From screen to street: the afterlife of protest songs

Every protest has its soundtrack. Walk into a demonstration today and you are as likely to hear a familiar song from a film as you would a slogan. Scroll through Instagram after a protest, and the chants from the streets are often replaced by carefully chosen soundtracks: Dhakka Laga Bukka, Azaadi, Khoon Chala, Sadda Haq or Give Me Some Sunshine. Paired with images of marches, placards and police barricades, these songs often do more than just accompany protests—they shape how we remember them.

Music has always been integral to the history of dissent in the Indian subcontinent. Long before protest playlists were stitched together on social media, songs gave voice to resistance and collective hope. The genealogy of protest music in India stretches far beyond cinema. It includes Tagore's Ekla Chalo Re, Faiz Ahmed Faiz's poetry, the Ganasangeet tradition of Bengal, and the songs of the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA). Songs such as Pothe Ebar Namo Sathi became inseparable from workers', peasants' and students' movements, creating a collective musical culture in which singing itself became an act of political participation. Faiz Ahmed Faiz's poetry, particularly Bol and Hum Dekhenge, found new life through musical renditions, transcending national borders and historical moments to become enduring anthems of resistance across South Asia.

If poetry and people's music once formed the emotional vocabulary of protest, contemporary movements increasingly borrow from cinema and popular music. Yet these songs are rarely lifted from films unchanged. Instead, they are reinterpreted, remixed and circulated until they acquire meanings that often exceed—or even depart from—the narratives in which they first appeared.

Few examples illustrate this better than Mani Ratnam's Yuva (2004). Dhakka Laga Bukka was composed for a film deeply invested in youth politics and political idealism. Today, however, the song frequently appears in protest reels and videos documenting student demonstrations. It no longer needs the film's narrative to make sense. It has become shorthand for youthful defiance and collective action.

The contrast becomes even more striking in light of the recently released teaser of a film starring Ajay Devgn called Chauhaan. Set against the backdrop of Kashmir, it depicts Devgn's character confronting protesters with pellet guns while the song Jumma Chumma De De blares from a boombox. The irony is remarkable. Yet Dhakka Laga Bukka continues to circulate through protest spaces, largely independent of the later screen persona of its lead actor. It is a reminder that audiences—not actors or filmmakers—ultimately shape a song's political afterlife.

A similar journey can be traced through Azaadi from Gully Boy (2019). The song draws upon the 'azaadi' slogan, whose long history in South Asian political movements gained renewed visibility following student leader Kanhaiya Kumar's 2016 speech at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Within the film, the song expresses Murad's struggle for dignity, voice and social mobility. Outside it, Azaadi has travelled into protest marches and social media reels, where it has come to signify aspirations far beyond the journey of a single fictitious character. Cinema borrowed from protest, and protesters, in turn, borrowed it back.

The same transformation can be seen elsewhere. Give Me Some Sunshine from 3 Idiots has become a familiar singalong at student demonstrations. A song born out of a film critiquing India's education system has found renewed relevance whenever students gather to question the institutions that shape their futures. Likewise, A.R. Rahman's Khoon Chala from Rang De Basanti frequently accompanies reels documenting protest marches and police crackdowns. The song's cinematic origins make its contemporary use particularly poignant; scenes from today's streets often seem to echo the film's visual language of sacrifice and youthful dissent.

Even songs that were never intended as protest anthems acquire new political meanings through public use. Sadda Haq from Rockstar has moved from expressing an individual's rebellion to articulating collective demands for justice. Lifafa's Jaago has frequently appeared in protest reels as a wake-up call. And when the Delhi Police used the song in one of their posts, the artist publicly objected to that particular appropriation. The incident reveals the complex afterlives of songs in the digital age. Once songs enter public culture, they no longer belong exclusively to their creators. Their meanings are continually negotiated by those who sing them, share them and place them alongside new images.

Social media has accelerated this transformation. Earlier generations encountered protest songs in rallies, cassette recordings or public performances. Today, Instagram reels, YouTube edits and WhatsApp forwards repeatedly pair familiar songs with footage of demonstrations. Gradually, viewers stop remembering the original cinematic scene and begin associating the song with the protest itself. The soundtrack remains constant while history rewrites the visuals.

Perhaps that is the most remarkable thing about these songs. They cease to be merely songs from films. They become part of what might be called an affective archive—a shared reservoir of memory, emotion and political imagination. They connect people who have never met, across cities and generations, allowing them to inhabit a common emotional landscape of hope, grief, anger and solidarity.

Films may end when the credits roll. Their songs do not. They continue to travel—through loudspeakers, protest marches and smartphone screens—gathering new meanings with every generation that sings them. In that sense, the most enduring protest songs are not simply remembered. They are constantly remade.