Sonic Revolution, is our series covering political music that changed the world.

Bant Singh is a Majhabi Sikh Dalit artist and agricultural labour rights activist, known for his songs on resisting exploitation by landowners. Singh’s fearless resistance against upper-caste feudalism earned him the title “The Dalit Sword of Mansa.”

Bant Singh was key in organising landless farmers across 12 villages into the Mazdoor Mukti Morcha (MMM) in 2002 — an act that prompted powerful, vengeful landowners to orchestrate his daughter’s rape, and later a near-fatal attack on Bant Singh himself for taking the rapists to court and securing their punishment. The attack cost him his arms and a leg, but his continued revolutionary work from his hospital bed only spread his legend as Punjab’s greatest living, singing ‘Inquilabi.’

In 2010, musicians Samrat Bharadwaj, Taru Dalmia and Chris McGuiness visited Bant Singh and collaborated with him on an album called ‘The Bant Singh Project.’ The process turned into a documentary titled ‘Word Sound Power,’ as part of an initiative by the Goethe Institut.