 "Amar Singh Chamkila: Bawdy songs and radical obscenity")
During a musical tour of Canada in 1987, Punjabi singer Amar Singh Chamkila, played by Diljit Dosanjh in the recently released biopic, is summoned by a committee of Sikh religious leaders. They castigate him for his bawdy songs. These songs are very popular among the people of Punjab, but their lyrics offend the gatekeepers of culture and self-appointed defenders of social morality.
They make him promise that he will not sing such songs, he will not drink liquor, he will turn into a vegetarian, and finally, he will also give up smoking. But as soon as Chamkila gets into his car, he pulls out a pack of beedi from his pocket and lights it. “That day I knew that Chamkila had gone mad,” says one of his troupe members. “He did not fear anything anymore.”
This is a marked change in the character trajectory of Chamkila in the film. Earlier, when he is threatened by Khalistanis, he stops composing the more popular songs and brings out an album of devotional music. He also pays off a band of gun-toting separatists who turn up at his house.
But, at a musical performance, when the audience demands that he sing his more popular numbers, he cannot resist. “Chamkila had a major flaw,” says his friend and lyricist Swarn Singh Sivia (Apinderdeep Singh). “He was a slave to his audience. Despite his success, he remained servile.”
The moment of lighting the beedi in the film is a sort of narrative rupture. If Chamkila sang earlier for popularity or to appease his critics, he will now sing because of his convictions. His “madness” has romantic overtones. His decisions are governed no more by concerns of self-preservation. This trajectory can result only in tragedy.
Chamkila and his second wife, the singer Amarjot (Parineeti Chopra), are shot dead as they arrive at a music concert on 8 March 1988 in Mehsampur, Punjab. His assassination remains unsolved.
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Musician and ethnomusicologist Gibb Schreffler classifies the popular duo of Chamkila and Amarjot as a subcategory of “commercial folk music” that reached a peak in the 1970s and ’80s. “[A] genre composed of commercially oriented singers who sing from the traditional ‘folk’ repertoire, or at least in a folksy style, solely for the purpose of entertainment,” he writes.
Their popularity peaked with duet singers, such as Chamkila and Amarjot, whose performances were often, writes Schreffler, “a sort of risqué banter, which was reminiscent of certain wedding songs of jousting between the bride and groom’s families.”
Bawdy songs are a part of Punjabi folk culture, as they are in many other parts of India such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, or Maharashtra. Chamkila was, in this sense, not really an innovator. Rather he exploited the conventions of a well-established genre very effectively for his art. And he was not the only one. Schreffler names other popular duet singers – Mohammad Siddiq and Ranjit Kaur, K. Deep and Jagmohan Kaur, or Karta Ramla and Usha Kiran. So why did Chamkila’s songs spark such outrage? Why was he labelled obscene?
What is obscenity? American philosopher Abraham Kalpan links “obscenity”, etymologically, to “obscures – what is concealed.” He argues that art makes meaning through symbols, and at the heart of each symbol lies something that is concealed. Thus, the artistic imagination is always concealing or revealing some meaning. “A creature incapable of obscenity is also incapable of art,” he writes.
Kalpan also claims: “Control over the arts… whether by official power or by unofficial influence — rests largely on allegations of obscenity.” Thus the purpose of an obscenity allegation is not to censor or restrict art of a prurient nature. It is to control its more subversive potential.
Chamkila keeps arguing throughout the film that he is not the only singer in Punjab performing so-called obscene songs. So, why is he the only one being targeted? Is it because he is more successful than the others? Is it because he is Dalit? Do his accusers – some of whom are political entrepreneurs – hope to ride the coattails of his fame and notoriety?
Thinking of obscenity and Punjab, one is immediately reminded of Saadat Hasan Manto and Ismat Chughtai. Manto and Chughtai were accused of obscenity for their short stories ‘Bu’ and ‘Lihaaf’, respectively. They were summoned to the Lahore High Court in 1945 to defend themselves against accusations of obscenity. Chughtai provides a lively account of travelling to Lahore from Bombay, with Manto and her husband, the film director Shaheed Latif.
At the trial, a wily defence lawyer confused prosecution witnesses with his sharp cross-examination. The judge threw out the case, absolving Manto and Chughtai.
But not all cases end like this – obscenity can be a very effective tool of silencing as well. Legal scholar Latika Vashist studies several cases between 1860 and 2015, and shows that the law dealing with obscenity “mobilises the emotions of disgust (towards sex) and fear (of transgressive sexualities) to strengthen the dominant (hetero)normative sexual order.”
An allegation of obscenity functions like a self-fulfilling prophecy, following a predetermined trajectory. The accuser does not carry the burden of proof. They only need to be competent at throwing mud. The accused is compelled, in violation of all principles of natural justice, to defend themselves.
No defence, however, suffices. The accusation sticks like a deep stain to the clothes – and the reputation – of the accused. It kills the artiste. Or silences them. One wonders which is the greater tragedy.
(Uttaran Das Gupta is a New Delhi-based writer and journalist)