Honey Singh’s New Year concert cancelled

Rappers derogatory lyrics evokes online protests and earns him a lawsuit.

While New Year concerts were in full swing all over the world, Indian Punjabi rapper Honey Singh’s New Year’s eve concert at Bristol Hotel in Gurgaon got cancelled at the last minute over protests on inappropriate lyrics, reported the Times of India (TOI).

“It has been cancelled. The protesters had a huge role to play. And there was government pressure also,” Dheeraj Dixit of RD8 Communications had told TOI. Although the organisers tried their best to resolve the issue, but following “threats from a couple of NGOs”, the show had to be cancelled, says Dixit.

He further added that the organisers had suffered “colossal losses”, though he refused to give an estimate. However, he says that the already sold tickets — costing INR 15,000 for a couple — would be refunded.

The protests started when a Delhi-based writer Kalpana Misra stood up against the “pornographic” and “unacceptable” lyrics of the song. Misra filed an online petition via change.org addressed to the management of the hotel, appealing for a ban on the Punjabi rapper’s performance.

“These pornographic lyrics are unacceptable and it is because of women-hating sentiments like these that men think that it’s fine to do what they did on that bus, that December night in Delhi.

“I hadn’t heard of Honey Singh until about a few days ago. So I don’t have any personal vendetta against this person,” Misra told TOI over the phone.

The petition stated: “Let’s put a stop to these subversive lyrics that infiltrate the minds of people who don’t know better and who then justify to themselves the rightness of a crime that harms another human being, sometimes so severely that they lose their lives.”

Following Misra’s lead, social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter are pouring with outrage against the rapper and his derogatory songs. By Monday evening, Misra’s petition had more than 2,500 online supporters. And it’s not just the common man, who is against this vulgarity but even B-town has risen against him, reports IANS

Film-maker Kunal Kohli took to social networking website to show his repulsion. “Honey Singh should not be allowed to perform in India. To write lyrics like that is disgusting, to be allowed to perform them, a shame. Come on Gurgaon, show the world, boycott Honey Singh, two days after Nirbhaya/Damini dies, you can’t let him sing such lewd songs,” Kohli posted on Twitter.

An FIR was also filed against the rapper on Monday by a senior Indian Police Service officer Amitabh Thakur for the “extremely vulgar and indecent songs”.

“This cannot be accepted at all, particularly when the country is mourning the death of the Delhi gang-rape victim and is outraged over increasing crime against women,” said the complaint.

According to the TOI, the rapper — who has lent his voice in big Bollywood films like Cocktail, Khiladi 786, Race 2 and Son of Sardar — was not available for comment.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 2^nd, 2013.

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