Aheli Moitra
The ‘North East’ is one of the many strange terms the Indian Union conveniently borrowed from the British Raj. Little did we imagine that Mr. India would one day rise from these politically marginalized peripheries to “speak truth to power” (The Caravan).
In this landscape of tribal myth and brute militarization, some of the most significant phenomena of our times have occurred. One of them has been the development of contemporary pidgin languages. Among these, Nagamese and Haflong Hindi stand out; both have connected peoples of the South Asian region in uncanny peripheries.
When political satire is projected in one of these languages, it captures not just the dark side of contradiction and nuance of life here, it also tickles your ribs thin.
Last year a friend forwarded a video of a young man singing profanities about unholy political alliances—the guy wore eye glasses that had two plastic hands covering the eyes, a self imposed blindness many can connect with. The video was understood to be a onetime joke by a young man expressing angst, and promptly forgotten.
A year hence, Mr. India reappeared on an update from Raiot, a webzine produced from Meghalaya. A Mizo-Dimasa man from Haflong, who lives in the terrific times of the North East and ironically calls himself Mr. India, is a riot.
He urges ‘warmonger’ chetan (ji) bhagat to die, and rounds it up with a ‘bharat mata ki jai,’ he shies naught from throwing profanities at political parties, he musically personifies ‘gau rakshaks’ as they must be and is not scared to pull out the ‘acting’ in the name of ‘desh bhakti’ so rampant in India today. Local issues don’t escape his medium either. He pokes at what has become of ‘indigenous people’ in a post colonial North East and sings ‘chinky songs’ in front of blue skies reminding us how ‘God still loves a Big Church!’ Call the Bangladeshi hands to build it brick by brick.
Mr. India’s ‘political pop’ is also about celebrating life experienced by the youth of the region; of cycling around town or leading an independent married life (he and his wife run another channel called ‘Haflong Vlogs’). These are the sound of souls rising from the seriousness, the doom and the daily experiences of marginalization, imposing a deliberate calm in their commentary.
When one of Mr. India’s songs was removed from social media platform Facebook after it parodied a farcical ‘anthem’ on the Brahmaputra that sought to hinduise and commercialize the river, bypassing political issues, it got other funnybones to his aide. Another Haflong-youth run YouTube channel called ‘Chugli TV’ featured Mr. India as ‘one the most dangerous people on earth right now.’
Protest is certainly not new to the North East nor is the word dangerous. But here, new tools—language and medium—are used, by claiming ownership, to bring previously unspoken truths to the fore in creative ways at a time when they can get you excommunicated, beaten or even killed. In this environment, Mr. India is giving us all a voice from his home base, armed with a camera, guitar (at times electronic), eye glasses and some wit—a musical, accessible, relatable way to speak the truth and wage nonviolence.
You can find Mr. India on YouTube & share similar stuff on moitramail@yahoo.com
