‘My bars are like Dasrath Manjhi; they break caste mountains’

When he made a debut two years ago with the single Ladai seekh le, rapper Sumeet  Samos made his politics clear. He was speaking up for his community and the everyday struggles of Dalits. In the time since, Samos, who lives between Delhi and his hometown in Orissa’s Koraput village, has been a consistent voice on the subject, keeping the anti-caste movement going through his music. In this interview, the artist speaks about his latest singles, his politics, the need to include the history of the converted Dalits in the larger movement, and Ambedkar. The complete interview is available on the Dalit Camera YouTube channel. Here are some excerpts:

Dalit Camera staff| 4th August| New Delhi

You recently released three singles, Fighter, Jati and Sapne. What prompted you to create these songs?

Fighter is personal to me. When I talk of caste, people say it is the thing of the past, but they don’t talk about Una, they don’t talk about Guna, about Rohith Vemula.  I also touch upon resources for Dalits. My bars are like Dasrath Manjhi, they break Mountains, Caste Mountains/barriers. When I say ‘My writings are easy and aren’t difficult like Japanese Kanji’, I draw upon Ambedkar, that the intellectual class can be a raw class but it can also be a moral force. Franz Fanon says intellectual classes do not connect with the masses and I don’t want that to happen with my lyrics.

I wrote Jaati to focus on caste in particular. When #BlackLivesMatter happened, the Indian diaspora voiced out their support for it but they don’t do the same when it comes to caste. In the song, I tried to include some popular elements from history. I studied Latin American Studies at JNU, so I try to say look we were like the Incas of Machu Pichu at a point of time. The minute we speak of caste, the upper caste perception is that it is about reservation or vote bank politics; they never refer to the violence we suffer due to caste, the disproportionate presence of our community in academia, media, bureaucracy, judiciary. If you are saying caste is a thing of past then who are the people cleaning your sewers and railway tracks. Ambedkar in his writings says when the Brahmin king Pushyamitra Sungha came, he destroyed a lot of Buddhist architecture, Brahmins started to consolidate power. So this song is about re-writing history and I believe that re-writing histories is important for marginalised communities, because without that, Indian history is some kind of hagiography of the Brahmins. If you look at NCERT books, it is all about the Vedic Age. There is a  little bit about Buddhism, Hunas, Sakyas , Sultanate period, Mughal period, and then independence movement. You don’t have history which speaks about replacing  of the indigenous communities.  In Orissa, Brahmins came at a certain  point of time, they claim to have a glorious presence of 5,000 years on this land; am trying to negate that because history doesn’t substantiate that. Their existence is fragmented, they came one after another. So compared to that, we had a history, we had a civilization. 

When I say ‘Jaati hai ki Jati nahi’, I refer to Ambedkar’s words. He says caste is like monster, you experience it in one form or another. All the DBA people experience it in one way or another, some experience caste in brutal ways, others experience in latter half of their lives during wedding, education processes, some at work. It just doesn’t end.

You also go by the pen name of Turuk. What does that mean?

I started reading a text written by two anthropologists about the South Chhattisgarh border. They say that around the 17^th century, there were Adil Shahi rulers from Bijapur who wanted to conquer South Orissa. In their armies were Turks who eventually came to reside in thisregion for about six months. They established a settlement called ‘Turuk penta’. Those who use that surname, it is said, are the descendants of those soldiers. Either the soldiers married the local women or they had intercourse and left. Am not sure how to wrap my head around it because my grandparents’ generation says we are natives of the region. So am unable to locate myself.

Which artistes have influenced your writing?

In India, it is Kadubai Kharat, Arivu and even Ginni Mahi. Ginni gives you that confidence; she can go on a big stage, she can sing about Ambedkar, constitution, rights for Dalits. Kadubai Kharat for her content; she comes from a village, her parents told her several stories from the past. In terms of composition of lyrics, it is Kadubai Kharat.  But in terms of art form, it is Arivu, the Tamil hip hop artist. We rap against caste, reservation, violence on Dalits, honor killings. So there are a lot of similar topics that we rap on. At times I go and look through his lyrics, I try to see what he is writing.

What is your creative process?

Most of the times I don’t pick a topic. Often, it’s a particular word that strikes me, compelling me to create. As a rapper, am very conscious of what is happening around me, conscious about different words moving around me, the topics discussed, or punch lines. For instance the song Desia Pila, Area Khali came up after a phone call with my mother. She had been asking me to return home and I I told her I have work in Delhi. So she called me ‘desia pila’, which is a slang for someone from a slum.  She meant to tell me, ‘You are still from the slum in the village; just because you have gone to Delhi, you don’t become a different person.’ After that she hung up. That night, I woke up at 3am and kept thinking of the phrase ‘desia pila’, I mixed that up with ‘area khali’, a slang for ‘awesome’. I went for a long walk and when I returned to my hostel, I made beats for it and came up with the song.

What part of Ambedkar’s philosophy do you relate to the most?

Ambedkar always speaks about intrinsic value of human life, reclamation of human personality. He talks of fraternity, equality, liberty, a very popular message. For me, that association of life, where you can be an individual and also part of a collective is moving. That aspect of life where he is giving back to the communities, working for the most marginalized in the country, constantly.  Not even the Communists cared for this cause, they even at one point of time said that the cause of the untouchables at a point of time, the cause of the ‘Harijans’, is mundane compared to freedom struggle of India. Even Gandhi wanted them to be part of Hinduism. But Ambedkar never wanted that, he wanted to make Dalit a separate political entity. He ensured they had representation, they were out of the clutches of mental slavery. The sheer magnitude of intellectual engagement that he did, in terms of writing, in terms of reading (Black history, Christianity, Law, Labor) inspires me. But apart from that, it is his activism. He is an intellectual and also an activist, a politician, and someone who was reading religious philosophies. Most of his political solutions were never static, he was a pragmatic thinker. He always looked for feasibility, he tried to see how something was feasible for the marginalized community and he went with that. He was always measuring the cost and benefits and that’s why I don’t think there can only be one way of doing things, that one can bring change by picking up arms; there has to be a middle ground.

The complete interview is available on the Dalit Camera YouTube channel.