A wave of songs known as ‘patriotism pop’ have been flooding Indian social media in the weeks since Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced he would be scrapping Article 370 and revoking Kashmir’s statehood.
The first music videos hit the web within hours of the decision and have continued to steadily appear ever since, some garnering millions of views.
While many musicians are getting in on the trend, the songs all follow the same nationalistic themes, encouraging Indian men to move to Kashmir, marry Kashmiri women, and buy up land to boost the number of Hindus in the Muslim-majority region.
Singer and producer Nitesh Singh Nirmal claims to be one of the first musicians to upload songs about Article 370.
“I am doing a service for the nation – people dance to these songs,” he told India’s National Herald.
While low production and often out of sync, some of his music videos have garnered more than two million views in just a few weeks.
Fellow musician Nardev Bainiwal said he did not actually believe the lyrics in his songs, but planned to continue producing them anyway.
“If we don’t make these songs, someone else will, and we will lose out on money," he told the National Herald.
While the songs are proving to be popular within India, they have been met with widespread criticism more broadly.
Director of ANU’s South Asia Research Institute Dr Meera Ashar told Dateline the songs play on stereotypes of Kashmiri men as “separatists and terrorists” and Kashmiri women as “fair-skinned beauties” to be objectified.
“This disturbing genre of ‘pop patriotism’ that encourages men, particularly those from the central Indian plains of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, to seek Kashmiri brides is a combination of the two stereotypes where the fair-skinned beautiful Kashmiri women are ‘taken’, as it were, from the unpatriotic Kashmiri men,” she said.
“These songs should also be seen in the light of the fear-mongering campaign against what the Hindu-right has dubbed ‘love jihad’, where they claim Muslim men are waging a religious war by seducing and marrying Hindu women and luring them away from their faith by coercing them into conversion.”
Modi’s removal of Article 370 also allows anyone to buy land in Kashmir, which many fear will significantly shift the region’s demographics if people act on the messages in these songs.
With Kashmir often referred to as “heaven on earth” in India, Dr Ashar said Article 370’s revocation has been a hugely popular move among the masses.
“Revoking this article has been celebrated as a move towards 'unification’ of India, of making Kashmir part of India again, of creating equality by removing ’special privileges’ to Kashmir and so on,” she said.
“Most of these attitudes are based in misinformation and plain ignorance combined with an unhealthy dose of patriotism.”
