“Sweetheart, as the world wrestles with ways to make more money, this dude was simply born to shine” (Ho, paise-poose baare billo soche duniya, Jatt paida hoya bas chhaun vaaste).
Thus goes the refrain of Diljit Dosanjh’s super-hit track Born to Shine from his record-breaking 2020 music album G.O.A.T. (Greatest of All Time). Dressed in a crisp white kurta-chadaraa (a traditional Punjabi outfit), a designer vest, paired with aviators and a diamond-encrusted watch, the Punjabi vocalist opened his electric performance at Jimmy Fallon’s The Tonight Show with this song in June 2024. Dosanjh’s high-ankle Air Jordans added a fresh layer of groove to the otherwise all-desi vibe.
Fallon introduced Diljit as the ‘greatest Punjabi artist on the planet’; it was a landmark moment as it was the first time that a Punjabi artist was invited to the iconic show. This, however, has not been a stand-alone accomplishment for the singer. In the last few years, Dosanjh has been encountering a good number of firsts: being the first turban-donning Punjabi artist and actor to have been accepted as a lead protagonist in mainstream Hindi films and in the Punjabi film industry as well. He is the first Indian artist to have been featured on the Billboard Global charts, the first Punjabi language artist to have performed at the Coachella music festival, and the list goes on.
A big year
2024 was a milestone year for the singer-actor. Musically speaking, the vocalist performed at packed stadiums through multiple locations in Canada, the USA, the U.K., Europe and India for his Dil-Luminati Music World Tour, making him the first Punjabi artist to have done so globally. It is not an exaggeration to say that Dosanjh has effectively mainstreamed Punjabi music globally. The artist was also visited on-stage by the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and was seen having an informal televised interaction with the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 1 January 2025.
Cinematically, Diljit saw the release of his film Amar Singh Chamkila, which was a box-office success and critically acclaimed. The Hindi film traces the journey of the humble Punjabi singer whose use of provocative and teasing lyrics in his songs generated fame and fury across Punjab and eventually led to the singer’s untimely death. Despite all the wrath and death threats that Chamkila faced from the so-called ‘guardians of morality’, the vocalist continued to defiantly perform publicly until the day when he was gunned down by unidentified assailants just minutes before a performance. Although from different milieus, both singers could very well be tied together by a similar streak of defiance in the face of hurdles, which may very well have been the reason behind their respective successes.
Born to modest roots in a tiny village in Punjab, Dosanjh’s story is not just one of a small-town person making it big but is also one wherein the small town ‘nobody’, rebelliously yet gently, makes the world take notice of the well-choreographed dance between music, theatrics, acting, influencing, social media and soft power. Having started his journey at an early age, singing devotional songs at a local gurdwara, Dosanjh slowly gained recognition in the Punjabi music industry with his albums Smile (2005) and Chocolate (2008).
The vocalist soon began collaborating with new-age Punjabi music artists like Yo Yo Honey Singh and Badshah, thus transforming his music by fusing pop, bhangra beats and rap. Additionally, Diljit’s songs started singing on themes that other Punjabi musicians at the time were engaging with, like guns, violence, alcohol and women. A case in point is Honey Singh and Dosanjh’s collaborative Panga (2009) and Goliyan (2011). With over 17 million views on YouTube, the songs thump to a cocktail of cocky boldness and rugged innocence, thus moulding the singer’s imagination in that direction. The production value of the songs saw a considerable shift. Super-hit songs like Diljit and Badshah’s Proper Patola (2013), for instance, were shot in Los Angeles with very slick outcomes. During the same period, YouTube also became a phenomenon that furthered the reach and popularity of such music videos globally.
From Proper Patola (2013) to Born to Shine (2020) from Dosanjh’s eleventh music album, G.O.A.T made it into Billboard’s Social 50 Chart, the singer’s music has further evolved into a genre that seamlessly blends Bhangra with R&B and Folk with electronic beats.
Reinforcing Punjabiyat across borders
Diljit is being followed and revered by his audiences (both at home and globally) not just for his craft, authenticity and humility but also because of the star’s success story in the last few years. Dosanjh has skillfully designed a universe that places the rest of the saanjha (common/collective) Punjab alongside or even before himself. The performer’s ‘Punjabi aa gaye oye Coachella’ that roared through the Coachella Music Festival in 2023 and hitherto rang like a slogan at most of the singer’s stage performances through 2024 helped cement the sense of a collective. Unsurprisingly, a number of fans were seen dancing through the concerts, making Instagram reels as they proudly fashioned Dosanjh’s merchandise T-shirts reading- ‘Punjabi Aa Gaye Oye’ and ‘Born to Shine’.
Be it through the artist’s language, music, attire, films, or ideology, in the past few years, Diljit has mastered the art of Punjabiyat, which has assisted in connecting and celebrating Punjabis globally.
Punjabiyat is about a feeling of belongingness that comes from a sense of a common and shared linguistic and socio-cultural past. This notion is not contained by national borders or religious identities; it brings into its fold not just the western and eastern Punjabs but also the global Punjabi diaspora living in countries like Canada, USA, England and Australia. Dosanjh’s Punjabiyat embraces ideas of unity and nostalgia for a shared socio-cultural past and is reflected in lines in a 2015 Coke Studio India song that he performed alongside veteran Punjabi singer Gurdas Mann – Ki Banu Duniya Da (What will come of this world). In a particular stanza, the song expresses an emotional exchange between the rivers that got separated by the man-made truncation of 1947. Herein, the river Chenab is heard asking its sister Ravi how brother Sutlej is doing (Ravi nu Chenab puchchda, Ki haal hai Sutlej da). The stanza further laments the absence of a path leading into Lahore from the border at Wagah (O Wagah de border te. Raah puchdi Lahore’an de haaye).
Furthermore, through the singer’s recent public interactions with his fans from across the border, be it with respect to Diljit inviting, in his own words, Pakistani ‘superstar’ Hania Amir on stage during his concert in the U.K. to gifting Pakistani fans shoes during another, Dosanjh has openly professed a feeling of commonality and oneness across the bordering states. In another interaction with a Pakistani fan on stage, Dosanjh playfully asserted, Ae sarhadan, ae borderan, ae politicana ne bnaye hoye ne, par jo Punjabi maa bole vale ni, o chahe edr rehnde ne chahe odr rehnde ne, sade sare sanjhe ne (These borders are made by politicians, but Punjabi speaking people living on either side of the border are all one). Such pacifist ideas that embrace Punjabi-speaking people irrespective of their national or religious identities stand contrary to the right-wing majoritarian agenda that has deepened its hold within India since 2014.
Born to modest roots in a tiny village in Punjab, Dosanjh’s story is not just one of a small-town person making it big but is also one wherein the small town ‘nobody’, rebelliously yet gently, makes the world take notice of the well-choreographed dance between music, theatrics, acting, influencing, social media and soft power
Through his stage performances from Coachella to Ludhiana, Diljit has also been seen rocking his Punjabiyat fashionably by dressing up in authentic monochrome traditional clothes and styling them with designer shoes, biker gloves, and bomber jackets.
Taking a stand
During his multicity Dil-Luminati Indian tour, nonetheless, the artist has not only seen sold-out shows but has also had to deal with his share of controversies coming particularly from the right-wing ideologues for whom the musician has been somewhat of an anathema for the last few years. Whether it was the latter’s disgruntlement about Dosanjh’s use of lyrics glorifying liquor or about the musician’s roaring assertion of himself as a Punjabi, Diljit has had to navigate his Indian leg of Luminati with a few hurdles, advisories and notices.
While finishing his concert in New Delhi in October 2024, Diljit was seen draping the national flag around his shoulders as he sailed through the stage, professing his respect for all languages, including Hindi, while explaining (justifying) a natural affinity towards his own mother tongue. Strains from the song ‘Main Hoon Punjab’ from Dosanjh’s recent critically acclaimed Hindi Film, Amar Singh Chamkila (2024) rang in the backdrop as the artist sang along while simultaneously waving the Indian flag. This act may be seen as an attempt by Dosanjh to reclaim his nationhood and place Punjab within the imaginative borders of the Indian nation-state. Through this act, Dosanjh also makes it politely evident that he cannot be coerced into choosing one identity over another.
That Dosanjh may have felt the need to perform allegiance towards the Indian nation-state during his music show can also be understood against the context of his very vocal solidarity towards the farmers during the protests that took place at the borders of New Delhi against the farm laws in 2020-21. During this time, Diljit had used his social media handles to popularise the farmer protests and consequently ended up facing a lot of hate from online trollers who proclaimed Dosanjh to be an ‘anti-national’ and a ‘Khalistani’ separatist.
Diljit has been one of the few popular celebrities to not have shied away from expressing his (controversial) political opinions, and this is also reflected through the singer/actor’s filmography that, among other films, also includes politically sensitive ones like Punjab 1984 (2014), Udta Punjab (2016), Jogi (2022), Amar Singh Chamkila (2024) and Punjab 95 (the controversial film delves into the unlawful killings and disappearances during the insurgency years in Punjab. The release of the film remains uncertain in India). In one of the actor’s roundtable interactions with film critic and journalist Rajeev Masand following the release of Jogi (the film looks into the events that transpired in New Delhi following the assassination of former prime minister Indira Gandhi), Diljit was quick to correct Masand after the latter had used the term ‘riot’ while talking about Delhi in the year 1984. Diljit politely stated that since the violence was directed by one group against the Sikhs, the use of the term ‘genocide’ was more fitting.
Historically speaking, Sikh characters in mainstream Hindi films have largely been treated either as a source of comic relief or as symbols of completing the nationalist project. Most Sikh characters have been presented as clumsily dressed, wide-eyed and unintelligent side-kicks. Turban-donning bearded characters have largely been deemed unattractive and undesirable by Hindi cinema. While this caricaturish way of Sikh representation in Hindi films has gradually shifted with characters like Ranbir Kapoor’s in Rocket Singh (2009) or that of Sail Ali Khan’s in Love Aaj Kal (2009), these representations have nonetheless been few and far between. It is worth mentioning here that among the actors that have played the characters of a turbaned Sikh, none of them have been turbaned Sikhs in real life.
In 2016, Diljit Dosanjh became the first turbaned Sikh to have been cast in a Bollywood film- Udta Punjab. Ever since, Dosanjh has been steadily finding his space in the industry, with 2024 being his milestone year in Bollywood after the success of Amar Singh Chamkila. Dosanjh has been instrumental in not only breaking the Sikh stereotype but has instead initiated the process of finally normalising the turbaned Sikh as both cool, desirous and fashionable.
In June 2024, Vogue Paris crowned Diljit as India’s most stylish man. This has not only amplified the artist’s persona but has gone to vindicate Dosanjh’s statement a few months earlier at his Mumbai concert, “They say Punjabis can’t do fashion, and I said, I will show you”.
From dreaming big time and again challenging the status quo, it is safe to say that the multifaceted star has a charmingly defiant way about himself that may be fuelling Dosanjh’s way into global stardom. From roaring performances globally to intense cinematic performances, Amrit Mann’s words from Diljit’s song Born to Shine again ring true- Dosanjh’an Aala Naam Dilan Utte Likheya Khasa Jor Lag Ju Mitaun Vaaste (Dosanjh’s name has been engraved on your hearts and it will take a long long time to erase it!).
