It’s a catchy beat that’s uniting the peaceful anti CAA/NRC protests, spearheaded by the young, across India. Ironically, it’s Italian in origin. Bella Ciao, an Italian folk song was adopted as an anti fascist anthem and used by the Italian partisans, 1943--1945, during the Italian Resistance. Since then it has gone through many versions and has been been used in several films, shows as well as protest movements across the world. Ironically, for the Indian millennials who have been singing its bhartiya versions various protest sites, the inspiration has come from the one seen and heard recently in the Spanish Netflix series Money Heist.
A Hindi version of the song played out last week in the Gurugram protests. Another Hindi version written by Ramneek Singh, Gaurav Tripathi, Puneet Sharma and Manish Saxena kept the energy going at the Occupy Gateway protests in Mumbai on Monday. It exhorted the young to keep the flames of revolution burning ( Inquilab ki mashaal jalao ) with one of the stanzas saying: “ Aaya ek Nazi, laaya NRC, Bola pehchaan karwao warna jao jao jao (A Nazi came and brought in NRC, asked us to show identity papers or leave).