Mumbai, India – Less than 24 hours after news broke of the April 22 attack, in which gunmen killed 25 tourists and a local pony rider in the Indian-administered Kashmir region, a new song surfaced on Indian YouTube.
Its message was unmistakable:
We made a mistake by allowing you to stay on,
You got your own country, why didn’t you leave then?
They call us Hindus “kaffirs”,
Their hearts are full of conspiracies against us.
The song, titled “Pehle Dharam Pocha” (They Asked About Religion First) targeted Indian Muslims, insisted they were conspiring against Hindus and asked them to leave India. In less than a week, the song has garnered more than 140,000 views on YouTube.
And it is not the only song. The killings in the picturesque resort town of Pahalgam marked the worst attack against tourists in Kashmir in a quarter of a century. But even as New Delhi hits back against Pakistan, which it accuses of links to the attack – a charge Islamabad denies – a wave of incendiary music tracks, crafted and circulated within hours, has set off an anti-Muslim backlash in India.
Set to pulsing beats and catchy rhymes, these songs, part of a genre that has come to be known as Hindutva Pop, are calling for violent retribution for the attack. From songs that label Indian Muslims as “traitors” to songs that advocate their boycott, the country’s smartphones are buzzing. Hindutva is the Hindu majoritarian political ideology of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies.
Al Jazeera found at least 20 songs that carried and amplified such Islamophobic themes at a time when Indians were anxiously scrolling through their digital feeds for more information on the aftermath of the attack.
These songs have a chillingly consistent narrative: Since the attackers are believed to have singled out Hindu tourists, Indian Muslims can no longer be trusted – never mind that a Muslim Kashmiri pony rider who tried to stop the gunmen was also killed.
Apart from these, a glut of other hyper-nationalist songs has also emerged in the past week, pushing warmongering rhetoric deeper into Indian digital veins. There are songs that call for Pakistan to be nuked or for the Indian government to “wipe Pakistan off the map”, and others that advocate for “Pakistani blood” in exchange for the deaths,
These songs have become a part of a broader digital push by Hindutva groups, who are using social media and encrypted platforms like WhatsApp to stoke fear, hatred, and division among Indians – all at a time when tensions with neighbouring Pakistan are ratcheting up.
This campaign is mirroring real-world violence, across multiple Indian states. In Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Maharashtra and Uttarakhand, Muslims have faced brutal attacks and threats. Kashmiri Muslims have been evicted from their homes, street vendors assaulted, and in chilling acts of retribution, Muslim patients have been denied medical care by Hindu doctors.
On Friday, a Muslim man was shot dead, with a Hindu supremacist in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, claiming responsibility for the shooting and saying it was retribution for the Pahalgam attack.
Concerted campaign
All the 20 songs that Al Jazeera analysed saw a common theme being pushed: a reiteration of the assertion that tourists were killed for their Hindu identities, and therefore, Hindus across the country must now feel threatened in living around Muslims. Multiple witness and survivor accounts of the Pahalgam attack suggest that the gunmen asked the tourists to recite the Kalimas (sacred Islamic verses) and the men who could not do so were shot.
The song Pehle Dharm Poocha (They Asked About Religion First) was released on April 23, the day after the attack. Singer Kavi Singh insists that letting Muslims stay on in India after the country’s partition in 1947 was “a mistake”, and asks them to go to Pakistan.
Another song, Ab Ek Nahi Huye Toh Kat Jaaoge (If You Don’t Unite Now You Will be Slaughtered), by singer Chandan Deewana, is addressed entirely to Hindus