New Delhi
Rapper Honey Singh has been a chart-topper this year, and two of the five most-searched for videos on YouTube for 2012 were his songs.

An online petition is demanding the cancellation of the singer's New Year's Eve performance at a hotel in Gurgaon, near Delhi.

The rapper's misogynistic and deeply-troubling lyrics are unacceptable now to thousands in a country that is mourning the death of a young student who was gang-raped on a moving bus in Delhi. One song, released in 2006, brags about the different ways in which the singer will sexually assault a woman.

The online petition says, "These pornographic lyrics are unacceptable and it is because of women hating (sic) sentiments like these that men think that it's fine to do what they did on that bus, that December night in Delhi. Let's put a stop to these subversive lyrics that infiltrate the minds of people who don't know better and who then justify to themselves the rightness of a crime that harms another human being, sometimes so severely that they lose their lives."

Petitioners like Kalpana Misra, who spoke to NDTV today, said that Mr Singh's massive popularity is more reason why he should be held to account and told -- in no uncertain terms -- that his deeply offensive and regressive songs have no place in civilised society. Ms Misra said that the petition is being sent to the manager of the hotel where Mr Singh is to perform because the idea is not to curb Mr Singh's right to express himself - no matter how offensive his lyrics may be - but because the petitioners have the right to not listen to Honey Singh.