It has indeed been a mournful second half of September for all Axomiyas, for Zubeen Garg, probably one of the most popular cultural figures to have come out of the state of Assam after Bhupen Hazarika, passed away suddenly in Singapore. It won’t be an exaggeration to say that Zubeen might have been able to bring a massively larger crowd to a Rongali Bihu function organized in any random town in Assam, irrespective of antagonized ethnic communities at loggerheads with each other. The times were immensely turbulent after the implosion of the seemingly composite Axomiya identity which splintered into communities demanding and asserting their own ethnic identities, especially in the late 90s and early 2000s when militant organizations like ULFA, BLT, NDFB, KLO, ACF, etc., operated with their respective demands against the Indian Union and the state government which responded with violence. It was amid the context of that unceasing violence when Zubeen Garg took to singing, his first album Anamika (1992) spread in popularity like wildfire across Assam. The generation that took to adulthood after the Assam Accord found itself stuck between the State and the Insurgent outfits. It was this generation that Zubeen struck chord with. His compositions, fusions of western elements, included distorted electric guitars, fast paced drums, synthesizers along with classical elements that dominated Axomiya music, and it caught popular imagination. He was not the first to have fused various elements, but he indeed was able to imbue a sense of rebellion in his compositions, which resonated immensely with the Axomiya generation that was passing through adolescence to adulthood in the 90s, which found itself continuously pounded from both the ends, the state and militancy. Deprived of hopes to live a life of dignity, that axomiya youth would find a serenade anthem in his compositions like Maya, while songs like Dure Dure and Mon Jai would console an unemployed, heartbroken and intoxicated with cheap liquor, when romance remained unrequited or rejected. His compositions towards the end of the 90s indeed gave a sense of consolation and relief to the generation that grew up with the wound of violence and disillusionment. His compositions for various mainstream Assamese flicks like Hiya Diya Niya, Tumi Mor Matho Mor, Daag and Nayak require special mention because the music from all these films still remain ingrained in the popular Axomiya imagination, despite having unmendable cracks. Such is the popularity of these films that any layman would find it immensely difficult to remember more Assamese mainstream films from the early 2000s beyond the ones mentioned above.
When the Axomiya film industry went into bankruptcy because of piracy, a parallel CD film industry arose which would allow other ethnic communities to produce music videos and films alike, breaking the hegemony of the middle-class caste-Hindu Axomiyas in audio-visual production. In a contradictory manner, this phenomenon allowed greater participation to erstwhile excluded communities in Assamese film and music production industry, and Zubeen became the most sought-after singer to sing songs in various other languages. He sang songs in Bodo, Karbi, Koch-Rajbongshi, Dimasa, Mising, Baganiya Bhasa, Garo, Nepali, Kokborok among many other languages, which made the almost always warring communities along ethnic lines feel represented, although temporarily. In a similar vein, the figure of Zubeen can be read as a contradictory one. A contradiction not in terms of his thoughts and actions, but rather a contradiction in terms of the sociopolitical environment that surrounded him. A contradiction in his identity: his birth identity (brahmin) which he rejected and his embrace of tribal identity. A contradiction in his public appearance: intoxicated and destroying all morals of the sanitized caste-Hindu imagination to which he himself belonged, at Bihu functions where fans would indulge in Boka dance (mud dance). Essentially a contradiction which an artist must live in contemporary times, i.e., to either become a mere spectacle, made for consumption, a commodity ready to be exploited by the forces that decide, or become a rebel, in a romantic anarchic sense.
Often, the figure of Zubeen inclined towards the romantic end of the spectrum; when he would perform on stage whatever he wanted to, despite the organizing committee’s chagrin, when he would sing Hindi songs in Bihu functions openly defying strict dictates by ULFA, when he would call for the purge of all Brahmins on stage because he no longer considered himself one, when he would be found making merry with men of street, lending a hand to fishermen and devouring food at shoddy dilapidated eateries. Immediately after the infamous 2008 bomb blasts that rocked Assam, Zubeen joined IPTA in their mobile peace rally across Guwahati to perform with them. Often, he questioned successive political establishments of Assam satirically through his songs and on-stage performances which always kept the establishment in an unnerving unease with him. This proto-anarchic unruliness always kept him as a figure who was never subsumed by any ruling political ideology, neither the Congress nor the BJP. Instead, he would refer to himself as a ‘socialist’ not because of any acute political understanding of the term, but because of empathy. In 2019, when CAA protests broke out in Assam, Zubeen along with his proto-anarchic unruliness stood by the masses of Assam. However, absence of any specific ideology to follow also made him intentionally or unintentionally sing anthems for both Congress and BJP during their election campaigns in Assam. In 2023, Zubeen opposed the Kamatapur movement impulsively rather than politically, while performing in Goalpara in Western Assam which angered AAKRASU (All Assam Koch Rajbongshi Students Union). The film Mission China (2017) which was the result of his production company saw him acting and directing it in order to bring back crowd to the theaters as well as to bring back to life the commercial Axomiya cinema. The film did great business in terms of profiting but at the cost of reducing the scope of conceiving sensible cinema, which wasn’t caricaturesque. It is to note that Zubeen also was a part of an older film Mon Jai (2008) which wouldn’t have been able to compete with a production like Mission China. It is here when the figure of Zubeen tilted towards being a spectacle, which didn’t seem to hold any ideology but was in fact susceptible to any kind of ideological project. This contradiction never left him, which is inherent to any artist in different degrees in a consumer society, in his case, a consumer society where various communities tend to be constantly in friction with each other for political control. His rise as a singer who sang in Axomiya and eventually in countless non Axomiya languages in Assam itself poses a contradiction, wherein, an Axomiya caste-Hindu would hold all ethnicities and communities together by a safety pin, at least at a Bihu function or a cultural festival. It is precisely because of this complex tussle between his two ends, where his romantic end, which defied any kind of labeling, policing and domination, which always had an upper hand over his spectacle end, that masses across communities and social hierarchies could feel a part of themselves being celebrated on the stage, like a carnival.
Despite the contradictions in him, he will be remembered as the one who never fell into line, a romantic, an untamable bard.
The political establishment is already pushing for museumization and a hollow canonization of his legacy for immediate benefit, to turn his figure into another spectacle. The generation that grew up listening to his compositions will remember him in nostalgia for a time which gave them solace amid the uncertainty of bomb blasts, blackouts, bandhs, and violence. For that generation it is an irreparable loss because his songs accompanied them in every phase of their lives. The masses would miss him in Bihu functions where they could enjoy their ‘now’ and forget about their disenchanting calculative tomorrow, where both a college student and a rickshaw puller could equally sing about love, loss, hopes and despair, where to be jolly and sentimental one needn’t be sipping matcha. Some might argue that his figure functioned as a mere escapade from real problems, which to an extent is true, because of the limitations put by the very contradiction that he embodied. However, if anything can be taken from the tremendous participation of masses cutting across ethnic and class divides at his funeral procession in Guwahati, it is the hope that similar genuine egalitarian participation is possible beyond the spectacle of curated Northeast festivals. Despite the contradictions in him, he will be remembered as the one who never fell into line, a romantic, an untamable bard.
