Underground, but undeterred: Why Kashmir’s rappers sing in secret

Under the shade of a chinar tree standing next to the famous Zero Bridge in Srinagar, India, Rumi* shares how his music was born out of the death of a stranger.

*The rappers in this story are in hiding due to threats from Kashmir authorities. Because of the danger they face, we have agreed to use pseudonyms in this story.

Nearly a decade ago, while he was walking to work, Rumi says he noticed a group of young boys throwing stones at an army bunker – not an abnormal scene in heavily militarized Kashmir. After a few minutes a soldier fired off a bullet, which hit a passerby. The man died on the spot, Rumi recalls.

“He was just walking, as I was, and died in an instant, killed as collateral damage,” he says, as the Jhelum River quietly flows nearby. The incident triggered something in Rumi, who’s now 30 years old and has several Kashmiri protest anthems to his credit. “As soon as I got back home, I narrated the whole incident in a rap form and recorded it.”

Like many young Kashmiris – particularly men – Rumi turned to rap as a way to process and protest the violence he saw living in one of the most volatile places in the world. But he has found it difficult to make music since 2019, when the Indian government unilaterally revoked Kashmir’s special autonomous status and imposed a six-month media blackout on the region. The subsequent crackdown on free speech has pushed many Kashmiri rappers out of the music industry, but the art form has survived by moving underground. Artists say rapping is worth the risks to ensure Kashmiri experiences aren’t erased. 

Ruth Susan Mathew, who studies the rap music of Kerala in southern India, says hip-hop and rap have always focused on marginalized communities, citing the genre’s roots in Black communities in the United States.

“Rap music in itself is a political art form,” says Ms. Mathew, who is currently pursuing her Ph.D. at Christ University in Bangalore. “That’s why it has a global reach and multiple societies throughout the world use it. Kashmiris, similarly, are using it in a way to voice their concerns [about] what is happening on the streets.”

Rumi’s music explores themes of militarization, political self-determination, and loss of culture in Kashmir, a predominantly Muslim region that has also been home to Pandits (Hindu priests and scholars) and Sikh communities throughout history. The rapper, who grew up in a Kashmiri Pandit family, counts Sufism and spiritual poetry as major artistic influences. Nowadays, Rumi keeps most of his music hidden, to protect himself and his work.

“I have a strong feeling that times will change and our raps will be referred to as the history of Kashmir,” he says. “Until then, we have to wait and keep resisting.”

History of protest

Kashmir came under Indian rule in October 1947, on the condition that the state could retain a degree of autonomy and eventually hold a vote to determine whether it would stay with India, join neighboring Pakistan, or regain its independence. That vote has not happened; instead, the region has faced nearly constant conflict between armed insurgent groups and Indian security forces. Human Rights Watch reports that since 1990, Indian forces “have engaged in massive human rights violations, including extrajudicial executions, rape, [and] torture.”

Eventually, rap emerged as a form of peaceful resistance in Kashmir. The trend picked up after Kashmir’s first hip-hop star, Roshan Illahi, aka MC Kash, released his hit song “I protest” in September 2010.

Since then, many young musicians have turned to rap as a way of critiquing the government as well as reclaiming control over their stories, says Mohamad Junaid, assistant professor of anthropology at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. He grew up in Kashmir and has written extensively on the militarization of the region and its portrayal in the mainstream media.

“No Kashmiri has been shown as a person who has aspirations and is capable of explaining or showing what they are going through,” he says, adding, “The rap music these boys make is a way of venting out their pain.”

Even those who earlier had been devoted to religious songs have found an emotional release in the genre. Ahmed* grew up reciting Naats (praises sung in the honor of the Prophet Mohammad) and verses of the Quran, but found himself drawn to resistance music – specifically, rap – whenever things took a turn for the worse in Kashmir. He wrote his first song in 2014, following a series of devastating floods.

“The Jhelum swelled and flooded the whole valley,” he says. “I could not help but think that the Jhelum was swollen with the pain due to all the things it has witnessed.”

August 2019 brought more hardship. Since the media blackout, the Indian government has used broad public safety laws to detain thousands of critics and journalists. New policies grant authorities the freedom to define “anti-national activities” and arrest individuals they deem “likely to commit terror” – rules that effectively criminalize political dissent, say civil rights advocates. But this hasn’t stopped rappers such as Rumi and Ahmed from making music.

Adaptation

Today, Kashmiri hip-hop artists organize secret cyphers – freestyle rap events – at undisclosed locations. After removing names and other identifying details from the recordings, the rappers then upload their music online. Lyrical themes still include the hope for peace and an end to censorship and militarization, but with the regular detention of local journalists and disappearance of newspaper archives, rappers feel an even greater obligation to document everyday occurrences in Kashmir, including human rights violations. 

Whether or not the artists are consciously trying to create a historical record, Dr. Junaid says that’s what is happening at the underground cyphers and in nondescript studios. “These [songs] are cultural artifacts,” he says. 

Ahmed knew that he had to continue his music as other forms of documenting oppression slowly slipped away. “After 100 years, when people will come back to my songs, they will get to know what happened in Kashmir and may feel what we are feeling right now. This is the only purpose of doing what I do,” he says.

It’s risky work, and the young rapper says he relies on imagery and symbolism to evade censors. “I frame the sentences in a way so that no one is offended, keeping my work and myself safe,” he says. 

Despite his carefully constructed lyrics, Ahmed has been summoned and questioned by police. Fellow rapper Dayaan* felt obliged to remove all traces of his art from the internet after his songs went viral and he got a call from the security forces.

“I became quite popular as the lyrics were written in such a manner that everyone could relate to them. But I had to delete everything from my YouTube channel for my own security,” he says. Eventually, he discovered the underground cyphers, and found a community of other Kashmiri rappers. 

“It makes me happy that I am able to do something for Kashmir,” Dayaan says. “I believe it is better to work for the community and highlight its plight rather than sit idle and wonder about what may happen in the future.”