Shining light on the Kohrra of Punjab politics and toxic masculinity in a new Netflix series

Despite limited promotion from Netflix’s end, its latest Hindi thriller series Kohrra has managed to strike a positive chord with critics and audiences alike. Playing out in the same vein as other gritty Hindi thrillers like Prime Videos’ Pataal Lok and Dahaad, the Netflix original is set in suburban Punjab and focuses on a grisly murder of an NRI being investigated by two hardworking cops.

Steve Dhillon to Balbir Singh: The case of Toxic Fathers

Much like Pataal Lok, Suvinder Pal Vicky’s Balbir Singh and his junior Amarpal Garundi (played by Barun Sobti) indulge in concerning amounts of police brutality and custodial violence even though they are portrayed to be dutiful policemen at the end of the day. One of the main victims hails from an NRI Sikh family who is compelled to enter in an arranged marriage with a local Punjabi girl who harbours big dreams for a life abroad. 

While the NRI victim is relegated to a minor flashback character, it is his authoritative father Steve Dhillon (played by a terrific Manish Chaudhari) who serves as the face of toxic Punjabi masculinity throughout the show.

Movies like Gulaal have shown how the notions of masculinity and male pride are engrained within moustache-twirling Rajputs from Rajasthan. But with characters like Steve Dhillon, Kohrra attempts to understand a similar brand of masculinity that Sikh men in Punjab might be compelled to stick to. Even when Steve lives in the UK with his Anglicised first name, he is shown to be violent towards his son for choosing to be a “cut-Surd” (choosing to cut his hair as opposed to the Sikh tradition of men maintaining their long hair). 

Slapping him and pinning him to the ground, Steve emasculates his son by calling him a “woman” for making such a decision.

Kohrra doesn't ride an anti-Sikh bandwagon but rather shows how a religion or community’s strict rules might end up blinding a father with rage towards his own son. 

The plot thickens when the son is revealed to be a closeted gay man, a truth that Steve can clearly not fathom. But it’s not just Steve’s toxic fatherhood that reveals the misogyny of powerful men in Punjab. Balbir Singh himself, despite all his high-handedness as a policeman, is shown to physically hurt his mentally-unstable wife. 

Controlling his own daughter with a patriarchal fist, Singh also allows her to only get romantically involved with men of his choice. When she goes against his wishes, Singh ends up brutally assaulting her current partner in the same way as Steve beats up his son. 

The Punjabi Hip-Hop Paradox

While it stands out on its own as a gripping crime thriller, Kohrra also borrows a page or two from other Hindi dramas set in Punjab (Udta Punjab, Pataal Lok, Manmarziyaan) to include the drug menace in the state and the machoistic brand of Punjabi hip-hop. 

What sets Pataal Lok apart however is that it also dabbles into a caste issue in the northern state. Jagjeet Sandhu’s Tope Singh played a lower caste Punjabi man who after being bothered by the upper caste Sikhs and Hindus in his village, decided to answer them with violence. After facing a few cuts from Tope’s knife, a particularly graphic scene shows the upper caste men’s fathers collectively sexually abusing Tope’s mother. The scene could have been arguably dealt with in a less triggering manner but it just went on to show how masculinity and caste can intermingle in a state like Punjab. 

Kohrra doesn’t particularly delve into caste in the same way as Pataal Lok or Prime Video’s recent cop drama Dahaad (that starred Sonakshi Sinha as a Dalit cop who draws the ire of casteist elements) but it is hinted that all the powerful toxic men clearly rank high up in the social ladder. But where it lacks in caste, Kohrra makes up for with its exploration of toxic masculinity in its different notions. 

A prominent case in point is the character of Saakar (Saurav Khurana), an independent rapper who goes viral ever since his girlfriend breaks up with him (the same person who decides to marry the NRI). Releasing a heartbreak-themed diss rap on her, Saakar angrily raps out his frustration at the “golddigger b***h” in his life. While Saakar never indulges in any physical abuse unlike the older men in Kohrra, his juvenile brand of the “b***h subgenre” of rap is reminiscent of Honey Singh and Badshah’s earlier days. 

Both Punjabi emcees now indulge in parent-friendly raps ever since they made it big in Bollywood. But for the generation of Indian boys who grew up in the pre-Spotify era of MP3 players, they will never forget the notorious “Volume 1”. The track’s reliance on explicit words might not raise as many eyebrows as its focus on some truly questionable sexual behaviour. For instance, Badshah talks about how he wishes to sexually indulge with a girl of “15 or 16 years” and then “tear up her clothes”, “strike her with his own shoes” and even “urinate on her”. 

The song is still considered to be a classic among diehard fans of Singh and Badshah. Much like mainstream hip-hop in the west, the hypermasculine views on women are still evident in Punjabi music. But while Saakar’s music still doesn’t come off as that morally questionable, it is interesting to note how Kohrra satirically incorporates tracks that are bound to remind people of the late Siddhu Moosewala’s discography. 

Whenever we see one or the other man driving aggressively with his fragile ego in Kohrra, one Moosewala-like song is bound to play on their car radio. The emphasis on “Jatt pride” again is bound to remind the audience of the relevance of upper-caste Sikh pride (much like the Rajput male pride model). Moosewala was undoubtedly iconic in his music as is evident from his global fanbase. The same can be said for Diljit Dosanjh who recently put Punjab and India on the global map after two memorable performances at the 2023 edition of Coachella. 

But while Dosanjh and Moosewala have both been seen as the poster boys of “brown music” exported from India to the West, it is worth noting how both artists have often dabbled in glorifying their upper caste Jatt Sikh pride. Moosewala has actively cited slain West Coast legend Tupac Shakur as his inspiration, respecting him not just for his musical legacy but also his socio-political consciousness. Apart from thoughtful tracks like Yamuna Sutlej Link (that talked about the conflict between Haryana and Punjab over the song's titular reservoir), Moosewala (who hailed from a landowning family in Punjab) has also openly and proudly proclaimed his caste identity in tracks like Jatt Da Muqabla (in which he sang about how Jatts have no competition in the world). 

In contrast, there are a few Dalit rappers from Punjab who are heralding an alternate take on Punjabi hip-hop, proclaiming their own lower caste identity and pride as a contrast. 24-year-old Ginni Mahi is a notable example who first blew up in the 2010s with her song Danger Chamaar (the name directly referencing her caste). Even Delhi-bred rapper Prabh Deep occasionally talks about the casteism prevalent among Sikhs. One of his tracks Toofan Main was exclusively recorded for Tope Singh’s character evolution in Pataal Lok. 

ALSO READ: Ginni Mahi, queen of Chamar pop, is more than a Dalit icon

Macho Men and Drug Addicts

Instead of taking a simplistically preachy anti-drug tone, Kohrra just objectively features troubled drug addicts in rural and suburban Punjab. And while it doesn’t make any assumptions on the drug addicts, it’s clear that the toxic masculinity in the world of Kohrra is also somehow linked with the drug menace in the state. 

Right from its opening frames, Kohrra features men across different age groups trying their best to prove their sexual prowess.

A detailed research paper by public policy expert Rahul Advani (written for the Institute of South Asian Studies) points to how the “Punjabi sense of masculinity” can explain the increased consumption of drugs in the state. 

One of the sources cited in the paper is a 2012 article from the Delhi Psychiatry Journal by PD Bansal and I Kalra. According to them, “the most popular reason for drug abuse given by abusers [in Punjab] was to enhance sexual performance”.  The research paper adds that these people had begun taking opioids to enhance sexual performance as per the popular belief among them. 

The document further suggests that the physicality of the male body is anyway a crucial part of Punjabi masculinity given the popular image of the laborious Jatt farmer (even though many Jatts are also wealthy landholders exercising control over lower caste agricultural labourers from either Punjab or the UP-Bihar belt). 

Commenting on the “macho” urge to enhance the male body, Advani writes, “The desire to enhance the capability of the body through drugs, be it for strength or for sexual performance (though both purposes are arguably perceived as connected, influencing each other), indicates the influence of masculinity as a factor in drug addiction.”

While Kohrra’s binge-able six-episode run doesn’t have enough time to delve into such specifics, it leaves a lot of space for some serious introspection on Punjabi masculinity. The healthy amount of subtext that Kohrra brims with is a testament to creators Gunjit Chopra, Sudip Sharma and Diggi Sisodia’s writing.