The month of April comes with mixed blessings. It is the month the indomitable actor-director-playwright Safdar Hashmi was born. It is also the time when his birth anniversary is celebrated through a series of street plays at hundreds of locations across villages, cities and towns, big and small. And it is also the month that reminds theatre lovers what could have been had fate not snatched Safdar at the age of 35 in 1989. Remembering him leaves a lump in the throat.
Inclined towards Marxism from an early age, his life was a sterling testimony to the ability of a man to usher in change through his perspicacity.
As a young Marxist, he believed art had a higher purpose than merely wonderful enactments in proscenium theatres. Accordingly, he started Jan Natya Manch in 1973 when he was still a teenager, and took meaningful theatre to the common man. In the early 70s when Indira Gandhi was accused of rigging elections, he produced a play, Kursi, Kursi, Kursi and performed it at Delhi’s Boat Club, then very much the epicentre of political resistance.
Street play performed in Delhi during Safdar Hashmi's birth anniversary celebrations | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
He lived his belief till his last breath when he was murdered while performing a street play, Halla Bol, in Sahibabad, near East Delhi in 1989. Since then the birth and death anniversaries of the noted lyricist and activist are observed by theatre activists by raising their voice for the common man, bringing in greater awareness about the challenges of contemporary life.
Says Sohail Hashmi, Safdar’s elder brother, “For over two decades, Safdar Hashmi established street theatre as a medium, which, aesthetically, was a form that could stand on its feet. Until then, many did not consider it a creative form and often associated it with political propaganda.”
According to Sohail, a-founder trustee of SAHMAT, which was established by leading artists, activists, poets and photographers, etc, following a spontaneous outpouring against Hashmi’s murder on January 1, 1989, “Safdar Hashmi theorised how one could creatively intervene without using proscenium theatre. Every year, we send out invitations to hundreds of troupes and clubs performing street plays to send in their entries, then we shortlist them.”
The entries this year, like in the past, were numerous and the organisers were unable to put a number on the plays staged on April 12, Safdar’s birth anniversary. “It is often like that. At times we get to know after a few weeks or even months after where plays have been performed across the country. Our main goal is that the plays should not devolve to mere propaganda as Safdar Hashmi was not in favour of such an action,” says Sohail.
Accordingly, this year, the states known for their rich street theatre culture, notably West Bengal, Bihar, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, saw street plays at vantage locations in big cities.
Street plays performed in Delhi during Safdar Hashmi's birth anniversary celebrations | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
In Delhi, there were four street plays on the day, including a Jan Natya Manch presentation, ‘Katha Kaalratri Ki’, a 30-minute Hindi play directed by Sunil Shanbag. Inspired by fables and folktales, the play tells the story of Kaalratri, a story writer who focusses on the lives of the ordinary people, the women, the workers and those who are oppressed, in folk language. It also tells the story of a king, who uses his power to silence anyone who dares tell a story that does not praise him, to curb dissent, and to rewrite history in a way that paints him in a good light. It reminded many of Kursi Kursi Kursi, others saw in it contemporary reality when dissent is often sought to be crushed.
Keeping Katha company was Dastak JNU’s ‘Break the Chains: Some Stories of Working Women’, a 22-minute play on the struggles of working women in India. Also there were ‘Aflatoon: The Theatre of VIPs’ and ‘D.N.D.’, Team Ankur’s take on dissent and democracy.
As cities once again stirred with street plays feeling the pulse of the common man, everybody fondly remembered Safdar Hashmi who made it all possible.
