The Infinite Afterlife of Zubeen Garg

I. Ten days after Zubeen Garg passed away, I was attending a Baptist Santal youth and children development camp, as part of my doctoral fieldwork, deep inside BTR, Assam. A speaker from the podium asked the students “What do you want to become when you grow up?” Before anybody could answer, he suggested a list: Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, and Zubeen Garg. “Do you want to become Zubeen Garg?”, my friend-interlocutor translated his exact words in Assamese for me. The speaker, a deeply religious pastor, later explained in personal conversation that Zubeen believed in no religion but humanity, and until his death, he remained unbowed before power and money. This was actually a village that had been displaced thirty years ago due to ethnic violence. They believed Zubeen’s death was an irreparable loss for the marginalized in Assam and recounted instances of him singing hymns and gospels.

II. In what would tragically become his final interview, Zubeen Garg began by invoking the mercurial Queen front-man Freddie Mercury. With the benefit of hindsight, one can nowonly imagine the impact the flamboyant Parsi born to Indian parents might have had on Zubeen. Did his life’s philosophy share the eternal impulse in “The Show Must Go On”, literally sung by Freddie on his deathbed? Or the aloneness, which Zubeen admitted to so candidly, crooning all over in “Somebody to Love”? What did Zubeen—the musical prodigy spoken of in bated breath as he broke into the Assamese music scene in the early 1990s—feel when he sat in his car listening to Pink Floyd? How did he perceive Syd Barrett? Did he too see, what others saw in Barrett’s troubled mind, a searing critique of the post-industrial commodification of art and artists? Barrett had left Pink Floyd in 1968, withdrawing from public life till his death in 2006. What did Zubeen think of the rebellion pulsating through “Another Brick in the Wall” or the distant ships and receding voices in “Comfortably Numb”? We will never know what windows these references might have opened into his inner world, but what is certain is that he lived and died knowing full well he was Assam’s own shining crazy diamond. His songs carried the scent of his birthplace, and the background scores of his films drew from the voices of its many tribal communities.

That is what makes Zubeen a daunting study in cosmopolitanism. He could make us speak about eccentric behemoths of western rock music and the ethereal divinity of borgeets in the same breath. Which other artist has had fans performing the (in)famous bokanaas(mud dance), something that sanitized middle class spaces can only comprehend of in horror or disgust or both? What kind of a catharsis might that have possibly meant for the countless unemployed, dejected youth spanning the length and breadth of the state today, readily dismissed in pejorative casteist/classistslangs like chappri ornibba? When Zubeen openly denounced caste pride and Brahminism up in the Nilachal hill, or criticized the tradition of addressing influential xatradhikars as nothing less than God right in Majuli, the heartland of xatras, whose unspeakable voices was he representing? In an India that has remarkably swallowed its hunger for free speech, Zubeen not only had the gall in speaking blunt truth to power, he also had a massive shoulder to bear the outrage that would unfailingly follow.

As someone who grew up in the 2000s, we knew that “only Zubeen could say stuff and get away with it”. One of my enduring memories of Zubeen is of the time when ULFA would issue diktats for prohibiting Hindi songs in Bihu functions. Zubeen would openly declare from the stage that music has no language, and go on to belt Hindi songs. We would shudder with fear. What if he gets shot or kidnapped? That fleeting thought went away as naturally as it came, this was afterall Zubeen Garg. Not even the guns can get him. Today no one will call it an irony that the same proscribed insurgent group had issued condolences after his death, and hasinfact gone a step further by threatening to “deliver justice”athis alleged unnatural death.

III. The afterlife of Zubeen Garg is a lived experience. If the present is any indication to go by, his name and one-liners could transform into symbols of social defiance, cultural resistance, and political dissent. Kaku Ghentau Khatir Nokoru (Bloody hell, I don’t give a damn to anyone!), Poriborton xobtutu xunibole bhaal kintu hoise b**l (The word “change” might sound sweet, but in reality, it’s hogwash) and Mur kunu dhormo nai, mur kunu jati nai, mur kunu bhogowan nai, moi mukto (I don’t have any religion, caste, or God, I’m free!) are not political slogans but the essential Zubeen cult. These are being cried out from the same multitudes that arguably become the “footsoldiers” of communal/ethnic/political violence in academic studies. Hence, it would be foolhardy to dismiss them as mere proxies of the singer-songwriter-musician-filmmaker. This assumes further importance when we take into account Zubeen’s public exhortations of socialism. The social media after his death is buoyant with reels and video clips of Zubeen proudly proclaiming his socialist, even communist, leanings. 

Although it’s unclearif he meant it in a politically urgent sense, the very act of openly declaring it at a time when that word has become a ploy to paint dissenters and critics as enemies of the nation is intriguing. He is perhaps the only God-like superstar to lend credence to words that have become political taboo, used relentlessly to dismiss and criminalize disagreements, even inside universities. It’s not just that everyday life in Assam came to a standstill in the last week following his demise, but the political atmosphere of communal polarization threatening the social fabric for the last few months seem to have vanished. Of course, this may be only a passing phenomenon, but it proved that Zubeen’s absence, just like his presence, is a social adhesive.Today, his legacy straddles between thatof a cultural icon and a life lived in raw defiance.

IV. It should not come as a surprise that after his death, many sections of the intellectual class, who were critical of not only his inconsistencies but alsohis outlandish irreverent persona, are writingof his glory. They are not to be blamed.Zubeen was not a politician or political activist, and it is only after his death that one felt the need to scratch the surface to recognize his political standpoint. At the same time, it must be stated that Assam’s intellectual public sphere is yet to shed its middle-class moralist worldview, and Zubeen, true to his spirit, would have only chaffed at such self-preservation.He would retort with Brahmaputra to the belief that Ganga was India’s chief river; thunder at the suggestion that the Indian government has “finally recognized” Assamese as a classical language;ask Assamese athletes to not compromise on protein intake even if it meant consuming beef; speak against animal sacrifice in religious rituals; or play with crude phraseology to term the contentious “CAB turned CAA” as k***, a popular Assamese slang arguably bordering on the vulgar. Nevermind, if it did not please the “civil” society. It was in that contradictory double-life—as a peerless artist answerable to none and an Assamese national bedrock—that seemed to burden or ornate Zubeen with the humongous responsibility (if not inreality, then in rhetoric) of guiding the jati at difficult junctures. At an anti-CAA gathering in 2019 in Chandmari, he spotted a banner from the crowd that said “Zubeen for CM”. He straightaway declared from the open stage that politics was not his cup of tea. A conscious decision to stay away from contesting elections, now in retrospect, catapulted him altogether into a different league even among the greatest of the greats. Assam was saved from having to witness a living cultural icon, yet again, enter the murky world of party politics. 

Today, instead seeking instances of a lack of adequate respect for Zubeen among some quarters while he was alive, we are better offrecognizingthe common denominator in what he had meant for his lovers, critics, skeptics, admirers, followers, and devotees.At any rate, there is a rare victory in the fact that those who had once viciously slammed Zubeen either for his choice of words or his eccentric persona cannot help but revise their assessment.

V. Witnessing over the years a young working-class man from Bihar earning his bread at a hair-salon near a busy Guwahati highway, blasting Zubeen’s Hindi and Assamese numbers, during peak and empty hours, a realization strikes—Zubeen Garg will continue to defy all narrow definitions. His death proved as much—with people offering nam-prasanga, recitations from the Koran, the Rabha community’s folk mourning Pansuna Dalai and many more.It would not be a stretch to say that every second person in Assam either has a photo with the icon or a personal memory of him or a favouriteZubeen song. With the rush for appropriating his life and legacy, it’s anybody’s guess if Zubeen’s fate may come to echo his beloved soldier-artist inspiration Bishnu Rabha, now commemorated mostly as an artist bereft of a radical socio-political legacy. Thanks to the digital age, his countless videos and songs may stand in the way in attempts at sanitizing his legacy—a heart that throbbed without seeking permission or validation.

About the Author

Mridugunjan Deka is pursuing a PhD in Political Science from Gauhati University and has taught at TISS-Guwahati. He holds an MPhil degree in Political Science. He acknowledges the help received from Eeshanee Pachani in writing this article.

Also Read: Zubeen Garg and the Metaphor of Kanchanjunga: Why the Mountain Sang Through Him