People's Democracy

 Friend, Companion, Comrade

Moloyashree Hashmi

IT IS nearly 15 years since Safdar Hashmi was killed when Jana Natya Manch (Janam) was attacked by Congress(I) backed goons. The attack took place on January 1, 1989. A worker, Ram Bahadur, was shot dead. Safdar was severely wounded and died in hospital the following night. His funeral took place on January 3. And on January 4, Janam went back to the site of the attack in Jhandapur, just beyond the Delhi border, to complete the disrupted play.

We are often asked what made us perform in Jhandapur that day. Why did we go there a day after Safdar died? Was it difficult? And so on. At that time, it seemed the most natural thing for us to do; I don’t think it was carefully planned. Was it an emotional response? Perhaps it was – we had lost a dear friend, comrade, companion. But I don’t think it was merely an emotional response. We were doing what we had been doing for so many years: performing amongst the people. And as performers, we felt very strongly, as we do till date, that we should never leave a performance incomplete. The January 4 performance was also Janam’s salute to Safdar, the people’s artist. And there was also the political context: we had to assert that people’s art cannot be crushed by brute might.

It has now become a fixed point on our annual calendar. Every year, on January 1, we go back to Jhandapur. Our comrades from the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU, in whose support we were performing in 1989) organise a mass meeting of workers and we perform. Over the years, several other artists have also performed in Jhandapur on January 1. The local workers take half a day off from work every year to attend the programme.

Safdar came into the democratic cultural movement in 1970 as an undergraduate student of Delhi University. He was a member of the Students’ Federation of India and along with some of his comrades sought to reactivate the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) in Delhi. This work excited him – performing at bastis and factory gates, interacting with the young intellectuals, artists, writers, and poets who were drawn to the IPTA, creating and organising – all this was not work but play. He was soaking up these experiences and growing – intellectually, creatively and ideologically.

In 1973 Jana Natya Manch was formed. Safdar was one of the co-founders. Although initially Janam didn’t do any street theatre of the kind that we are doing now, but in one sense the basic motivation of doing theatre was much the same, which was taking theatre to the people. So even our large proscenium productions were very rarely confined to auditorium spaces, they were usually in the open where we would erect makeshift stages. Those days we went a lot to the rural areas. Plays like Ramesh Upadhyay’s Bharat Bhagya Vidhata and Sarveshwar Dayal Saxena’s Bakri were performed in front of audiences of thousands.

After the Emergency, we found that the organisations for which we performed earlier could no longer afford the expenses of the large plays. They had suffered in the Emergency, and the priority for them was to reorganise themselves. Many comrades told us: we need your plays in our efforts to reorganise, but we cannot pay for them. Can’t you do something cheaper?

That was the motivation for the shift to street theatre.

We thought, if we can’t take big theatre to the people, we can take small theatre to the people – these were actually Safdar’s words. That’s when we started looking at small plays. But whatever we looked at, nothing excited us. So we took a very major decision in Janam, which was an important turning point – a creative turning point – that we would write our own plays. After brainstorming and discussions in Janam and with our trade union friends in the CITU, Rakesh Saxena and Safdar penned down Machine, first performed on October 15, 1978, twenty-five years ago. 

Safdar was a dreamer and a doer. He was able to combine his creative talents with organising abilities. Performing for the people was not a ‘feel good’ action but a process of engaging with ideas and issues affecting the working people. It was essential to have excellence in the craft, the form, the aesthetics, and be alert on questions of ideas and politics. He was never formally trained as a theatre person, but he learned by reading, watching, and actively seeking out friends and contemporaries from the theatre world. He had dreams for Janam, and he also had a very strong practical sense so that as soon as a dream crystallized, he would start thinking about how to give it shape practically. Many of his dreams, it is true, remained just that. Had he lived longer, I am sure he would have turned some of them into realities.

Safdar was and remained essentially a simple person. He delighted in creative work, and ideas excited him. He embraced Marxism when still a teenager, and while over the years his understanding and grasp of more complex issues increased, he remained unwavering in his political commitment. In fact, he believed, quite rightly, that the Marxist method of understanding the world helped expand his creative expression.

Safdar was not simply a remarkably creative person himself, he had a knack of drawing out the best from others. He was able to unlock the creativity in his co-workers, not in a formal teacher-learner format, but as co-workers of a creative collective. Safdar’s absence continues to be felt and he is a reference point for most of Janam’s enterprises. He played the central role in creating the two dozen-odd street plays we did during 1978–88. And in the 40-odd street plays after his death, Safdar’s inspiration has been with us. We remember him especially when something particularly innovative happens or when there is a crisis. We remember him when we are eating together or sharing jokes. A number of initiatives after 1989 – for instance, we started a journal, Nukkad Janam Samvaad in 1993, built a mobile theatre in 1997 to take our larger plays in working class areas, etc. – have been a fruition of his dreams.

Safdar’s talents were truly versatile. He wrote plays, songs, articles, he was an actor, singer, and director, he wrote for the television, he made some short films, he wrote a number of wonderful songs, poems and plays for children, he designed posters and masks, and he was an efficient and dynamic organiser. When the Committee for Communal Harmony was formed after the anti-Sikh riots of 1984, Safdar played a large role in mobilising artists and intellectuals. Similarly, in November 1988, when the workers of Delhi went on a 7-day strike, we organised, under Safdar’s initiative and leadership, a large march of artists and intellectuals in support of the workers. 

These initiatives became the precursor for the massive show of solidarity on part of artists and intellectuals after Safdar’s murder. After January 1, 1989, the overwhelming support of the people and artists was the mainstay of Janam. The admiration and love of people even in far-flung areas continue to be very humbling and inspiring. This support has again been evident recently when Safdar’s killers were sentenced to life terms. 

Safdar’s name has become a source of inspiration for large numbers of people across the country and beyond. In Janam, we remember him with joy and with a smile. The grief and loss cannot be repaired. They remain. But what endures is Safdar’s dreams, our dreams, our convictions. Safdar lives with us. He lives among the people.

(Moloyashree Hashmi is secretary, Jana Natya Manch)