{"id":1529,"date":"2026-06-09T05:40:30","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T05:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ambedkarsociety.org\/assa\/?p=1529"},"modified":"2026-06-11T05:47:49","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T05:47:49","slug":"india-the-caste-pride-in-your-spotify-playlist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ambedkarsociety.org\/assa\/india-the-caste-pride-in-your-spotify-playlist\/","title":{"rendered":"INDIA: The Caste Pride in Your Spotify Playlist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Open any Punjabi playlist. The genre that produced\u00a0Diljit Dosanjh<\/strong>,\u00a0AP Dhillon<\/strong>, and\u00a0Sidhu Moosewala<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 and now saturates every Bollywood party track and NRI wedding \u2014 is a billion-dollar global export. If you understand Punjabi, you\u2019ll notice something. A word recurs in the lyrics with unusual frequency:\u00a0\u201cJatt\u201d<\/em><\/strong>. Sometimes\u00a0\u201cJatta\u201d<\/em><\/strong>, sometimes whole song titles \u2014\u00a0\u201cJatt Da Muqabla\u201d<\/em><\/strong>,\u00a0\u201cIssa Jatt\u201d<\/em><\/strong>,\u00a0\u201cJatt Fire Karda\u201d<\/em><\/strong>,\u00a0\u201cMoosa Jatt\u201d<\/em><\/strong>. It is not a whisper. It is worn as a crown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Jat community is the dominant landowning caste of Punjab \u2014\u00a0roughly 18-20% of the population, estimated to own around 80% of the state\u2019s agricultural land<\/strong>. Nevermind their self-proclaimed OBC status or demands to be included in OBC quotas \u2013- which the National Commission for Backward Classes has rejected \u2014 they are no doubt the most dominant caste in Punjab.
Like Sidhu Moosewala\u2019s \u201cJatt Da Muqabla\u201d, which pairs \u201cbig hearts and wide open lands\u201d with \u201ccrime\u2019an aale scene\u2019an aale<\/strong>\u201d \u2014 \u201cassociated with crime scenes\u201d \u2014 in the same chorus. Like \u201cMoosa Jatt\u201d, whose entire premise is a Jat surname as a gangster brand, presented without irony. Like \u201cBambiha Bole\u201d, which frames Jat masculinity through weapons and territorial control. Like \u201cJatt Fire Karda\u201d, which celebrates the community\u2019s capacity for violence as honour, not pathology. The Jat in these songs is not merely proud \u2014 he is armed, he is dangerous, and this is the point.<\/strong> This is not pastoral nostalgia. It is a recurring assertion that dominance is deserved and that force is how it is maintained. This is not just my impression. It can be quantified, as follows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I reviewed every song released in 2025 by the five most-streamed Punjabi artists on Spotify India \u2014\u00a0Karan Aujla, Diljit Dosanjh, AP Dhillon, Shubh, and Sidhu Moosewala<\/strong>. The shortlist is not mine: it is\u00a0Spotify Wrapped India 2025<\/strong>. The scope covers all\u00a057 songs<\/strong>\u00a0on which these artists appeared as lead or co-lead across the calendar year. The test is binary: does the song contain\u00a0the word \u201cJatt\/Jat\u201d<\/strong>, or an explicit caste-identity claim, verified against a published lyrics source?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Now the context those songs swim in.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Punjab has the highest proportion of Scheduled Caste population<\/strong> of any Indian state \u2014 31.94%<\/strong>, per the 2011 Census. One in three Punjabis is Dalit<\/strong>. These communities own 3.5% of its private farmland. Fully 94.2% of rural Dalit households have no cultivable land at all. In the Indian state with the largest Scheduled Caste population, Dalits had simply never held power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The irony cuts deepest at the gurdwara. Sikhism was founded in explicit rejection of caste \u2014 Guru Nanak composed against the varna system; the Guru Granth Sahib contains verses by Ravidas, a Dalit cobbler by birth. In practice, in dozens of Punjab villages today, Dalit Sikhs cannot enter the main gurdwara<\/strong>. In Dhanaula in Sangrur district, two gurdwaras operate side by side \u2014 one for Jats, one for Dalits. The SGPC, the apex Sikh religious body, felt compelled to launch an official \u201cOne Village, One Gurdwara\u201d campaign in 2018. The need for such a campaign tells you everything about the scale of the problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Dalit artists have tried to create their own cultural space \u2014 Ginni Mahi, Roop Lal Dhir, others asserting Ambedkarite and Ravidassia identity \u2014 their music was categorised by critics and industry insiders under a label that uses a caste slur in its name: \u201cChamar Pop.\u201d<\/strong> The naming of the counter-movement after a slur is itself the argument.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When every song tells you the Jat is the hero, the landowner, and the armed enforcer of local order, and the communities that constitute a third of the state are erased from the cultural landscape entirely \u2014 that is not music. That is a political argument delivered through a speaker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In August 2024, a Bengaluru CEO named Anuradha Tiwari posted \u201cBrahmin genes \ud83d\udcaa\u201d on X. The post hit 2 million views. Supreme Court advocates weighed in. National newspapers ran the story for days. A woman most of India had never heard of triggered a full national conversation about caste supremacism within 48 hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now consider what you have just read. Not one tweet. Not one person. Thirty-seven percent of the most-streamed Punjabi music in India in 2025 <\/strong>\u2014 songs played at your weddings, your parties, your gym \u2014 contains an explicit assertion of Jat caste identity, by artists with tens of millions of followers, many of them invoking that identity alongside weapons, territory, and the threat of violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: The Print<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Open any Punjabi playlist. The genre that produced\u00a0Diljit Dosanjh,\u00a0AP Dhillon, and\u00a0Sidhu Moosewala\u00a0\u2014 and now saturates every Bollywood party track and NRI wedding \u2014 is a billion-dollar global export. 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The genre that produced\u00a0Diljit Dosanjh,\u00a0AP Dhillon, and\u00a0Sidhu Moosewala\u00a0\u2014 and now saturates every Bollywood party track and NRI wedding \u2014 is a billion-dollar global export. 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