“If a girl like me is speaking out in public, she has already overcome the two most difficult challenges, of parivesh (environment) and parivaar (family). Random strangers can’t shut me up,” says Neha Singh Rathore.
Friends have been urging Rathore to not step out alone, or to keep her face covered with a mask. But the 24-year-old — who grew up in village Jandaha in Bihar’s Kaimur district, who has built a following of millions for her YouTube videos shot on phone, who writes and sets to music her songs, who has fans now in even faraway Punjab, who hopes to free Bhojpuri songs’ image from “blouse hooks and lehnga strings”, and who now stays away from home in a hostel in Varanasi for better Internet connectivity, and for her expanding work – says she is done being afraid.
“Aise hi humko daba lenge (Can they suppress me just like that)?” she grins, sitting in a cafe in Varanasi’s Lanka area. In a shirt, jeans and glasses, Rathore is a far cry from her videos, where she appears in sari, bindi and covered head, but many of the visitors stop short, recognising her.
In person, she has the same anger, confidence and wit. But behind that camera-perfected demeanour are glimpses of a girl who is still very young, and often very hurt.
Rathore first caught attention 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 the migration during lockdown, apart from traditional folk songs.
After the BJP wielded Bhojpuri film star and MP Ravi Kishan to release UP mein sab ba for the coming polls, Rathore released the first ‘UP mein ka ba’ song on January 16. She has since brought out parts 2 and 3, talking about among other things the Hathras rape case, the Lakhimpuri farmers’ deaths, and bodies found in the Ganga during Covid. The BJP has come out with songs to counter hers. Comments have been directed at her questioning her ‘character’.
This is not the trajectory a girl like her is supposed to have, Rathore admits. Her father is a private firm employee in Lucknow, and the family owns a small farm. Her sister is married, a brother just joined the CRPF.
Her motivation was “the need to be heard”, Rathore says. “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 adds: “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.”
She also felt despair at Bhojpuri being reduced to vulgar songs. “I want to see Bhojpuri freed from blouse hooks and lehenga strings, and sing about the actual issues its speakers are facing,” Rathore says.
Home at Jandaha after finishing her graduation in 2018, she first started recording videos on a spare phone at home. “In September 2019, a song I uploaded on Facebook got thousands of likes. Jhooth nahin bolenge, tab se mann badh gaya (I won’t lie, it really fired me),” she flashes the grin again.
Rathore started with Bhojpuri folk songs, the kind sung at family functions. As these got appreciation, she moved on to own songs, “issues I cared about”. Being argumentative from childhood always got her reactions like, “Marry her off quickly so she is someone else’s problem”. “Bachpan se suniyega aap dikkat hain, tou boli mein dhar aa hi jayega (If you grow up hearing you are a problem, your words automatically get an edge),” she says.
To those who accuse her of criticising only the BJP, Rathore says: “Questions can only be asked to the one in power. I am a jankavi, a people’s poet.”
A little-known fact, she adds, is 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.”
She remains part of an online campaign to “Save Bhojpuri”, and hopes to raise other issues now, “educate myself more academically” as “big people” notice her.
Ask her about that, and Rathore says it is surprising that “hum jaison se ladne sarkaar utar jaati hai (the government takes on someone as small as me)”. However, it says more about the government, she believes. “That it has nothing to counter the content in my songs… The abusers attack my looks, my short hair, my ‘character’. People take screenshots and tell my parents, ‘See what is being said about your daughter’.”
Thankfully, Rathore says, some of it doesn’t reach home.
Jandaha is a village located just 85 km east of Varanasi on the map. But down an unpaved 2-km road, past the Karmnasha river, the most helpful direction to it is by a motorcyclist: “Taar ke sath mudte rahiyega (Just turn as the overhead electric wires do).”
It took a while but Champa Devi now understands why her daughter had to find her way out of there. (Express photo)
At the village though, everyone knows Rathore’s one-storey house, down a waterlogged lane. “There is a drain right outside the house. These are the things which drive her to write,” smiles a proud Champa Devi, Rathore’s mother.
It took a while but Champa Devi now understands why her daughter had to find her way out of there. Pointing to a room just off the large, functional living room, she says, “When not in Benaras, Neha is shut in there all day, scribbling. We had no idea she could write so powerfully.”
Rathore’s brother Brijesh Singh, joining on the phone, says, “Neha used to say that one day, people will come to interview her. Who knew she would be proven right!”
Champa Devi says they are fully behind Rathore, and “don’t care what abusers say”. “She is doing nothing wrong.” Still, about her future career, she is clear. “What she does after her marriage is for her in-laws to decide. If they allow her, she can continue writing and singing.”
That is not how Rathore sees it, nor her fiance Himanshu, whom she met while in college and who works at a coaching centre in New Delhi. “He is supportive,” she says, especially in the face of attacks. “If I am low, he reassures me.”
Himanshu says he doesn’t expect a role for himself in Rathore’s future. “Neha has done everything on her own, I am sure she can continue. My job is to be there for her,” he says on the phone. “Baaki woh ladki hai, lad sakti hai (she is a girl, she can fight).”
Bhojpuri singer Neha Singh Rathore at a cafe in Varanasi. (Express photo) 
It took a while but Champa Devi now understands why her daughter had to find her way out of there. (Express photo)
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