Artists working on a street art campaign supported by the Delhi government may get security cover after two members of the team were prevented from painting an Urdu couplet in East Delhi last week by people allegedly belonging to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
On May 20, artists Akhlaq Ahmad and Swen Simon, working with the “Delhi, I Love You” initiative, were forced to deface an Urdu couplet they were painting on a wall of a Delhi Jal Board building in Shahdara. A crowd of about 100 people, including some who claimed to be from the RSS, made them write “Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan” over the Urdu line.
“They told us that we cannot write in Urdu. They also said they were from the RSS,” Mr. Ahmad told The Hindu .
“Inexcusable” incident
Condemning the “inexcusable” incident, Delhi Minister for Tourism, Culture and Languages Kapil Mishra on Wednesday asked Delhi Police Commissioner Alok Verma to take action against those involved.
“I will also ask for security for the artists and will personally be present when they return to the site,” Mr. Mishra added.
In his letter to the Commissioner, Mr. Verma said: “I demand that the police take immediate action against the members of RSS who indulged in such a heinous act against our artists and violated all the laws of the land.”
Mr. Mishra, who is also the chairperson of the DJB, said he had given permission to the artists to paint on the nine buildings owned by the water utility. The pumping station on GT Road in Shahdara was the first DJB building the campaign worked on.
Just as the artists finished painting the first line of a couplet praising the “heart of Delhi”, they were bullied into erasing it. “These men of the RSS neither understand art nor culture nor language nor religion and least of all, they don’t understand Delhi and its vibrant citizens [sic],” Mr. Mishra wrote to the Commissioner.
The project started in September 2015, with the “Delhi, I Love You” campaign collecting anecdotes, stories and couplets on the Capital through a Twitter hashtag #MyDilliStory. A total of 8,000 tweets were received, and 40 of the best — 10 each in English, Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu — were selected to be painted across walls around the city. The project has already painted 10 of these tweets in locations around the city, including Saket City Hospital, ISBT Kashmere Gate and Ambedkar University.
The couplet the artists were painting on May 20 was submitted by a Delhi University student.
“ Dilli tera ujarna, aur phir ujar ke basna. Woh dil hai toone paya, sani nahi hai jiska . (Oh Delhi, you were ruined and you overcame your ruin to settle. No city has a heart like yours),” it said.
The Delhi government is a partner for the #MyDilliStory project, which is part of the 30-month “Delhi, I Love You” initiative. The campaign will culminate in a film about the city.
Terming the incident as “tragic”, the “Delhi, I Love You” movement on Wednesday remained undeterred to carry out the remaining projects.
“It’s tragic, almost to the point of amusement, that, while ‘Delhi, I Love You’ is working with the Department of Languages of the Delhi government to popularise the use of Urdu, Punjabi and Hindi, our artists get roughed up, by alleged RSS men, for writing poetry in Urdu,” said the director of the movement, Aastha Chauhan.
Since Urdu is one of the four official languages of Delhi, it should be “sacrosanct from such ugliness”, she added. “There seems to be a breakdown at such an intrinsic level that the very tools we use to communicate are being misconstrued such to lose their intended purpose. Meanwhile, we at ‘Delhi, I Love You’ simply love poetry,” Ms. Chauhan said.
