Kendrick Lamar has dropped a fresh music video for his track ELEMENT from the album DAMN. If you have followed his music for a while it will be easy to understand the hidden message behind the video. The urge to display strength through violence is a mentality that exists all over the world. Recently, this has been at a peak in India.
ELEMENT video sees Kendrick Lamar in a white tee shirt with blood stains. People pushing and shoving each other, punches landed hard on the face, body flying off from top of the building. All in all it tries to portray the violent conditions people in USA are living in. While it is an issue of race in the states, the same issue prevails in the form of religion and casteism in India.
Mob violence has increased a lot in the reign of Modi government. Did this start only now? Not at all. Communal riots have been taking place in our country since decades. Only now it seems to have a specific motive above all – harm those who eat beef. This stupid mentality has cost lives of lot of Muslim and Dalit people in our community.
While ELEMENT shows thugs, criminals and prisoners, our countrymen are carrying on elemental activities on a daily basis. Like a lot of his tracks, Kendrick Lamar portrays the adverse condition black families live in. Police brutality, unwarranted killing of young black males these are all issues he raises voice against. Similar events are unfolding in India where a young Muslim man was recently lynched by an angry mob in a moving train for a petty argument over seats.
If a video like ELEMENT were to be made in India, the quick formula would be to show lot of cows, religious thugs protecting them and beating up minorities over the suspicion of being a beef eater. And it seems like the only element in India right now is the silence of its citizens over such matters.