13 highlights
-
The presence of guns in the hands of Punjabi youth is no accident. There are more than 390,275 active licensed weapons in the state, according to the data released by S. Karuna Raju, the state’s chief electoral officer
-
This means that Punjab has 2% of the country’s population but 10% of the total gun licences. Adjusted for population, Punjab issued the third-highest number of gun licences from 2018 to 2020, after the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh.
-
The proliferation of arms and ammunition goes hand in hand with the popularity of Punjabi pop music videos that show men engaging in acts of violence and firing weapons. So much so that even the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 2019 stated that the glorification of violent and vulgar songs had given rise to a culture of gangsters in Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh, affecting children of an impressionable age.
-
Ahead of elections, the incumbent Congress party rolled out the red carpet for singer Shubhdeep Singh Sidhu, popularly known as Sidhu Moosewala, the poster child of gun culture in Punjab.
-
“The cocktail of social media, poor literacy and unemployment has increased the digestion of violence in society,”
-
In 2001, popular Punjabi singer Babbu Mann experimented with the phenomenon of “gun glorification” in his song “Kabza”. He appealed to the youth to “pick up the revolver” to settle land disputes.
-
She insists that caste has a role to play in Punjab’s gun culture. Guns, seen as a status symbol, were popularized by upper caste Jatt Sikhs.
-
Disappointed, he eventually approached the Punjab and Haryana High Court to get such songs banned. It was on his plea that the court in July 2019 directed the Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh police to ensure that no songs glorifying liquor, drugs and violence are publicly played or performed.
-
Apart from Sidhu Moosewala, singers such as Mankirat Aulakh, Elly Mangat and Karan Aujla started invoking Jatts and guns in their songs.
-
Sidhu Moosewala was a step ahead of the duo. In 2020, during the initial COVID-19 induced lockdown, videos of him firing an AK-47 and a pistol, while being assisted by policemen, went viral. He was booked under the Arms Act. However, he went underground to evade arrest until he got bail.
-
After getting bail in July 2020, Moosewala released a single “Sanju”, in which he compared the charges against him to those against actor Sanjay Dutt. That invited another FIR against him by the Congress government.
-
I heard Sidhu Moosewala on the campaign trail in Mansa district of Punjab, from where he is contesting the elections as a Congress candidate.
-
A request for an interview with Moosewala was turned down. His aide, requesting anonymity, politely told me that he would speak only with the vernacular press because the English media asked him questions about gun violence.