Dow Vs Bhopal: A Toxic Rap Battle

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Indian rapper #SofiaAshraf is targeting #DowChemical with rhymes – demanding the U.S. company pay more in victims’ compensation and environmental damages stemming from the world’s worst industrial accident in #Bhopal in 1984 (Source: DW Group 2016, np link).

Her video, she hopes, will change that, with its provocative clips of dancers wearing gas masks, Prime Minister Narendra Modi orating, President Barack Obama donning sunglasses and presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump doused in water interspersed with images of hospital rooms and Ashraf herself rapping angrily at the camera (Source: George 2016, np link).

‘The fight ain’t done’, says Chennai-born rap artist Sofia Ashraf … in her new video about the struggle of victims of the Bhopal gas Tragedy and fixing of blame in one of the world’s worst industrial disasters. Titled ‘Toxic Rap Battle: DOW Vs. Bhopal’, Ashraf’s video is an appeal to fix responsibility for the leak of around 40 tons of methyl isocyanate gas from a pesticide factory owned by U.S. multinational Union Carbide Corp in the early hours of Dec. 3, 1984. The government had recorded 5,295 deaths. Activists estimate 25,000 deaths from illnesses since the leak (Source: Chatterjee 2016, np link).

Sofia Ashraf … is now using a music video to urge people to sign a petition by the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal (ICJB). The video, called ‘DOW vs. Bhopal: A toxic rap battle’, has gone viral (Source: Poorvaja 2016, np link).

‘Speak to young people, and they know about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they know about the Holocaust,’ the 29-year-old songstress [Sofia Ashraf] said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. ‘But very few of them will know about the Bhopal gas leak tragedy’ (Source: George 2016, np link).

The song itself is part of a 2008 campaign which was aimed at engineering graduates, urging them not to go work for Dow Chemicals. ‘That song was my first step into ‘raptivism’. It was just a cover I had done. Since we had such a short time, we thought we could just repurpose it into a completely new song,’ said Ashraf (Source: Venkatraman 2016, np link).

Titled Dow vs Bhopal: A toxic rap battle, the video has Ashraf going back and forth between the roles of ‘Dow’ and ‘Bhopal’, rapping each side’s arguments taking responsibility for the tragedy. ‘What’s all the fuss about? We bought UC, not its liabilities,’ goes Dow’s side of the argument, while ‘Bhopal’ alleges that the compensation given to the victims is too meagre for the damage caused (Source: Venkatraman 2016, np link).

Ashraf wrote the song eight years ago, when she was known as the burkha rapper (‘I was strongly religious back then’) in Chennai. As a student, she would rap at college festivals. She also performed at Justice Rocks, an initiative that invites youngsters to express themselves on issues that matter. ‘I wrote it along with another song about Islamophobia for that show. Eight years later, these two issues are still relevant,’ she says. The song’s format is that of a rap battle; with Ashraf representing America and the people of Bhopal in different avatars. ‘I had a lot of data. But I needed to find a way to present it to people. So I felt a dramatised debate would be the best way to do it,’ she says (Source: Shah 2016, np link).

Hope justice is achieved … Every one involved in safety projects throughout the world know the real seriousness. The incident is acknowledged by all safety experts throughout the circle as the most disastrous … why is it that law and justice is blind to it (Source: Vijayan 2016, np link).

Safety norms and rules are strictly followed by western nations and especially by US. But Indian lives are cheap for them and hence the company had not spent a penny to improve safety . Hence the tragedy. No successive Governments at centre and MP had not taken up seriously and it is futile to expect any JUSTICE at all (Source: Venkatraman 2016, np link).

Really f*in disgusting.All those deaths and injuries and they hide behind a regulation meant to protect the oppressor. They have ducked issues before, but this is the most blatant (Source: Momcat, 2016, np link).

saw the hindu newspaper. saw this video. signed the petition. did something good today. 🙂 (Source: ankith adam 2016, np link).

‘Through the rap video, we were able to get word out about the issue and how it still is affecting a large number of people in Bhopal, to a new generation who weren’t aware of what had happened,’ … said Rachna Dhingra, a coordinator for ICJB in Bhopal (Source: Poorvaja 2016, np link).

The White House petition, which closed on June 14 … currently has 121,045 signatories to it. As per terms of the White House website, the U.S. government has to respond to the petition within 60 days. When the video was released, the petition needed 90,000 signatures in two weeks (Source: Venkatraman 2016, np link).

The White House has declined to intervene in an online petition, signed by more than 1.27 lakh [hundred thousand] people, most of them from Bhopal, asking the United States Department of Justice (DoJ) to serve a legal notice to Dow Chemicals in connection with the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy … Members of four organisations burnt an effigy of US president Barack Obama on Saturday and said they would protest outside US consulates in India. Activists said there was a documentary evidence of the US government having used undue influence to set up the plant in Bhopal and to protect its then chairman Warren Anderson from criminal proceedings … The petition uploaded on the White House website argued that the DoJ did not summon Dow Chemical to explain the whereabouts of Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), the main accused in the gas tragedy trial pending in Indian courts. The UCC never showed up for trial and the four notices served by Indian courts through DoJ were never served on the company (Source: Ghatwai 2016: np link).

Next, [Ashraf] plans to release a ‘more prolific yet fun’ sequel to the Kodaikanal issue, regarding the clean-up. She is also working on spoken word pieces about domestic abuse, gender issues, and the identity of the modern Indian women. But what she is most excited about are her comic sketches and spoof songs. ‘I don’t believe that every song has to have a message. I am actually quite a comical character (Source: Shah 2016, np link).