UP Police notice to Neha Singh Rathore: Who is the Bhojpuri singer?

यू पी में का बा..!

Season 2#nehasinghrathore #kanpur #KANPUR_DEHAT #up #UPCM #Government #democracy #death pic.twitter.com/Onhv0Lhw12

— Neha Singh Rathore (@nehafolksinger) February 16, 2023

The Bhojpuri artist was first under the spotlight during the Bihar Assembly elections of 2020 with her song Bihar mein ka ba (what does Bihar have). The ruling BJP-JD(U) responded with Bihar mein ee baa (listing the state’s “achievements”). Since then, Rathore has released around 200 songs, dealing with unemployment, labourers, farmers and migration during the lockdown, apart from traditional folk songs.

In the run-up to the Uttar Pradesh polls last year, her song UP mein ka ba made her the subject of vicious trolling. This was after the BJP wielded Bhojpuri film star and MP Ravi Kishan to release UP mein sab ba for the polls. Rathore responded with the first UP mein ka ba. She subsequently brought out parts two and three, talking about among other things the Hathras rape case, the Lakhimpuri farmers’ deaths, and bodies found in the Ganga during Covid.

The 25-year-old grew up in village Jandaha in Bihar’s Kaimur district and built a following of millions for her YouTube videos shot on the phone. She writes and sets to music her songs. Speaking to The Indian Express in February 2022, she said she hoped to free Bhojpuri songs’ image from “blouse hooks and lehnga strings”. At the time, she was staying away from home in a hostel in Varanasi for better Internet connectivity and for her expanding work.

At the time, Rathore admitted that “this is not the trajectory a girl like her is supposed to have”. Her father is a private firm employee in Lucknow, and the family owns a small farm. Her sister is married and she has a brother who is in the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF).

Her motivation was “the need to be heard”, Rathore said. “If you are a girl, the third child in a traditional family in a Bihar village, you quickly learn what it is like to feel unheard and overlooked. You have to be loud, insistent, and at times, rude.”

She added: “In family set-ups like mine, after school, boys are sent to cities for coaching and college, girls are married off. My sister got married at 19. I was a bright student, so I went to Kanpur for graduation. After that, the expected path was a B.Ed, become a teacher and await a husband. I was certain this was not my road.”

To those who accuse her of criticising only the BJP, Rathore had said: “Questions can only be asked to the one in power. I am a jankavi, a people’s poet.”

She said then that one of her earliest songs was in support of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. “Personally, I like no politician, I feel they all betray us eventually.”