She’s become the face of Kodaikanal’s protest against Hindustan Unilever Ltd, with her rap video Kodaikanal Won’t garnering over two million views on YouTube, making the front page of Reddit, earning a re-tweet from popstar Nicki Minaj (on whose hit Anaconda the tune of the protest rap is based) and even prompting Unilever’s CEO Paul Polman to respond to the demands of the Kodaikanal Worker’s Association.
But Sofia Ashraf says that she is a “rapper (only) by digression”. “I’m a content creator, a writer first,” says the 28-year-old who, until last month, worked as a creative supervisor at the ad agency Ogilvy & Mather in Mumbai. “Everyone has a conscience. You always write about the things that matter to you, and I do care about environmental issues, so that makes its way into my writing.”
Sofia first came into the spotlight when she rapped about the Bhopal Gas Tragedy (the piece was called “Don’t Work For Dow”) at a Justice Rocks event in her hometown, Chennai. The image of a burqa-clad girl rapping against a global conglomerate caught public attention, and when Sofia later rapped about the Kundakulam nuclear power plant, her image as a “social activist rapper” was set. But Sofia has shrugged off that label as well. “I’m anti-label; they’re restrictive,” she says and adds, “Tomorrow, I may want to write about other things that matter to me and if I call myself a ‘social activist’ then I won’t be able to do that.”
Rapping itself was something that Sofia took up almost incidentally, as an undergrad student in Chennai. Growing up with a sister who was as introverted as Sofia was outgoing, she found that their mother would spend a lot of time with her sister, trying to draw her out of her shell, especially through music (Sofia’s sister is a very talented singer).
Miffed at not getting the same attention, Sofia would spend hours in her room, practising music. “I got into music clubs, took piano lessons. There was just one problem — I couldn’t sing,” Sofia says, wryly. “My sister and I have the same voice, and because she sings so well, people just assumed that I do too. So I got into the music club (at college) and I had to tell (the others), ‘I can’t sing’. And they said, ‘So what can you do?’
There was a girl who was on stage, rapping at the time, and I looked at her and said, ‘Well, I can do that’. Just like you sing along to the songs that you hear, I could rap along to the songs I used to hear, that was it.”
Strong women rappers like Lauryn Hill and Missy Elliot have influenced Sofia. Missy Elliot, especially, is someone she really admires for “not just rapping but also being a producer, getting other people on her records, and generally being this godmother-like figure”. Sofia herself aspires to be “more than a creator”. “I want to fuel change... I’m constantly trying to push people to do things,” she says, admitting that her enthusiasm has been called “annoying” by her friends.
Coming back to Kodaikanal Won’t, Sofia says that the entire team behind the protest has been overwhelmed by the response. “There’s hope, because the issue is finally receiving public scrutiny. But there’s also cynicism, because HUL is still giving us the same responses they’ve been giving us for the past 5-6 years,” she tells us. On the anvil now are several more meetings for the team with the corporate, with the environmental minister promising to look into the case.
While what emerges from those meetings still remains to be seen, what can’t be denied is that Kodaikanal Won’t has achieved just what Sofia and the team had hoped — widespread conversations around the issue. “Initially, the team had wanted an original song for the protest. But for anything to go viral, it needs to capitalise on popular culture… we were hoping to piggyback on (the popularity of) Anaconda to have people talk about the issue,” Sofia signs off.
