‘Our Song Impure,Our Voice Polluted’: Conversations with Activist and Musician Shital Sathe

Vitaal ⁴

Rasika Ajotikar: When did you start singing? How did you join the cultural group Kabir Kala Manch (KKM)?

Shital Sathe: My family, specifically my mother worships the devi (goddess). Aaradhi is a worship song for the goddess. Singing loudly to the halgi ⁵ is crucial to these performances which go on all night. I witnessed this throughout my childhood and had memorised all ‘devi’ songs. I remember I really liked to sing. Later when I went to school, I participated in different cultural activities. I strongly felt I had what it takes to be a singer. But I could never undertake the typical path to ‘become a singer’, or rather, the circumstances were never favourable. It wasn't even part of my awareness. But then I stumbled upon a cultural organisation called KKM in Pune which came together in 2002 after the Gujarat riots. One of my cousins was working with them. He asked me if I wanted to be part of their cultural group. Actually, I did not have any political inclinations whatsoever during this time. I just wanted to sing. I went to meet them with my cousin and sang a few songs. They really liked my voice and I learnt many songs from them. I got to sing, but later I also got the thought behind these songs.

Rasika: When did you start writing and composing songs?

Shital: I had some experience writing poems in college. The first song I wrote was

Talking to you about this makes me realise how much tyranny there was around food. I understand now what nutritious food means!

With KKM, we initially performed a lot of songs of Sambhaji Bhagat, Vilas Ghogre, Vamandada Kardak and so on. Along with our performances in vastis for safai kamgars (the cleaners’ union), we also performed in colleges for students. We increasingly realised that we needed to study and nurture our political thought. Just singing was not going to be enough. We started reading a lot of Ambedkar, Marx, Phule, Annabhau Sathe. Sachin also got his songs and poems when he joined KKM. I composed some of them. As I became more politicised, I wrote songs like ‘Vitaal’, ‘Saau’, ‘Bhagat Singh’ and so on.

Rasika: How would you describe shahiri in the protest tradition of music? How do we historicise shahiri?

Shital: All popular arts, ⁶ musical genres are associated with caste-specific cultures. For instance, powada (a subgenre) originates in the Dalit and peasant castes. If we look at the history of shahiri, we find that its roots are in the era of Shivaji, characterised by a warrior spirit, a genre originating in war, in conflict, to inspire soldiers and sing of their glories. My song set does not fall under the typical category of shahiri. But still I am a shahir because it has developed as a protest genre of Dalit-Bahujan communities, first articulated by Jotiba Phule in his powada about Shivaji and later in the jalsas (musical gatherings). ⁷ Being a shahir implies [that] you create the poetry yourself. One is responsible for her/his words. Someone who writes their own songs, sings and plays a daf is a shahir. If you are only singing other people's songs, then you are a singer, not a shahir.

Rasika: Could you speak a little more about the importance of words?

Shital: Who are the creators of popular arts and music? The oppressed castes: the ones at the margins. They created their own music, their own poetry—a reflection of their lives. Our music is the only thing appropriated and sensationalised by the contemporary mass-mediated Brahmanical capitalist culture. But our words are significant to understand the history of aural cultures and caste groups at the margins. We cannot imagine anything without words. Tukaram ⁸ says,

What do we have? We have only words. Our revolt is founded on words.

Rasika: What is the impact of the vidrohi shahiri jalsas, specifically on women? ⁹

Shital: There are so many stories I could share, but women are affected in unique ways. After my performance, they first of all have the access to come and talk to me, unlike when only male shahirs perform. They often tell me that they want to sing like me. After one performance in Nagar, one woman came to meet me and said ‘I don't want to wear my mangalsutra ¹⁰ anymore. I know what it is for!’. Ambedkar said, the work is to make the slave aware of his slavery. ¹¹ If that really happens, they become ready for change within themselves. Music has immense power I believe. It creates collective cultural inspiration. If something is heard as a group, there is a sense of responsibility felt among people. That is what enlightenment is all about—to create those moments of critical consciousness—where an old perception breaks and a new one is created and truly realised.

Rasika: I have heard shahirs refer to Stridasyanta (end of women's servitude) as central to annihilating the caste system. What are your thoughts about this?

Shital: Ambedkar has told us how women are the gateways to the caste system. Their sexuality is at the heart of controlling caste. So, both are certainly intertwined. One cannot be achieved without the other. It is good that there is awareness about this, about women's liberation. But there is still no understanding as to how it can really be done. What exactly do we need to do in our everyday lives or during performances? It is of no use to just claim it outside in public performances, but then perpetuate Brahmanical values at home or in other social contexts.

Rasika: Could you talk about how and why the state censored and surveilled you?

Shital: We were absolutely aggravated after Khairlanji and could not fathom the brutality of that massacre. ¹² We were writing and performing very provocative songs like ‘De Dalita Thoka’ (‘Fight back Dalits!’), about local caste issues, women, increased privatisation, Special Economic Zones (SEZ) and its effects on Dalit populations. After a number of these performances, the state—then it was the Congress state—announced a ‘hit list’ of certain people and organisations in the local papers. The state denies this today, but it was there. This hit list included thirty-seven organisations/people likely to have links with Naxalites—KKM, Baba Adhav, Medha Patkar, ANS of Narendra Dabholkar and so on. The then Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra, R.R Patil, had also made a statement about the Khairlanji protests having links with Naxalites. ¹³ Since then, the police started surveilling. One time at the Nagpur Deekshabhumi, we had a book stall during an event. The police suddenly raided and picked up some of the books that ‘looked provocative’, based on the colour and photographs on the cover page and asked us to stop selling them. We also spotted the police at our performance venues, and they also made occasional visits to my mother's house in Pune. We protested this by organising a committee to save our freedom of expression and explained how we are not teaching or promoting the Naxalite ideology. But then we saw a long trail of arrests from Dr Binayak Sen to Shahir Shantanu Kamble and Sudhir Dhawale. We were a bit alarmed. The arrest of Deepak Dhengle from KKM triggered our decision to disappear.

Shital and Sachin sought guidance from a number of intellectuals and activists while they went underground. One of them was comrade Sharad Patil, a significant historian and founder of the Satyashodhak Communist Party. Shital and Sachin's ideological path completely changed after their meeting with Sharad Patil. They decided to tell the state fearlessly that they were not Naxalites and face the judiciary once and for all. They dissociated from KKM with their newly found ideological path. After both were arrested in 2013, Shital, who was six months pregnant, was granted ball just before she gave birth to their son, Abhang. Sachin stayed in custody for almost four more years and was denied bail twice by the high court.

‘Our Song Yearns foR liberation’ ¹⁴

In 2014, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rose to power in India and what followed was a trail of systematic coercions and lynchings of Dalits, Muslims, progressive activists, journalists and intellectuals. Maharashtra witnessed murders of two progressive leaders, Dr Narendra Dabholkar and Comrade Govind Pansare in 2013 and 2015 respectively. In Dharwad, Karnataka, progressive writer M.M Kalburgi was assassinated at his residence. The investigation revealed clear links with Hindutva organisations like Sanatan Sanstha to both murders. Most have absconded and no concrete action has been taken against those arrested. This has similarly been the case in the murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh, who was gunned down in front of her residence in Karnataka in 2017. Progressive voices openly opposing Hindutva have been systematically under attack. A number of grassroots movements arose in fury against the state machinery. Shital and Sachin, who revered Pansare and Dabholkar as their teachers, wrote songs about them.

In 2014, one of Shital's public talks at St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, was cancelled after the organising body received repeated threats from ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad/All India Student Council), the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The ABVP also attempted to attack Shital on stage during her performance in Solapur in 2016 and threatened the organisers of another event in Bhiwandi later that year. The police, on the one hand, offered protection in these instances, while at other times intimidated event organisers by visiting performance locations, interrogating them, asking for Shital's whereabouts and so on.

In January 2016, the gruesome institutional murder of the Dalit student Rohith Vemula in Hyderabad Central University (HCU) sparked protests all over the country, especially university campuses. In February 2016, while we performed at HCU, the agents of the Intelligence Bureau followed us in disguise throughout the day. We sang in unison the song Shital wrote and composed for Rohith.

Rasika: Why do you think the state repressed Dalit shahirs?

Shital: The state doesn't and cannot openly accept that it censors music or musicians. We have accepted democracy and our constitution drafted by Ambedkar. It upholds freedom of speech and expression. Singing a song shouldn't be a crime as far as democratic values are concerned. Even singing a song against the constitution is not a crime. But it is made a crime by the operators who have a monopoly over the operating mechanisms. If that is challenged, they are threatened, irrespective of the medium. In fact, they might feel even more threatened by a song, because they can answer the weapon with a weapon. Have they created shahirs against the progressive shahiri tradition? They have no ideological or philosophical answer to this. I believe they can suppress temporarily. They are only delaying the storm that is inevitable.

Rasika: How would you describe the politics of the cultural movement you have mobilised today?

Shital: Drawing on Sharad Patil's (1993) methodology of Marxist-Phule-Ambedkarism and his abrahmani ¹⁷ historical analysis of Indian society, we aim to mobilise through the shahiri tradition a cultural movement foregrounding women's liberation and annihilation of the caste system. We believe in democracy and the constitution drafted by Ambedkar. But political revolution or freedom cannot change everything. India is a caste-class society, and caste and religion today have become the basis of everything. We need to define and redefine freedom, democracy, humanity and educate people. But first, we need to understand all of this on a micro level. The processes by which this is understood is what our cultural revolution is—like nurturing and taking care of a crop. You cannot bring values and culture out of nowhere. If values are forced, they will take a U-turn in no time, as we know from so many examples around the world. Revolution or freedom cannot be forced or ‘given’. It is about experiencing freedom from within. Without a cultural revolution, we won't be able to experience real freedom.

The trial of Shital, Sachin and members of KKM is yet to proceed in the courts. Sachin was finally granted ball in January 2017. Shital and Sachin both have restrictions on their movement within and outside Maharashtra and are unable to leave the country. While they await justice, they are not only performing with their troupe Navayaan, but also working on their new initiative, Kalasangini, which draws on the Buddhist tradition of Dhammasangini: a space for democratic debate and conversation to develop a new philosophy. Kalasanginis are held in Maharashtra among a community of artists to foster, learn and develop diverse art forms that aim to create a cultural movement with the anti-caste philosophy at its heart (Figure 2).

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Figure 2

Rasika Ajotikar and Shital Sathe after a performance at Ambedkar University, Delhi, 2016

Relevant Video Links

Some of Shital Sathe's performances are accessible online at: