Why Safdar Hashmi turned to street theatre

The life and times of an artist who tried to link ideology and real-life struggle through his work but was brutally killed in 1989.

January 02, 2020 02:19 pm | Updated 02:20 pm IST

 Safdar Hashmi with baton | Hissar, Haryana, 1981.

Safdar Hashmi with baton | Hissar, Haryana, 1981.

Safdar Hashmi was 34 years old when he died from injuries sustained during a brutal attack. On New Year’s Day in 1989, Jana Natya Manch – Janam – the theatre group he was a part of, and which he led, was attacked while performing a street play on the outskirts of Delhi. Beginning with a record of the attack that killed him, Halla Bol , written by theatre director and actor Sudhanva Deshpande, illuminates the life of Hashmi, artist, comrade, poet, writer, actor and activist. The book is filled with details about the making of Janam’s famous street plays, such as Machine and Halla Bol (the play Janam was performing in Jhandapur at the time of the attack). An excerpt:

The Emergency was lifted in March 1977. During his winter break at Srinagar University in 1977-78, Safdar came to Delhi and got involved in efforts to reorganise Janam, and met N.K. Sharma. NK grew up in the mohalla known as Chudiwalan in Old Delhi, where he went first to an NDMC and then DAV school, after which he joined Hindu College in Delhi University. But his father, an industrial officer in Delhi Administration, died suddenly. The family didn’t own any house in Delhi. NK applied for, and got, a job in Delhi Administration on humanitarian grounds, enabling them to retain the government accommodation. He was just about 18 then. He quit Hindu College because of the job, and enrolled as a distance learner, completing his graduation. NK had first been in the touch with Janam in 1975, but the Emergency was clamped down before he could get active. When things moved again after Emergency, NK joined. By this time, Arun Sharma, from Meerut, was also part of the group.

Critique of the Emergency

The Hindi poet Kanti Mohan was connected to Janam at the time, and NK remembers a meeting at his house in Naya Bazaar, Old Delhi, attended by Safdar, Tyagi, Manish, Arun, and himself. Maybe they met more than once, because Kavita Nagpal also remembers a similar meeting at Kanti Mohan’s house, but NK is emphatic she wasn’t there. Either way, nothing concrete came out of it. The young men were nevertheless upbeat. Since Rakesh Saksena hadn’t been part of the meeting NK mentions, they met again a few days later on the lawns of Sapru House, which in those days was an intellectual and cultural hub, with a fine library. Rathin Das was also part of this meeting. Rakesh Saksena played an important part in Janam’s reorganizing efforts.

Janam regrouped with a production of Asghar Wajahat’s Firangi Laut Aye (‘The Colonizer Returns’), directed by Kavita Nagpal. After this, they took up an Utpal Dutt play, Ebaar Rajar Pala , a critique of the Emergency, and did it as Ab Raja Ki Bari Hai (‘Now, the King’s Turn’), directed, NK says, by Utpal Bannerji. It was translated from Bangla to Hindi by Aparnadi, and Rakesh and Safdar then worked on that text. These were plays in the old mould: large, and with big casts. Safdar didn’t act in either, because he was back in Kashmir. It was hard to get performances. The trade unions, kisan sabhas, and students’ organizations had all been working underground and were short of money. They also needed financial resources to fight court cases against their activists. They needed Janam’s theatre in their reorganising efforts, but couldn’t afford it.

Safdar had quit his job and come back to Delhi in the summer of 1978. The group was wondering what to do, and how to go forward. If big plays are not feasible, Safdar said, let us make small plays that are inexpensive to produce, mount, travel with, and perform. Janam already had some experience with a rough-and-ready sort of improvised street theatre. Could this be developed further, the group wondered. NK had seen street sellers in Old Delhi, showmen who could entertain crowds of a hundred or so as they performed little tricks and sold their wares. Why can’t we do something like that, he said.

Plays for the people

A decade later, Safdar told Eugene van Erven, ‘Someone suggested that we write our own plays, things that could be easier and cheaper to produce. We felt we didn’t have the confidence for that. Then an older Communist leader called me one day and told me about an incident that had happened in Ghaziabad . . . in a chemicals factory called Herig-India. The workers didn’t have a union. They had two very ordinary demands. . . . They wanted a place where they could park their bicycles, and inside the factory they wanted a canteen where they could get a cup of tea and heat up their food during a recess. . . . For these simple humanitarian demands, the workers had to go on strike. . . . The guards opened fire, killing six workers. . . . We decided to try writing a play about this.’

Six people lost their lives for what were not even economic demands, and they were killed by private guards, not the police. Why?

After Emergency, there was an upsurge in working-class struggles. The police and administration are always with the owners in any case; owners also have goons in their direct or indirect employ. In Ghaziabad, however, traditionally, the role of goons and criminals as strongmen of capitalists has been high. In some cases, the owners themselves are strongmen with criminal records, who run factories as fronts for all kinds of illegal activities. Many factory owners are also part of the land mafia. Herig-India was not the only factory where workers faced repression. In the same period, there were about a dozen factories in the region where the workers had to go on strike, because the owners wouldn’t even talk to the workers about their problems.

The larger context was also important. The Janata Party government, which came into power at the Centre after Emergency, was trying to bring in a new Industrial Relations Bill to curb the growing militancy of the unions.

When Janam decided to make a play around these issues, they were clear that the play had to (a) be simple to mount; (b) be general enough to appeal to workers at large, not only those from a single factory; (c) talk about capitalism as a system, rather than about the cruelty of individual owners; (d) bring out the inhumanity of the capitalist class; (e) suggest that no matter how terrible or kind individual owners might be, the way out was to abolish capitalism. Safdar and one or two others met a number of trade unionists to understand the situation, both at the larger, macro level, and also at the ground level. K.M. Tiwari, then a CITU activist and worker, now Delhi CPI (M) secretary, says that he remembers speaking to Safdar and others along with a senior trade unionist, and answering their questions, many of which were quite detailed. Jogendra Sharma, who too was a CITU activist then, also recalls meeting Safdar and others and discussing at length the industrial situation in Ghaziabad. With all this background research buzzing in their heads, and after discussions in Janam about the form and content of the play, Rakesh Saksena and Safdar sat down one day to write and, as Safdar told van Erven, ‘practically on its own something started emerging. We started speaking the dialogues almost naturally’.

Machine was the result.

It is a short, 13-minute piece. Five actors enter and create a machine with their bodies. The machine has three component elements: the workers, the owner, and the guard. Each of them emerges from the machine and talks about their role in the production process: The worker creates value, the owner enjoys the economic fruits of the workers’ labour, and the guard enforces discipline and compliance from the workers with an iron fist. The narrator links the various elements. At one point, the machine breaks down. The narrator asks, who is responsible for this? The workers step forward: We are. On one side, we face the stone wall of the owner, on the other side, we have the iron fist of the guard. They have no option but to strike. The owner unleashes repression; in the end, the workers win.

Excerpted with permission from LeftWord Books.

Halla Bol: The death and life of Safdar Hashmi ; LeftWord Books; Rs. 495

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