Singer Sonu Nigam has stirred controversy after linking an audience request to sing a Kannada song to the terror attack in Pahalgam, Kashmir.
In a now viral, Sonu Nigam can be heard saying, “The best songs I’ve sung are in Kannada. Whenever I do shows in Karnataka, I come with a lot of respect. You have considered me as a part of your family. I didn’t like it when a boy over there asked me to sing in Kannada. The number of years I’ve been singing in Kannada must be more than his age. He [the audience member] was so rudely threatening, ‘Kannada, Kannada’. This is the reason for the Pahalgam attack, what was done here just now. Look at who is standing before you. I love Kannadigas, I love you guys.”
The singer’s remarks, said to be made at a show in East Point College of Engineering, has drawn widespread criticism for insensitively connecting two unrelated events and for trivialising the terror attack. Some, however, went a step further and demanded that the Kannada film industry stop giving him work.
Arun Javgal, of Karnataka Rakshana Vedike, a pro-Kananda organisation, said in a post on X, “At an event in Karnataka, when asked to sing a Kannada song, he refused and brought up a terrorist attack in Kashmir. What does that have to do with Kannada?”
Arun added that Kannada speakers are always questioned when they stand up for their rights. “Why should Kannadigas always be the ones to give up our identity and language in the name of nationalism?… We must stop giving even the slightest importance to Kashmir or North Indian issues when our own language and pride are under attack. Don’t lose Kannada for the sake of false ultra-nationalism. Kannada is not just a language — it’s our identity. And it comes first.”
TA Narayana Gowda, state president of the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike, has demanded that the police register a suo motu case against Sonu Nigam. He said that Sonu’s statements not only paint Kannadigas as “inferior”, they project Kannadigas as “terrorists” and “anti-nationals”, for which he must be booked.
“How can a request to sing a Kannada song be the cause for a terror attack? Let’s see how this man who’s grown fat eating Kannada rice conducts shows in Karnataka from now on,” Narayana Gowda said on X.
He even demanded that producers in Karnataka stop signing Sonu Nigam on for songs, and added that venues too should stop hosting his shows. “If anybody dares to do this, they will pay for it.”
This incident comes days after an airforce officer claimed that he had been attacked by a man who abused him in Kannada and posted about it on social media. However, CCTV footage later showed him attacking the man too.
Although it is still not clear who landed the first blow, the incident was projected as yet another instance of people in Bengaluru attacking ‘outsiders’.