Five months after his death, slain Punjabi singer Sidhu Moose Wala’s song Vaar, which lauds the bravery of Sikh general Hari Singh Nalwa, is trending on YouTube with over 1.4 million views in just 37 minutes.
Under Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Nalwa (1791-1837) commanded the Sikh empire’s army and was known for his role in the conquests of Kasur, Sialkot, Attock, Multan, Kashmir, Peshwar, and Jamrud. He extended the Sikh empire’s borders beyond the Indus River all the way to the mouth of the Khyber Pass.
The song, which was released on the birth anniversary of Sikhism’s founder, Guru Nanak Dev, begins with the line: “Nalwa is a lion heart son of Dashmesh (Guru Gobind Singh ji) and pride of Punjab.”
The second posthumous song by Shubhdeep Singh Sidhu was trending on YouTube, where it was released at 10 a.m. on Tuesday from Moose Wala’s official account. On YouTube, the video received 3.62 lakh likes. The song has received a lot of attention on Instagram, where the singer has 11.4 million followers.
The song’s Instagram caption by Moose Wala read: “Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. Vaar Playing Now..!”
SYL, a contentious first posthumous song
SYL, the first song released following Moose Wala’s murder, focused on the more than four-decade-old political dispute between Punjab and Haryana over the construction of the Sutlej Yamuna Link Canal (SYL). Aside from SYL, the singer touched on the post-independence undivided Punjab, sovereignty, the 1984 riots, the release of Sikh prisoners, and the incident of hoisting the Khalsa flag at Red Fort during the farmer agitation on Delhi’s border.
Following a legal complaint from the Union government, YouTube removed the SYL song from its platform in India. The song, which was released on June 23 evening, received 27 million views and 3.3 million likes on the singer’s YouTube page in less than three days before it was removed.
36 people have been charged in the Moose Wala murder case.
Moose Wala was killed on May 29 in Jawahar Ke village in Punjab’s Mansa district, a day after the Punjab government reduced his security cover. He was driving in a jeep with his cousin and a friend to Jawahar Ke, about 10 kilometres from his home village of Moosa, when he was ambushed and killed.
The Punjab Police SIT has named 36 people as suspects in the case and filed a 1,850-page chargesheet against 24 of them.