Coachella had never seen anything like it before.
As the Malayali hip hop artist known as Hanumankind launched into a version of his hit track Run It Up at the popular music festival in California in April, he summoned an unlikely set of accompanists to the stage – a troupe of white-shirted musicians playing traditional chenda drums.
The fans were ecstatic. “That’s called pure talent maahnn!!!” gushed one commentator on YouTube. “What a proud moment for us Indians, Keralites especially!!!!” said another.
That performance was yet another step in the Malayali musician’s journey to global recognition. But to those who had been following his trajectory, Hanumankind’s deployment of the chenda drummers was not unusual: like his other work, it projected his belief in Kerala’s dynamic and pluralist society through the lens of a member of the Malayali diaspora.
The universalism of Hanumankind’s Malayali-rooted hip hop has helped Run It Up notch up 40 million views on YouTube since it was released on March 7.
Among the fans is African American hip hop creator Scru Face Jean, who shot a video expressing admiration for the track’s insurgent energy.
“This is a marching song, this is a rebel song,” he says. “This is a protest song… this is a ‘pick up arms and doing something about it’ song… I don’t even know what the issue is but you got me bro! I relate to what he is saying.”
In his enthusiastic endorsement of Run It Up, Scru Face Jean unintentionally exposed the paradoxes of Hanumankind’s persona.
Though the Indian rapper celebrates “being from the Southside”, his personal politics lack a genuine engagement with the progressive ideas that have made Kerala the object of hate for Hindutva supporters.
In fact, even as his chosen vehicle of expression is hip hop, a genre that has its origins as a form of musical resistance by the marginalised, Hanumankind has allowed himself to be subsumed in India’s nationalist politics.
Is Hanumankind’s use of his Malayali identity a mere tool to add flavour to hip hop? Or does he have a vision that is larger and more nuanced?
The life trajectory of 33-year-old Hanumankind – born Sooraj Cherukat – illustrates Kerala’s migrant history and experiences. The son of an oil executive, he has lived in Nigeria, the Middle East, Egypt, Italy and Texas. He returned to India to do a business degree.
Since his first track dropped in 2019, he has gradually built an audience across the world. He has recorded two albums, 13 singles, and a couple of film songs in Kannada and Malayalam. But it was the release last year of his track Big Dawgs that catapulted him to global attention.
The video was shot in a well of death attraction in Malappuram district, showing a glimpse of Hanumankind’s interest in another of Kerala’s cultural forms – the Malabar circuses.
Big Dawgs notched up around 400 million streams on Spotify and climbed to number 23 on the US Billboard charts.
Hanumankind is a perfect example of someone who is quite at ease with himself and his Malayali identity. His lyrics refer to Kerala’s food sovereignty, selfhood, autonomy and universalist politics. His videos incorporate imagery from Kerala’s folk traditions – kalaripayattu, theyyam, garudan parava, chendamelam and vellattam. The raps often use Malayalam to talk about Hanumankind and his roots.
Still, reducing Hanumankind’s imprint on hip hop to empty celebrations of a folk Kerala would be simplistic. He is attempting something unique: to graft a global form of music onto folk tunes, beats and lyrics circulating in Kerala.
His songs point to possibilities for other artists who work with multi-lingual universes. He expands the contours of globality – from the global to the specifically local.
His project has roots in Kerala’s long-standing inclusive and diverse imagination of India. It also helps reframe India as an intermixing set of cultures rather than being monolithic.
Somewhere in the middle of Run it Up, the song becomes a call for global solidarity, de-colonisation and cultural resistance. He refers to “his people” having to create something out of thin air, and managing to feed themselves and their neighbourhood when there was nothing working for them.
This form of regional pride sets him apart from Punjabi artists such as Diljit Dosanjh. While Dosanjh has been applauded for asserting his Sikh identity through his songs and personal politics, he has also been playing with tropes such as Jatt pride and slut-shaming.
Hanumankind uses the grammar of a hip hop tradition that emerges from secular and universalistic Malayali history. He does so without any references to caste pride and misogyny.
However, his projection of Kerala does not include signs of the challenges posed to the state by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led central government and the trolling of its supporters – the disagreements about revenue sharing, the administrative hurdles posed by the centrally-appointed governor, the sneering about the state’s excellent social indicators and scorn about its multi-religion ethos.
In September 2024, Hanumankind baffled many of his fans by performing at an event in New York to felicitate visiting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In March, Run It Up also received appreciation from Modi in his monthly Mann ki Baat radio programme.
How did an artist who raps about community pride and challenging majoritarian dominance end up serving the cause of a Hindu majoritarian vision of nation?
Perhaps the very factor that allowed him to incorporate Kerala into his hip hop formula for the world is also the reason he failed to understand how his actions served as an endorsement of Hindutva politics: growing up in diaspora helped him absorb the cosmopolitan idiom of hip hop but denied him the opportunity to organically immerse himself in actual politics on ground.
Hanumankind’s idea of resistance is bereft of any understanding of the strategies that Bharatiya Janata Party consistently uses to undermine Kerala’s social advances – advances that are rooted in a distinctly leftist politics.
The appropriation of Hanumankind by the country’s ruling regime is neither surprising nor unique. He is just another on the long list of celebrities who have tried to cultivate close relationships with the ruling party.
The appropriation of Hanumankind by the Hindutva establishment is enmeshed with the vicissitudes of India’s political ecosystem, where celebrities are finding it increasingly difficult to retain an autonomous voice.
To cut Hanumankind some slack, he is not the first nor will he be the last celebrity to align with a dominant political force.
Aprajita Sarcar is a Laureate Postdoctoral Fellow, University of New South Wales, Sydney.
Anand P Krishnan is a Fellow, Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence, Delhi NCR.
