world the place corrupt folks get pleasure from even after committing acts of injustice, corruption, and oppression, however little stays in the long run.”
Maitrayee Patar, a distinguished Assamese songwriter and poet, who had collaborated with the singer, together with as just lately as in 2023, stated Garg, as an artist, “exuded a humanitarian facet that was uncooked and relatable to all”.
“He disregarded political correctness and refused to align himself with majoritarian politics or any political events, which made [him] come throughout as an artist cherished by all,” Patar advised Al Jazeera.
As clips from Garg’s songs and outdated interviews flood Assam’s social media, Hussain, the Bengali-Muslim truck driver in Guwahati, says his staunch rejection of hate politics and his humility in treating everybody as equal made him accessible to all.
Garg was Hindu. However after his demise, college students in madrasas – Islamic faculties – had been seen taking part in his songs, whereas Muslim leaders held prayers in his honour and recited the Quran earlier than his pictures – grieving practices not usually allowed by Islamic tenets.
“He [Garg] sang jikir – devotional folks songs sung by the Assamese-speaking Muslim group – to honour us,” Nadim stated. “So there’s nothing flawed if we pray for him by singing his songs.”
Again in Guwahati, truck driver Hussain recalled how Garg “by no means vilified” Bengali-speaking Muslims, as he wore a T-shirt bearing Garg’s photograph.
Hussain hummed Garg’s iconic 2007 hit, Maya (Phantasm) – a music by which the singer likens chasing a love curiosity to an phantasm. The soothing melody, Hussein stated, reminded him of the void left by the Garg’s demise.
In Garg’s music, the thought of an Assam for Hindus and Muslims, Assamese audio system and Bengali audio system alike, was not an phantasm.
