Sofia Ashraf, the woman who took on Unilever with a rap song

Her social raps include 'Don't Work for Dow' campaign where the aim was to discourage youth from taking up jobs with Dow

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Sofia Ashraf insists she’s an accidental rapper. This after she rapped for the Bhopal gas leak victims, against the Kudankulam nuclear power plant, and, recently, against Unilever for failing to clean up the alleged toxic mercury waste from the Kodaikanal thermometer unit it shut down 14 years ago.

Her latest rap video, “Kodaikanal Won’t Step Down”, has gone viral with over 1.5 million views on YouTube ever since it was released by NGO Jhatkaa.org on July 30. In the video, set to the tune of Nicky Minaj’s popular hit “Anaconda”, Ashraf, 28, goes all out to drive home the point by liberally using many of the company’s brands in her lyrics — “Unilever has been hiding behind their fake PSAs [public service announcements] and Pepsodent smiles. They’ve washed their hands off Kodai with Lifebuoy.”

Such has been the impact that Unilever has responded to the concerns raised about the health of its ex-employees by putting this statement out on its official Twitter handle: “Safety is our number one priority. Extensive studies found no harm to workers or environment in Kodaikanal.”

Before this, Ashraf had hit the spotlight in Chennai, her hometown, as the “burqa rapper”. Born into a rich and conservative Muslim family, she would say: “I’m a conservative Muslim; but I’m also cool.” To project this traditional yet trendy image, she took to the stage rapping with her band, Peter Kaapi (a take on filter coffee), clad in a burqa. Her first rap was a remixed version of Madonna’s “Frozen” and the second one was a remix of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, which was about wearing the burqa.

Though Ashraf grew up in a musical environment — her mother and sister are good singers — she says she “can’t sing to save my life”. Her first stage appearance was at Stella Maris, where she studied graphic design.

Her religion, she says, does not encourage physical contact between men and women and so she did not shake hands with men. Instead, she greeted them with a namaste. But when she turned 22, she gave up Islam. “There was no radiating light guiding me or a musical crescendo leading me to my destiny. It was a slow decay of an old belief that no longer made sense,” Ashraf was quoted in a report.

She then moved to Mumbai and the last five “glorious” years have been a journey of self-discovery. Until recently, she worked as a creative supervisor at Ogilvy & Mather.

The tryst with rap continued, with one of her songs even inspiring a flash mob protest against Dow Chemicals at the London Olympics. She has rapped for both films and social causes. A R Rahman picked her to sing the rap portion of “Jiya Re Jiya Re” in Jab Tak Hai Jaan (2012).

Her social raps for include the “Don’t work for Dow” campaign in engineering colleges, where the aim was to discourage the youth from taking up jobs with Dow. She also rapped against moral policing following the attack on women in a pub in Mangaluru.

Ashraf says she only picks those issues that she feels strongly about. In the Unilever case too, she says, she did her research and spoke with the victims. She says it’s not that she’s against corporations.

She is now moving back to Chennai, though she’s not sure if she will continue rapping.

But she would like to create content that spreads campaigns using humour.