MUMBAI

Safdar Memorial Book Fair Attracts Thousands

ACTIVISTS of Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) in the western suburbs of Mumbai organised a Safdar Hashmi Memorial Book Fair at Vasai Road from January 2 to 4. The fair received an overwhelming response from the local people and attracted thousands of visitors. Though the book fair’s timings were from 10 in the morning till 10 at night, it had to be kept open till 11 p m on all the three days.

A number of progressive book houses which cooperated with the Vasai Book Festival by either setting up stalls or sending their books. They included PPH, Comet Media Foundation, Navnirmiti, Paridrisya and Gandhi Book Centre from Mumbai, LeftWord, Jan Natya Manch and Tulika from Delhi, National Book Agency (Kolkata), Bharati Puthakalayam (Chennai), Navakarnataka Publications (Bangalore), and Deshabhimani Book House and Prabhat Book House from Kerala. Nine languages were represented in the festival: Hindi, Urdu, Marathi, Bengali, Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Gujarati and English.

The DYFI’s emphasis has been on bringing as many progressive book houses as possible, with the view to acquainting the multilingual population of Vasai and its nearby suburbs in Mumbai with progressive books and literature from different states. But the book fair was thrown open to commercial booksellers too, with the only condition that books promoting superstitions, communal divisions and backward looking ideologies must not be displayed. Several book houses accepted the idea and arrived for the Safdar Memorial Book Fair. They included well-known names in publishing and distribution like National Book Trust, Navneet Prakashan, Majestic Book House, Sandeepani Pustakalaya, Liberty Literature, Kunal Book House and DC Books.

The DYFI’s Vasai and Nalasopara units have been together organising a Safdar Hashmi Memorial Vasai Book Festival every year since 2000, with support from the DYFI Mumbai committee and western suburbs committee. A 200-member book festival organising committee under the chairmanship of well-known Marathi poet Rocque Carvalho was formed to reinforce the DYFI efforts. Like the last two years, this year too the book exhibition was housed in a specially erected pandal at Samaj Unnati Mandal ground on Vasai Road. Well known Urdu poet Shri Nida Fazli inaugurated the book festival on January 2 evening at an emotional function, amid the slogan of “Long Live Comrade Safdar Hashmi.” In his enthralling speech laden all along with passionate poetry, Nida Fazli paid rich homage to Comrade Safdar Hashmi and commended the book festival effort. “These are times of thickening darkness. Commemorating Safdar’s martyrdom with programmes like this is more relevant now than ever, just like a small lamp lit somewhere in a dark night guides the travelers miles away to the correct path,” he reminded the large gathering who had come to hear him.

Like previous years, this year’s guests list of the Vasai book festival was also a mixture of DYFI leaders, personalities from the broad Left and secular stream, and famous writers from the mainstream who refuse to join hands with communal forces. Smt Pratima Joshi (well known Marathi journalist with Maharashtra Times), Smt Shereen Ratnagar (famous archaeologist), Shri Joseph Tuscano (well known science fiction writer in Marathi), Shri Narayan Jadhav (Maharashtra state library council), Smt Aruna Pendse (professor of political science at Kirti College) Ms Swati Lavand (freelance journalist), Mahendra Singh (CPI-M Mumbai secretary and DYFI’s founder secretary in Maharashtra), K K Theckedath (CPI-M state committee member and author), Ram Sagar Pandey (DYFI’s former Mumbai president) and Pradeep Salvi (DYFI western suburbs secretary) were among the speakers in the several interactive sessions held during the three days of book festival. Shailendra Kamble (DYFI’s Maharashtra state secretary) was the main speaker at the concluding session.

All the evenings at the book fair were enriched by a wide range of cultural performances including street plays, a show of M S Sathyu’s film Garam Hawa, Rabeendra Sangeet, Bhavgeet, qawwalis and ghazals. Competitions for children and youth were also conducted during the book festival.

The Vasai book festival is designed as a platform to disseminate democratic ideas in the western suburbs of Mumbai. Events at the book festival time, like photo exhibitions, interactive sessions with authors, street plays, seminars, film shows, cultural programmes and discussions are all structured to carry forward the ideological struggle with which Safdar Hashmi had identified himself.

The Vasai book festival was conceived primarily as a means of resistance to the bourgeoisie’s ascendancy in the realm of writing, printing and reading. The bourgeoisie, imperialist bourgeoisie in particular, is molding the people’s sensibilities in its own way, by increasingly monopolising the areas of writing, printing and reading. It is supplying to the people what they ‘like’ but only after dictating what they should like. Along with other media like cinema, television and performing arts, the bourgeoisie is controlling the printed forms of communication and creativity in a totalitarian fashion. Writing, printing and reading has been with us for centuries --- not only as a major component of our cultural life but also as the single most important vehicle in the circuits of ideas. These have produced innumerable persons who played a fundamental role in social change. The link between literary movements in Indian vernaculars and our national liberation movement is a case that comes quickly to mind. But the ascending patterns of writing, printing and reading today do not seem to permit the emergence of persons equipped with ideas of radical social change; nor does the prevailing patterns seem to permit ‘individuality’ in general! This is one, though not the only one, important aspect of contemporary culture that progressive forces cannot afford to ignore. That is why the DYFI, intending to move our youth away from the fascist trap and rallying them in the struggles for social justice, chose to institute an annual book fair in the suburbs of Mumbai and to integrate it with the memory of Comrade Safdar Hashmi.