What began as a protest anthem against Nepal’s monarchy in 1979 resurfaced in the streets of Darjeeling and Kurseong on Monday, with the strains of "Gaun Gaun Bata Utha (Rise Up From Every Village)" stirring political and cultural memories.
In Darjeeling, supporters of Ajoy Edwards, the Indian Gorkha Janshakti Front chief convener contesting from the Darjeeling Assembly seat, sang this song and crisscrossed the town after Edwards filed his nomination around 11am.
Around the same time, tea union leader Sumendra Tamang, an Independent candidate from Kurseong Assembly constituency, and his supporters sang the same song and canvassed around Kurseong town.
Tamang, a part of the Hill Plantation Employees’ Union (HPEU), has established a support base in a few hill gardens.
Rabgay Rai, the president of the IGJF youth wing of Darjeeling subdivision, said: “Ajoy da liked the message behind this song and hence it was played today (Monday).”
The song was written by music composer Shyam Tamot in 1979 when he was a 20-year-old studying at Mahendra College in Nepal's Dharan.
“All I wanted to do was use my musical skills to compose a song that would motivate the public to participate in efforts to build an egalitarian society,” Tamot recently told The Kathmandu Post, a leading newspaper in Nepal. “That was all I wanted the song to achieve.”
At the time, Nepal’s party-less panchayat regime had imposed various restrictions, including freedom of speech. “The government enforced strict rules on people. Our voices were censored and silenced. As an artist, I wanted to use art to unite people from all across the country to overthrow the autocratic regime and its system," he told The Kathmandu Post.
There was a revolution in Nepal in the year Tamot wrote the song, forcing King Birendra to explore the possibility of administrative changes.
According to Tamot, it was Ralpha, a cultural group of progressive musical artistes established in 1967 with musical legends like Ramesh Shrestha and Narayan Bhakta Shrestha, which popularised the song as an iconic revolutionary song in Nepal.
The song has been translated across more than 17 local dialects such as Tamangbhasa, and also English, Chinese and French.
In 1997, the song was featured in Balidaan, a superhit Nepali film based on the democratic movement against the panchayat regime. A popular Nepali band, Nepathya, has also been performing the song across the world. It performed in Siliguri a month ago. The band has come up with its own version of the song.