Melody and resistance: environmental activism of Zubeen Garg

The relationship between culture, politics, and environmentalism has increasingly become an important area of interdisciplinary inquiry in contemporary South Asia. In Northeast India, environmental issues are deeply connected with questions of indigeneity, ethnicity, land, language, and identity. Cultural icons often emerge not merely as entertainers but as socio-political actors who shape public consciousness. This article examines Zubeen Garg as a ‘cultural rebel environmentalist’ and how his songs, public interventions, environmental protests, and cultural politics gave a space for resistance against state-led development and environmental destruction, conceptualised here as ‘state-led de-environmentalism.’ Drawing on environmentalism, cultural nationalism, ecocriticism, and selected songs of the singer, the paper situates Zubeen Garg within broader debates on environmental justice in Northeast India. The study further examines how his interventions regarding deforestation, river ecology, urban destruction, and indigenous identity transformed him into a cultural-political symbol of ecological resistance. Zubeen Garg’s environmentalism cannot be understood in isolation from Assamese cultural identity and regional anxieties over land, migration, and state-centric development. Using an interdisciplinary framework, the article debates eco-cultural resistance and the political role of popular cultural figures in shaping environmental discourse.