Amar Singh Chamkila
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. |
A brief biography
Suanshu Khurana, June 1, 2023: The Indian Express
From 1979 to 1988, Chamkila ruled the music landscape in Punjab with songs that were a commentary on village life, drug abuse, guns, extra marital affairs, dowry, alcoholism and matters of Punjabi masculinity among others. This wasn’t like the spot on, in tune, polished folk of Gurdas Mann or the kind of gentle folk that Surinder Kaur and Asa Singh Mastana were propagating in the state and among the diaspora.
These songs sounded gravelly and uninhibited. But what was spot on was Chamkila’s raw yet very in tune voice. Many of Chamkila’s songs comprised coarse lyrics, mostly written by him. These were often bawdy and left little to imagination. At the time, many of his detractors denounced him for songs that were boorish and full of double entendre. But the numerous live shows that were followed by many albums, earned him generations of fans that still give him the legendary status.
Chamkila’s childhood and early life
Born as Dhani Ram to Kartar Kaur and Hari Singh Sandila in an impoverished Dalit family in village Dugri, which is now a suburb in Punjab’s Ludhiana, Chamkila, who sang a little bit at home as a six-year-old, aspired to be an electrician. When that did not work out, he joined a cloth mill in Ludhiana to support his family. By this time, he was 18 and already married to a woman named Gurmail Kaur. He had four children with Kaur, two of whom – daughters Amandeep and Kamaldeep (who is also a Punjabi folk musician) survived beyond infancy.
While working at the cloth mill, his childhood affection for music grew and Chamkila began to learn how to play the harmonium and dholak. He also began to meet and sit in the music sessions of local music artistes such as K Deep, the first Punjabi singer to sing famed poet Shiv Kumar Batalvi’s poetry, and Mohommad Sadiq from Sangrur, who is currently a Member of Parliament from Faridkot.
In this process he met Surinder Shinda, a noted folk artiste of the time, and became his student. Chamkila wrote numerous songs for Shinda, sang in his chorus and accompanied him on tours. But the money he managed to get, Rs 100 a month, was not enough to run the expenses of his family. Chamkila then decided to sing, so that he could support his family properly.
The rise of a star
His decision to sing gave rise to the nom de plume – Amar Singh Chamkila. Chamkila means aglow or glittery, an attempt to have a name that grabbed attention and was also aspirational personally.
He joined forces with singer Surinder Sonia and managed to land his first album comprising eight songs. The album ‘Takue Te Takua Khadke’ (1979, EMI) did well, but Chamkila felt Sonia’s manager, who was also her husband, wasn’t paying him properly. He left the partnership and worked with singer Usha Kiran for a while before partnering with a singer named Amarjot Kaur, whom he later married.
Amarjot, whose vocals weren’t much of a match in comparison with Chamkila, had worked with popular singer Kuldeep Manak before and had left her home and first husband to pursue her dream.
The two sang fluently and fluidly on stage, as if having a conversation in a living room. This worked massively. Every song the two touched turned to gold. It came to a point when Chamkila’s akhadas (free, open air programmes) dominated every place in Punjab, rendering many local singers jobless. People would pile up in maidaans, climb terraces to listen to him. Many even checked Chamkila’s dates to fix a wedding in the family.
At a time when popular folk singers charged Rs 500 for a local show, Chamkila charged Rs 4,000 just for a wedding. He once performed more than 365 shows in a year, sometimes booked in different villages in the same day. He wrote cleverly and whatever he sang, holding his trademark tumbi (a single-stringed instrument), was a hit, no matter what. He also recorded for a number of Punjabi films and travelled extensively to Canada and Dubai for shows.
Amarjot and Chamkila had a son together. They called him Jaiman.
Music in the times of insurgency
The backdrop to Chamkila’s music was Punjab’s insurgency, which gained momentum in the aftermath of the 1984 Sikh riots. The Sikh separatist movement and calls for the establishment of Khalistan were marked by terrorism, assassinations, bombardments, police brutality and a number of human rights violations.
Chamkila’s lyrical content was considered vulgar by many who supported and were a part of the then terrorist organisations. He received anonymous death threats in the form of letters and would hide for days at a stretch in his friends’ homes. In fact he also stopped writing his suggestive songs for a while, but got back to work soon after.
Chamkila’s death and conspiracy theories around it
On May 8, 1988, Chamkila and Amarjot were to do an afternoon show in Mehsampur in Punjab’s Jalandhar. Just when the two got off their white ambassador, they were gunned down by three disguised men riding a motorcycle. Chamkila was 27 at the time of his death. Of their three accompanying artistes, two died on the spot. No FIR was ever registered in the case and the culprits were never caught.
The situation gave rise to a number of conspiracy theories, besides a number of films on the issue. While many think that the terrorists killed Chamkila and Amarjot at the behest of many local artistes who were jobless due to his rising popularity, there are those who call the assassination as honour killing by Amarjot’s family. Amarjot was from a higher caste and his family had issues with her marrying a member of a lower caste. This was fuelled by the fact that her family never claimed her body or the couple’s son, who was later brought up by Chamkila’s first wife, who continues to live in Dugri.
Many films were made on Chamkila’s life including Mehsampur (2018) by Kabir Singh Chowdhry and the recent film titled Jodi, starring Dosanjh and Nirmal Khaira. A book titled Awaaz Nahi Mardi by Punjabi writer Gulzar Singh Shaunki was also released in 2014.
His songs of resistance
Manraj Grewal Sharma, March 10, 2024: The Indian Express
Amar Singh Chamkila, arguably the first superstar of Punjabi pop — it’s said he was booked for over 400 programmes in a year — was shot dead by militants along with his wife and co-singer Amarjot Kaur at Mehsampur near Jalandhar in March 1988.
Mention Imtiaz Ali’s forthcoming film Chamkila and chances are that you think of Diljit Dosanjh, the singer-actor who is the hero of this film.
But in Punjab, the name Chamkila is a sobering reminder of a dark decade. It transports you to 1988, a year marked by the ominous reign of militants in the state.
Amar Singh Chamkila, arguably the first superstar of Punjabi pop — it’s said he was booked for over 400 programmes in a year — was shot dead by militants along with his wife and co-singer Amarjot Kaur at Mehsampur near Jalandhar in March 1988. He was all of 27.
Those weren’t good times for poets, writers, singers and dreamers. Prof Jagrup Sekhon, co-author of Terrorism in Punjab: Understanding Grassroots Reality, recounts how, in April 1987, militants had laid down a 13-point code called Samaj Sudhar Lehar, putting down rules for how people should dress, interact and even marry. The boisterous Punjabi baraat was reduced to just 11 people and lehenga was a no-no for brides who were told to stick to salwar-kameez.
The year 1988 began on a bloody note with the killing of Jaimal Singh Padda, 45, a Naxal poet, singer and peasant leader. Paramjit Judge, author of Religion, Identity and Nationhood: The Sikh Militant Movement, remembers interviewing Padda in 1981 for his thesis on Naxals. “He was a simple man who lived an austere life in two rooms.”
Padda’s work inspired filmmaker Anand Patwardhan to make a documentary on Punjab Communists with the title borrowed from a popular Padda song, “Ona Mitran Di Yaad Pyaari” (In sweet memory of those comrades).
Padda, who coined the slogan “Na Hindu raj, na Khalistan, raj karega mazdoor kisan (No Hindu state, no Khalistan — it’s the working class that will rule)”, was gunned down by militants of the Khalistan Commando Force (KCF) outside his house in Lakhan Ka Padda village near Kapurthala on March 18, 1988.
Five days later, militants shot down Pash, 37, one of the most celebrated Punjabi poets. Born Avtar Singh Sandhu to an Army officer, Major Sohan Singh, Pash began writing poetry at the age of 15. Greatly influenced by the Naxal movement and Bhagat Singh, he was 18 when he published his first book of revolutionary poems, Loh-Katha (Iron Tale), in 1970.
The state, in a bid to silence him, arrested him on trumped up charges of murder, of which he was acquitted after two years in prison.
Prof Chaman Lal, who translated Loh Katha into Hindi — he won a Sahit Akademi award for it — says Pash openly raised his voice against militants. Working as a schoolteacher in a village next to his native Talwandi Salem near Nakodar, Pash started publishing a wallpaper called Deewar in which he would quote verses from Sikh gurus to show how the movement was antithetical to the principles of Sikhism. Warned by friends and family about the imminent threat from militants, he moved to the US in 1986, where he continued penning the wallpaper and pamphlets decrying militancy.
In 1988, he had returned to India to get his visa renewed when he was shot dead at the village well on March 23, the death anniversary of Bhagat Singh. He was to leave for the US the next day. “Death couldn’t silence Pash; his influence has only grown, and he is one of the most translated poets of India,” says Chaman Lal.
Despite the diktat of militants, Chamkila’s popularity continued to grow. Prof Judge, who is penning a book on Punjabi singers, says Chamkila, a Ramdasiya who wrote his songs himself, used to sing on three subjects — the valour of Sikh gurus, the plight of the poor, and illegitimate relations. “He was just holding a mirror to society when he sang about the male gaze or desire but he was called a ‘lecherous’ singer. Militants had given a diktat against what they called ‘vulgar’ songs and most singers complied.”
It was a chilly day in March when Chamkila and Amarjot were killed in a hail of bullets at Mehsampur village near Jalandhar. “There are many theories about his death, one is that he was killed for marrying a Jat woman despite being a Dalit, another was that he was eliminated by other Punjabi singers who were jealous of his popularity. But the predominant theory was that the couple fell to militants. Those days, it was easy to blame any killing on militants,” says Judge.
Another killing that rocked the entertainment world was that of Veerendar Singh, the superstar of Punjabi cinema and a cousin of popular Bollywood star Dharmendra. The 40-year-old was shot dead while he was filming Jatt te Zameen in Ludhiana in December 1988. His death remains shrouded in mystery but back then, militants were blamed.
Chaman Lal, who was then teaching Hindi at Punjabi University, Patiala, says such was the fear of the gun that diktats by militants were followed even by eminent vice-chancellors. At Punjabi University, all notice boards were painted saffron and press releases by militants were posted prominently. But clearly not satisfied, the militants shot down Dr Ravinder Ravi, a well-known Punjabi author and president of the university teachers’ association, at his home in May 1989. An open critic of violence, Ravi was the first PhD scholar of the varsity.
The targeting of writers and scholars had begun much earlier, though. It was in February 1984 that Sumeet Singh aka Shammi, 30, the editor of Preetlari, a highly respected left-of-centre literary journal which preached Hindu-Sikh unity, was shot dead by militants.
Madan Lal Didi, his father-in-law and general secretary of the Punjab unit of the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), later said that Shammi had paid the price for his boldness in criticising the terrorists despite repeated threats.
But these killing failed to silence the voices of peace and sanity. Poets, writers and playwrights continued to pen their agony, targeting both the militants and the state repression that followed.
As Manjit Tiwana, a Sahitya Akademi award winner, wrote:
What times are these,
Sitting on the threshold of it,
We ask the whereabouts of our home.
