Young Rapper Karab Surya Challenges Caste Inequality in Debut Track ‘Kelra’

Think teenage angst. Think anger commingled with an urge to lash out at caste. Think primal drum beats heralding a lyricist’s spit on a dry-boned mic. Seventeen-year-old Karab Surya’s Tamil rap track, ‘Kelra,’ meaning both ‘listen up’ and ‘question them’, does just that: it questions systems that oppress by beckoning people to listen to what the lyrics are saying.

Karab , the youngest of three born to a Tamil couple living in a slum in Jyothipura, Bengaluru, was not ready for the ice-cold splash of the harsh reality of having to answer a schoolmate who asked him which caste he belonged to.

A still from Kelra
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

“He was in the fifth standard. This kid did not want to know my name, not who I was as a person. I was shocked by the unassuming crudity and could not offer him a reply, because that’s not how our parents raised us,” he says. His parents interject in agreement. “Everywhere I looked, I had only questions. The issue that linked them all was caste. My way of fighting against such injustice was to rap. That’s how ‘Kelra’ began,” he says.

As a child, he had been influenced by other Tamil rappers in terms of style and content. This pushed him to write his own lyrics. “I am a lyricist at heart. I find a way to write even if it doesn’t get produced into a track. Not a day goes by without writing bars,” he says. His debut, however, takes a sharp turn from the glitz and glamour that most rappers croon about, offering another perspective that gives voice to the realities that many from his slum and community face.

The track is part of a series titled SlumLore by Adavi Arts Collective, a Bengaluru-based troupe that has been breaking barriers. The purpose of the project is to provide a platform for Dalit voices from the slums of Bengaluru. Members from the collective conduct workshops in slums and set up street theatres with the aim of raising social awareness and instilling political consciousness among marginalised communities. Karab Surya is one lyricist whose latent talent shone when he asked Naren, one of the founders of Adavi Arts Collective, to check his bars out.

A still from Kelra
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

Naren is preparing for a Kiran Nadar Museum of Art performance of a rendition of the poet Kotiganahalli Ramaiah’s poem Nannaja in the form of a play where he ponders over the question of history and memory of a people — the dignity associated with it. This is what SlumLore set out to accomplish in helping release Karab’s debut track. He makes it a point to question if one’s geographical location is an indicator of one’s innate talents. “No. Yet, people deny them [Dalit voices] any dignity or recognition. We want to show people that this ‘other’ that the elite describes when talking about slum-dwellers is just as good as them,” he says.

The obverse is also true, observes Naren. “Many of the people living in these slums did not know that most of the issues they were facing, like caste discrimination, were serious matters that the entire nation was grappling with. On the other hand, urbane metropolitans had no clue that slums existed in their cities,” explains Naren. “We wanted to bring them together to eradicate this notion that rap can only be birthed in spaces of affluence. The audio launch of the song was held at Jyothipura. We want everybody to witness art here, because we define the space we perform in. Not the other way around,” he adds.

“When we were children, we did not know that we could question oppressive systems of authority. It took us a long time to arrive at that stage in our lives. But in providing an opportunity to rappers like Karab, we seek to motivate youngsters to instil a sense of critical questioning through a medium that appeals the most to them: hip-hop and rap,” he explains.

SlumLore forms collective memory and a living document of resistance. It instils a sense of pride in the labour of people who live in slums. “Most city-dwellers do not stop for a moment to think of the people who clear their garbage; the labourers whose efforts are made invisible are the ones who keep the city going. With this project, we want to give them a name and a voice,” Naren says.

‘Kelra’ is available for streaming on major music streaming platforms.