After the viral video Kodaikanal Won’t, rapper Sofia Ashraf is back with another rap video demanding that Dow Chemicals be made accountable for the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy. Dow Chemicals in 2001 bought Union Carbide, which ran the plant that was the site of the disaster.
The video was put together within a week, said Ashraf, after a petition to the White House was not gathering enough signatures within the specified time of 30 days. “The International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal (ICJB), who started the petition, approached me after they realised the petition wasn’t moving fast enough. We had a small window of opportunity, so we had to move fast,” she said.
The White House petition, which closed on June 14, has already surpassed the required one lakh signatures. It currently has 121,045 signatories to it. As per the 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.
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 this 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.
The music for the video is by electro band Area Dwgz, which had also collaborated with composer Santosh Narayanan for the upcoming Rajinikanth film Kabali.
The song itself is part of a 2008 campaign that 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.
The global success of Kodaikanal Won’t , which highlighted the alleged mercury contamination in Kodaikanal by Hindustan Unilever’s thermometer factory and has more than 3.8 million views on YouTube till date, might have given the ICJB the idea, said Ashraf. The 15-year-old class action litigation between Hindustan Unilever and its employees was settled in March 2016.
Activists representing survivors of the disaster said they hoped the US Department of Justice will serve the Bhopal District Court’s notice on Dow Chemical so that it appears in the court here on July 13.
They added that they had also sent a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking directions to the Central Bureau of Investigation to call for harsher measures against Dow Chemical if it fails to appear on July 13.
“We are hopeful the Prime Minister will take note of this historic challenge by the Bhopal survivors and their international supporters and instruct the CBI to seek issuance of non-bailable warrant against Dow Chemical if it fails to appear in court on July 13,” said activist Rashida Bee.
Rachna Dhingra, part of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action, added, “Once Dow Chemical appears in court, it will have to present Union Carbide to face trial. A successful trial can very well lead to Union Carbide having to pay heavy criminal fines in keeping with its grave criminal acts and its terrible consequences. Hopefully the fines will be large enough to supplement the meagre compensation victims have received so far.”
(With inputs from IANS)
