Ali Sethi’s songs uplifts an audience to imagine a unified South Asia

September 19, 2022

Last week, Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans, and Afghans gathered together at Harvard University’s Sanders Auditorium to celebrate South Asia’s 75th anniversary of independence from British rule. Amartya Sen, Indian economist and Nobel Prize winner, chatted with Pakistani philanthropist Syed Babar Ali, both born before the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947.  

But the sold-out crowd of 1,000, at the event organized by Harvard’s Mittal Institute, were there to sing and dance with Ali Sethi. Among the songs sung by Sethi, a Pakistani and a Harvard alum who is based in New York, was Pasoori (difficult mess). It is about the complexities and complaints of two people in love “the un-partitioned heart,” as the Mittal Institute newsletter described it. 

Pasoori is “an apt metaphor for the relationship between two countries in perpetual conflict whose histories and cultural touchstones are entwined” notes Priyanka Mattoo in a profile of Sethi for The New Yorker. The song can be interpreted in vaious ways - as a love story, description of an unjust society, or a plea to the divine - similar to a Sufi poem.

Sethi’s songs, composed in Punjabi, Urdu and Hindi, are major global hits. Pasoori, released in February, has gotten more than 370 million views on YouTube alone. It is widely popular among Pakistanis as well as Indians, including Shilpa Shetty and other Bollywood stars. Sethi’s inspiration for the song came from Punjabi calligraphy he read on the back of a truck in Lahore, Pakistan.

His Chan Kithan, starring his sister Mira Sethi, has gotten more than 17 million views on YouTube and Chandni Raat (Moonlight Night) more than 5.2 million views. Sethi, 38-years-old, has more than 350,000 followers on both Instagram and YouTube and more than 110,000 on Facebook.

Ali Aziz Sethi, born and raised in Lahore, Pakistan, is the son of journalists. His father was jailed several times for his criticism of Pakistani officials and policies. Sethi attended the Aitchison College, a top private English language boys’ high school in Lahore.

He joined Harvard in 2002, planning to study economics. Attending a course taught by Ali Asani, a professor of Indo-Muslim and Islamic religion and cultures, Sethi gained a deeper appreciation of qawwalis (devotional Sufi songs) and ghazals (love songs), which he listened to while growing up.

These old folksongs emphasize pluralism, tolerance, and an inward search for the divine, he told The Harvard Magazine. He started to realize that, in a society with so many fault lines—along caste, class, and ideology—traditional music felt like a safe place to express himself and to explore his own queerness, according to The New Yorker. Sethi switched majors to study music and creative writing, concentrating in Sanskrit and Indian studies.

In 2006, after earning his degree, Sethi wrote The Wish Maker, a novel about politics and family in Pakistan, which is partly based on his life. Moving back to Lahore, he bought a harmonium and apprenticed under Ustad Naseeruddin Saami. The Ustad’s ancestors have been qawwali singers since the 13th Century.  

In 2012, Sethi recorded Farida Khanum’s Dil Jalaane Ki Baat (Talk That Burns the Heart), for Indian American film maker Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. The song brought him wider recognition as a singer. In 2016, he started training under Khanum. In 2014 at the Tata Steel Kolkata Literary Meet, he discussed with Khunam her life in music and produced a documentary.

Sethi sings Pasoori with Anushae (Shae) Gill, who is a Christian, a community that makes up less than 2% of Pakistan’s population. Sethi’s songs, videos and other work include collaboration with singers, musicians and other artists from various regions, including Indians like Rekha Bhardwaj and Vishal Bhardwaj.

In 2020, following collaboration between Indian and Pakistani performers, an organization of film employees in India issued a circular stating that “anyone found cooperating or working in any manner with any Pakistani artistes, singers and technicians, in any mode or media of entertainment will be subject to strict disciplinary action,” The Hindustan Times reported.

Sethi responded to the circular on Instagram stating, the collaboration between Indian and Pakistani artists "is something spontaneous. It's not something we planned, it did not have an agenda. Music always transcends borders, we listen to music from around the world…It's not something you can control or you should control."

Last week, Asim Khwaja, the Director of the Center for International Development at Harvard, speaking about Sethi’s performance at the Harvard campus, told the Mittal Institute newsletter that, “It was an absolutely magical night. It brings hope that even as we remain separate nations (in South Asia), we can remember and rekindle the love and camaraderie that exists between us all.” 

Added Satchit Balsari, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, “It was overwhelming, and yet comforting. The three generations of South Asians on the dais showed—in their own very distinct ways—what was and is possible.” Osman Khalid Waheed, who graduated from Harvard in 1993, who was in the audience and was instrumental in bringing the evening together, said, “A song doesn’t require a visa to cross borders.”

 For access to stories each week, follow on: LINKEDIN or TWITTER or FACEBOOK