Book Review by Meenakshi Malhotra
Title: Safdar Hashmi: Towards Theatre for a Democracy
Author: Anjum Katyal
Publisher: Orient Blackswan
How do you write a biography of a man who was yet to reach the full expression of his multifaceted talents? How do you document his contribution to social action? Do you say that the tragedy of such a premature death is not only that he died young, but that his life was cut short while his talents were still quivering on the cusp of flowering, struggling for full self-expression? As witnesses to this shocking and traumatic event, we can call it a critical event; a moment in time which is still out of it. It is a moment of reckoning which forces us to revisit our assumptions about theatre as entertainment, a Brechtian moment which alienates us from our previous experience and which forces on us “a new and shocking revelation/revaluation of all we have been.”
In a kind of tragic irony, Safdar Hashmi’s[1]story became front page news when he was brutally attacked by some goons who were trying to stop the Jana Natya Manch actors from enacting a street play in Sahibad, one of Delhi’s industrial suburbs, on the 2nd of January, 1989. At that time, he was barely 35 years old.
Born into a close-knit family in 1954, the youngest of four siblings, Safdar Hashmi grew up in Delhi and Aligarh. His first few years of initial schooling were Aligarh and then he moved to Delhi, where he graduated from St Stephens. While the family had to struggle financially, they had plenty of opportunities to be involved in the vibrant cultural scene of Delhi in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Safdar Hashmi: Towards Theatre for a Democracy by Anjum Katyal, a writer, editor and translator, with a forward by the eminent actor Naseeruddin Shah, details the journey of Hashmi, his total dedication to and involvement with theatre. In his forward, Shah writes that Hashmi was an actor who was unconcerened with personal fame or celebritydom. He was a theatre activist who saw theatre as a means of social action and an instrument of change; he was so dedicated to his work that he was “willing to die for it”.
The book houses his early years, his stint in Kashmir, where he proved to be a catalyst in college and university theatre and drew students into it. He worked for the newly instituted television industry in Kashmir, which helped him earn some much needed money to sustain his passionate love for his own work with street theatre .
The slim volume is a veritable treasure trove of anecdotes about theatre from one of its scholars and connoisseurs and the narrative of Safdar’s journey is interspersed with rich dollops of theatre history. Katyal tell us stories of theatre giants like Badal Sircar, Utpal Dutt, Vinod Nagpal and M.K.Raina, thespians whose life stories and work were closely entwined with the history of theatre in India.
To quote the author, “[T]here is little reliable scholarship on the history of theater in India and on Safdar Hashmi’s contribution to Indian theatre.” Katyal’s book on Hashmi addresses both the issues, covering a substantial chunk of post-independence theatre and specifically the 1960s and seventies. Thus, we get to hear about the contributions of Utpal Dutt and Badal Sircar, doyennes and trail blazers of people’s theatre. Katyal examines the larger socio-political environment against which activist theatre evolved within the country. Drawing from different folk traditions , this adumbrated the vision that was truly democratic in its scope and reach and which moved out of proscenium theatre to reach trade unions and factory workers, the streets, factories and the marketplace.
Utpal Dutt, the intrepid screen and theatre actor recalled that they were “infected by the real IPTA[2]’s concern for the people’s political struggle” and he professed, “the exhilaration of direct political action…changed me completely”. These actors also offered valuable insights into the nature of the street theatre, including its capacity for consciousness raising and revolutionary action. Many of the street plays with their specific critiques “gathered the dispersed rage (of the people); it rallied angry men into an angry mass.”
Apart from socio-economic issues like price rise and labour exploitation, street theatre also focused on political issues like the Emergency and the Naxalite movement. In terms of experiments with form, in 1972 Badal Sircar and his group, Satabdi[3], introduced their Third Theatre; pieces evolved through intensive workshops. The physical and even “graphic body language, the ensemble approach in which all actors formed a close part of the whole with interchangeable ‘roles’, the simple uniform-like costumes, and the strategic props were all taken straight from the news or the actors’ lives, in many cases. The narrative was often non-linear, like a collage of facts , ideas and images”.
Non-proscenium theatre, which could be performed in intimate spaces or outdoors for larger audiences, inspired groups in other parts of the country to evolve performances, which were experimental and non-formal, combining disparate styles. The Third Theatre enabled practitioners the flexibility to practise their art even if they had no access to funds or sponsors. However, state-sponsored violence and the imposition of the Emergency in 1975 clamped down on street and activist theatre in India.
From IPTA to the plays of Utpal Dutt and Badal Sircar, the book gives a dialogic account of history of theatre, both for the specialist and non-specialist alike. Safdar Hashmi himself has written quite extensively on the history of street theatre, stating that “street theatre as it is known today can trace its direct lineage no further than the years immediately after the Russian Revolution of 1917.” It was a basically a militant, political theatre of protest. As Katyal traces the history of street theatre, she writes, “The history of street theatre in India is usually traced back to the 1940s and to the IPTA. However, the attempt to use theatre in public spaces to communicate a political message to the common people began as early as the 1930s, when the SFI[4] started using it to spread the message of class struggle among the masses.”
JANAM or the Jana (People’s) Natya (Dramatics ) Manch (Stage)was founded by Safdar Hashmi in 1973. He poured himself into developing plays like Machine, From the Village to the City and Killers, which demonstrated the group’s commitment to workers’ rights and issues. The group also took up women’s causes to raise consciousness in a society which had normalised violence against women. Their play, Aurat (Woman), met with unprecedented success and had 2500 shows. Their theatre also dealt with sectarian or communal violence.
In her book, Katyal ultimately locates the significance of Safdar Hashmi’s and the Jana Natya Manch’s work in its strengthening of democracy and democratic processes. Tragically and ironically, he paid a high price for it.
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[1] Safdar Hashmi (1954-1989) was one of the most major proponents of street theatre in India.
[2] Indian People’s Theatre Association founded in 1943.
[3] Translates to mean century
[4] Student Federation of India
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Dr Meenakshi Malhotra is Associate Professor of English Literature at Hansraj College, University of Delhi, and has been involved in teaching and curriculum development in several universities. She has edited two books on Women and Lifewriting, Representing the Self and Claiming the I, in addition to numerous published articles on gender, literature and feminist theory. Her most recent publication is The Gendered Body: Negotiation, Resistance, Struggle.
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