Just as hip hop gave voice to many black Americans, Arivu hopes his music will speak for Dalit Indians combatting caste
New Delhi — The hip-hop artist Arivu was in his final year of engineering college when it hit home that he was a Dalit — one of the “untouchables” in India’s deeply entrenched caste system.
Yet, he fit in — a high-energy, fun-loving young man who liked to rap in Tamil, itself a novelty. Arivu was popular, and even found himself fronting a band with college friends. So Arivu cut himself off from friends, changed his phone number, gave up music, finished college and decided to spend a couple of years prepping for India's civil services.
An atmospheric, slickly produced collection of songs, it let Arivu pour his years of pain into expertly crafted poetry. The album made waves, helping propel a nascent hip hop movement for Dalit rights into the forefront. His songs get millions of views on YouTube — one has notched up 450-million — feature on the soundtracks of big movies, and are go-to tracks at musical, cultural and literary events.
In 2018, the Global Slavery Index estimated that nearly 8-million people lived under conditions of modern slavery in India, largely facilitated by “discrimination against Scheduled Castes, Dalits and Scheduled Tribes”. A scholarship took Samos to university in New Delhi then he went on to graduate from Britain's prestigious University of Oxford, all of which helped him make sense of his old life.
“In an upper-caste house, if I got tired of playing and ask for water, they refuse, or give me an unwashed cup,” he said. “That's because we can put everything online...We are doing what a virus does,” he laughed, explaining how quickly their message spreads.
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