A glance at subaltern cultural/political mobilization underlines the role played by music in suturing social divides, healing collective wounds, engendering new ideas of community or solidarity, and envisioning new ways of performing the ‘political’. Within the context of South Asia, music and, more broadly, performance cultures, have long been central to struggles against oppression. A case in point is Lokshahiri (People’s Poetry), a musical tradition at the heart of Dalit struggles in Maharashtra. Essentially, Lokshahirs constitute Dalit identity as a united identity of protest through their songs themed around contemporary socio-political realities, Dalit struggles against injustice, and Ambedkar’s personal and historical trajectory. Against the context of divisive mainstream political discourse and a politics of hate, contemporary Lokshahirs construct a sonic landscape that resounds with love and hope. Through focus on this preformative tradition, this paper seeks to explore the politics of hope, love and freedom within this music scene, understanding the ways in which these emotions can be linked to broader histories of affectively charged sonic modes of protest in the Indian subcontinent. In keeping with Judith Becker’s emphasis on emotion as a cultural and social construct, I intend to analyse the ways in which the hope experienced and expressed in performances of Lokshahiri is a cultural category specific to Dalit histories of silencing, deprivation and subsequent cultural awakening. Moreover, I wish to understand the ways in which Lokshahirs’ articulations of hope are central to their imaginations of a nation-community premised on a solid foundation of love and social justice. Finally, I posit this paper as a contribution to ‘anthropology of the good’, a domain that responds to ‘dark anthropology’ through its focus on how suffering becomes a launching point for struggles against structures of oppression.
