Our Rockstar, Our Republic: Will Zubeen’s Death Spark Swabhiman, Swatantrata, Swaraj?

It was 2001 or 2002, soon after my family returned to Selenghat in Jorhat, when my father retired from the army and began driving a Sumo. Bohag Bihu was his busiest season, with functions almost every night. One evening he was hired to take a group to Rebakanta Barua Public High School, opposite Jorhat Kendriya Mahavidyalaya in Kenduguri, where Zubeen Garg was to perform. I begged to go, but my father refused. Zubeen usually arrived late in the night, the crowds turned unruly, and every seat in the Sumo mattered. Determined, I quietly slipped in with a 'murha' (stool) at the back of the Sumo. By the time my father noticed, it was too late to send me home. After some scolding, he let me stay, crammed with fourteen others. When we arrived, the ground was already a sea of people, young and old, waiting for a glimpse of their idol. Without tickets, my father and I climbed onto the Sumo roof. Near midnight, Zubeen appeared, boots and chains gleaming under the floodlights, greeted like a Western rockstar. He had barely finished his first Bihu song when the skies opened. Rain poured in sheets, yet no one moved. Instead, the crowd sang louder, dancing as if the storm were part of the show. Moved by their devotion, Zubeen stepped down from the stage and drew near to the rain-soaked crowd, singing directly to them. He sang eight or perhaps ten songs, and the night became unforgettable. We returned home drenched as if a god had carried the songs of Bihu into our bones. That night remains one of my core childhood memories. It was my first encounter with “Zubeenism,” the fierce and unifying love of the Assamese people for their heartthrob. For me, it was also a homecoming of sorts, a discovery of Assam, its people, and its cultural life after the early years I had spent away from the state.

Zubeen Garg (1972–2025) was not only one of Assam’s most celebrated musicians but also a cultural phenomenon whose life defied conventional boundaries. His voice became the soundtrack of our youth, our protests, our festivals, and our private joys and griefs. What made him unforgettable was not only his music but the way he lived. He embodied a lived philosophy that can be traced to Gandhi’s Swaraj, Periyar’s call for self-respect, and Ambedkar’s fight against caste, while remaining deeply rooted in the affective and cultural world of Assam. At a time when speculations swirl around his untimely death, including one curiously centred on a series of ’S’s, it is more meaningful to return to the ideals that truly shaped his life. I read his journey through three guiding “S”s: Swabhiman (self-respect), Swatantrata (freedom), and Swaraj (self-rule and belonging). For him, artistry was never entertainment but a living practice of these principles, expressed in his songs, his choices, his rebellions, and his generosity. To revisit his life through this triad is to see why he was not just a singer but a people’s artist, a republic in himself.

Swabhiman: Self-respect as a Way of  Life

Zubeen’s life was a constant assertion of Swabhiman, the self-respect of being Assamese and the dignity of being true to oneself. Once, when a journalist asked how often his “attitude” got him into trouble, he replied boldly, “It’s not attitude, but my swabhiman.”

In Assam of the early 90s, a land long marked by struggles of identity, migration, and neglect, Zubeen embodied Swabhiman as cultural belonging. He made Assamese fashionable again for a generation caught between the dominance of Hindi mass culture and the aspirational pull of English global popular culture. Early albums like Anamika, Ritu, Maya, Jaanmoni, and Nahor rekindled pride in local idioms and melodies. When Bollywood and MTV dominated, he restored pride in being Assamese in a modern world. In cities such as Guwahati and Dibrugarh, boys grew their hair like him, and girls hummed his romantic ballads.

His songs did not glorify tradition alone. By blending rock with Bihu rhythms and composing film scores that carried Assamese cadences, Zubeen showed that Swabhiman was not a return to the past but a confident renewal of identity. A regional voice could be modern and rooted, cosmopolitan and intimate. His Hindi album Chandni Raat (1996) became a national hit, standing just behind Daler Mehndi’s Bolo Ta Ra Ra on the pop charts. The album was also nominated for Best Indian Pop Album at the Channel V Music Awards and the Screen Awards, proving that an Assamese artist could command space on India’s national stage.

Even after his Bollywood breakthrough with Ya Ali in 2006, Zubeen’s regional grounding remained intact. “A king should never leave his kingdom,” he said, and he lived by that conviction. He reinvested his earnings into Assamese cinema and music, financing films like Mission China and Kanchenjunga, nurturing young artists, and strengthening the local industry. In Mon Jai (2008), his complex portrayal of Manab reflected the restlessness of our own youth, mirroring the uncertainties and anxieties many of us felt while coming of age in Assam during a time of change. When asked why he continued to sing so much in Assamese despite national fame, he replied, “If I forget my own, what worth is my voice?” For him, this was cultural self-reliance, a refusal to yield to the homogenizing pull of the Bombay-centric market. Swabhiman also meant honesty. He openly criticized corrupt politicians, often at personal risk, and refused to lip-sync even when pressured by organizers, insisting, “Zubeen’s voice is not for playback machines.” To his admirers, this stubbornness was not arrogance but dignity itself. He lived as if to say that respect is not given, it is lived.

The musical call of Swatantrata: Freedom to Create and Resist

If Swabhiman gave him dignity, Swatantrata gave Zubeen his wings. The same self-respect that kept him rooted in Assam also pushed him to cross boundaries. Born into a Brahmin family steeped in classical traditions, he refused to remain confined to the expected. From an early age, he learned the tabla, guitar, harmonium, piano, and a range of both Western and indigenous instruments, declaring through his practice that Assamese artistry could never be pigeonholed.

Throughout his career, he moved effortlessly across languages and genres. He sang in Assamese, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, English, Nepali, and several local languages, shifting with ease from Bihu and Borgeet to rock, from Sufi ballads to devotional hymns, from gospels to zikirs, and into protest anthems and experimental fusions, weaving together traditions that rarely shared the same stage. For him, art had no borders. This versatility was not opportunism but a declaration that an Assamese voice could travel across borders without losing its roots. His Swatantrata was a continuous striving for autonomy: the autonomy of the artist against markets, the autonomy of the region against neglect, and the autonomy of the self against despair.

That freedom also defined his politics. Whether protesting the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), voicing concern for flood victims, or supporting local movements such as animal rights, Zubeen positioned himself as the people’s artist, never an entertainer insulated from their suffering. Onstage, too, he often broke conventions, performing barefoot, lit cigarettes mid-performance, or scolding organizers openly. Critics called him eccentric, but his fans saw the authenticity of an untamed spirit. Even when accused of arrogance, Zubeen reminded that freedom demands risk and discomfort. This anarchic energy unsettled many city elites but made him an icon of authenticity for ordinary rural Assamese people who saw in him the courage they themselves longed to live.

This defiance extended beyond politics to religion and culture. Despite repeated warnings from ULFA from time to time, including threats for singing Hindi songs at Bihu functions, he never yielded, insisting that linguistic diversity and cultural plurality could not be suppressed by fear. In 2019, he wrote to ULFA-I, urging peace, affirming, “Freedom is all about standing on your own. You cannot be free in fear.” His challenges also took aim at entrenched caste-Hindu Brahminical orthodoxy. He once joked that he had broken his janeu to tie a mosquito net, a symbolic rejection of caste order. By urging sprinter Hima Das to eat beef for “real strength,” he transformed a dietary suggestion into a critique of Hindu taboos and the politics of food purity, exposing how freedom must confront the moral policing of caste and faith. He questioned animal sacrifice at the Kamakhya Temple and the divine status accorded to Satradhikars, declaring Krishna not a god but a man. He openly renounced his caste, religion, and even God itself, saying: “Mur Kunu Jaati Naai, Mur Kunu Dhorma Naai, Mur Kunu Bhogoban Naai, Moi Mukto” — “I have no caste, no religion, no God. I am free.” In Assam’s history, few artists have challenged the caste-Hindu order with such fearless clarity.

Swaraj: Self-rule, Belonging, and Social Commitment

Finally, Swaraj was the deepest thread of Zubeen’s life, the belief that true self-rule is both individual and collective. Even at the height of his fame, he held to a conscience-driven moral compass. For him, Swaraj was not about rejecting the modern but about carrying one’s roots proudly into it, and it extended far beyond music. It was also a form of social commitment. His philanthropy was often quiet: funding treatments, supporting orphans, donating to namghars and local institutions. Zubeen and his wife, Garima, adopted around 15 underprivileged children, offering them care, education, and family when society had denied them all. This gesture enacted Swaraj in its most radical form, rejecting rigid boundaries of caste, tribe, and class while affirming a shared humanity. By turning his celebrity capital into a commons for the people, Zubeen redefined Swaraj as mutual care and responsibility rather than mere independence.

Yet Zubeen’s Swaraj was not only public; it was also in the ward. Zubeen’s life was marked by personal struggles—health scares, mental stress, and moments of despair. He often admitted feeling misunderstood and fatigued, but instead of hiding these truths he allowed them to seep into his songs. In a world where celebrities often craft polished, untouchable images, his openness was itself a political act, a form of inner Swaraj, a self-rule over his own narrative.

Conclusion: Carrying His Ideals Forward

Through the three ideals of Swabhiman, Swatantrata, and Swaraj, Zubeen lived as both artist and citizen, rebel and philosopher, a republic in himself. Our Zubeen Da is gone, but his ideals remain. The truest tribute we can offer is to renew his practice daily in our art, politics, and relationships; to sing in our own voices, to care for one another, to resist domination in all its forms, and to dare, like Zubeen, to live authentically.

We can try to box Zubeen’s life in many ways, but each attempt falls short. He was at once a non-conformist, a humanist, a socialist, sometimes even a Buddhist. He wanted to live like Charlie Chaplin, like Bishnu Prasad Rabha, like Alexander, like Columbus. He often said he wanted to touch the bottom of the sea, and in his passing, perhaps he did. In one of his last interviews with acclaimed writer Rita Chowdhury, he described himself as the captain of a ship in a sea without maps. The image is haunting, for the ship has long been seen as the “heterotopia par excellence”, a floating world closed in on itself yet open to the infinity of the sea, carrying dreams, dangers, and possibilities across unknown waters. Zubeen’s life was such a vessel, connecting distant shores, genres, and peoples, while remaining a world of its own. To see him as captain of that ship is to see his journey as both rooted and unmoored, always in motion, always opening Assam to new possibilities.

Joi Zubeen!

Also Read: Zubeen - The Human Who Refused To Be God