Halla Bol: A Book Review

Nitheesh Narayanan

Martyrs never regret
what they have done
having done it.
Amazing too
they never frown.
It is all so mysterious
the way they remain
above us
beside us
within us…

(Alice Walker)

I remember watching the street play, ‘Halla Bol’, by Jana Natya Manch (JANAM), seven years ago in JNU, just a few days after I joined my university as a Masters student. This street play was the first public event of which I was one of the organisers in JNU. However, the reason behind my wonderment was something else. I used to speak about Safdar Hashmi and his street theatre group, Jana Natya Manch, during our classroom campaigns back at my college in Kannur, Kerala, during my graduation. As student activists, while emphasising on the need for everyone to be politicised, we repeatedly introduced Hashmi, spoke of his words and his martyrdom to fellow students. Almost all the classrooms in Brennen College, one of the oldest colleges in Kerala, must have heard the name of Safdar and his quote, “Jeena hai to ladna hoga. Aur pyar bhi karna hai to ladna hoga” (You should fight to survive. To love too, you have to fight) numerous times from our own mouths. It was ‘political coincidence’, I would say, that I started my activism in JNU by being a part of organising a street play by Safdar’s comrades of the Jana Natya Manch. This memory will be cherished forever.

Today, I completed a rather passionate reading of Halla Bol: The Death and Life of Safdar Hashmi, a wonderfully written biography of Safdar by Sudhanva Deshpande, one of his comrades at JANAM, and the one who witnessed the terrific attack which led to the murder of Safder Hashmi three decades ago in the outskirts of the national capital.

Safdar lived only for 34 years. In that short span of life, the kind of engagements and initiatives he made were quite unparalleled. Therefore, writing the story of Safdar must be a very difficult task. One might fail to keep justice to the life Safdar lived and the death he was met with. Sudhanva, however, has penned down the historic life of Safdar like no one could. The book is a must read, not only to travel through the extraordinary journey of Safdar, but even to learn how to write a biography of an activist who was committed to the cause of justice, equality and the construction of a better society, and who lived his life not in isolation, but as part of a collective movement.

The book is worth reading for many reasons including its content and the way it is written.

The author, in the acknowledgement, emphasises that the book itself is a collective creation. As Sudhanva points out, Halla Bol is about a man of theatre – and theatre itself is quintessentially a collective art. Moreover, it will be absolutely meaningless to write the story of the life and death of Safdar without framing it within the context of street theatre and its development in India, precisely that of political street plays. Both Safdar and modern Indian street theatre grew parallelly, and both contain the story of each other within them. The book is an essential read for anyone whose inquisition goes on to the history of street theatre in post colonial India. 

Safdar was a man of clarity and conviction. During the ‘80s, Safdar was a regular contributor to Student Struggle, the journal of SFI. His film criticism and writings on art and politics were manifestations of his wide critical thinking. Sudhanva picks and presents different anecdotes from the life of Safdar (at times his own narrative also) – testimonials to the immense potential Safdar had to convince people around him. Safdar did not debate with people, instead he just talked and listened, learned and unlearned, convinced and got convinced of everything he does. With all these he made himself a man of constant evolution, in other words, ‘a moving man’. We come across this peculiar character Safdar at many places in the book. 

Halla Bol is divided into three parts along with a beautifully written epilogue, a collection of the pictures of Safdar, JANAM and his comrades, and the script of ‘Halla Bol’ itself – JANAM’s street play during the performance of which the group was attacked and Safdar was killed. He had succumbed to the injuries caused to him while trying to save others from the murderous attackers.

First Part

The first part of the book is largely about some incidents that took place in four days – from January 1^st to January 4^th of 1989.  On January 1, JANAM had begun their 20 minute play ‘Halla Bol’ after an hour’s delay, but completed the performance only after three days on 4^th. In between the performance, the group was attacked, and Safdar Hashmi and a worker from Nepal were killed by Congress party workers. The author, who was a witness to those incidents, narrates the story in detail. However, less than about 48 hours after Safdar’s death, the group performed the interrupted play at the same spot. As the author points, it was the single most important performance of a street play in Indian history.

Before the play began, Sudhanva went up to the audience and said these words:

“We are here to perform our interrupted play. We are here to fulfil our commitment to our audience. We are here to say that they can kill us, but they can’t stop us. We are here to honour Comrade Ram Bahadur. We are here because Comrade Safdar Hashmi is not dead. He lives here, among us, and he lives among countless young women and men all over the country.” 

Second Part

The second part of the book is about the growth of Safdar, the revival of IPTA (Indian People’s Theatre Association), the birth of Jana Natya Manch, and the spread of street theatre in the country. Two of the darkest periods in independent India’s history, both carried out by the then ruling Congress party appeared in between all of these developments – the Emergency (1975-77) and the Anti-Sikh pogrom (1984).

The second part explains the different engagements of Safdar – as a teacher, writer and director of street plays, documentaries and poems. What is more peculiar about this part is the emphasis on the theatre group’s class consciousness in favour of workers. Different plays, including the most celebrated, ‘Machine’, and many others narrate the oppression faced by the working class in the country, and in fact, stress on the need to build resistance. Caste oppression was the theme of another play, ‘The Harijan’, written in the early 80s – years before the anti-Mandal riots erupted. Workers were indeed the most vibrant audience of JANAM. They must have seen their lives, dreams and struggles so closely in JANAM’s performances.

When we read about what Safdar did during the anti-Sikh pogrom, his presence is badly missed today, especially in the context of the anti-Muslim pogrom that recently took place in the national capital. 

Third Part

This part continues to speak in detail about the different plays of JANAM, and how they evolved. Sudhanva has done a marvellous documentation of how Delhi’s working class got organised under the red flag during the late 80s. He describes the different strikes organised by the activists of CITU, especially of the one that took place in 1988. The working class movement rightly occupies a significant part in almost all writings on Safdar and JANAM. Most of JANAM’s plays were (and still are) made in the context of the working class movement. This precisely explains how the murder of a street theatre artist is a huge loss for the country’s toiling masses and the movements for their emancipation. 

The book talks about many other activists and artists too to a great extent. Many of them are still amongst us, as active as they were three decades ago. It is an enriching experience to read about them as part of the life story of Safdar, JANAM and Delhi’s workers’ movement. The one who is talked about most in the book, after Safdar, must be Mala, or Moloyashree Hashmi. I feel that the book is also about Mala, her love, understanding, courage, and contribution to street theatre, hand in hand with her comrade, Safdar.

The photo in the last page of the book is of JANAM performing amidst a huge crowd, enthusiastically watching their performance – most of them cheering at the play. The photo was taken when JANAM had gone back to Jhandapur to complete their interrupted play after Safdar’s tragic and sudden death. In the crowd, one can see a person standing up with a placard in his hand. Written on it are the words: “Safdar died, but not in vain”.

---

Halla Bol: Death and Life of Safdar Hashmi is written by Sudhanva Deshpande and published by LeftWord Books. It was released earlier this year in New Delhi. Sudhanva Deshpande is a theatre director and actor. He joined Jana Natya Manch in 1987, and has acted in over 4,000 performances of over 80 plays.  He has co-directed two films on the theatre legend Habib Tanvir and his company Naya Theatre. Since 1998, he has been Managing Editor at LeftWord Books.

---

Nitheesh Narayanan is the editor of Student Struggle, a Central Secretariat member of SFI and a PhD scholar at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Read his interview with Muhammed Yousuf Tarigami on Kashmir here.

---

Follow us for regular updates!
Telegram
t.me/studentstrugglein
Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/studentstrugglemonthly
WhatsApp
https://chat.whatsapp.com/BvEXdIEy1sqIP0YujRhbDR