Safdar Hashmi springs to life in ‘Halla Bol’     

Halla Bol, Raise Hell, was the name of the play that street theatre activists of Jan Natya Manch, Janam, were performing on January 1, 1989, when Safdar Hashmi and his troupe of actors were attacked. There were corporation elections in Uttar Pradesh, and the performance at Jhandapur was part of the campaign for comrade Ramanath Jha.

Sudhanva Deshpande, currently managing editor of Leftword Books, was a student of MA History at Delhi University at the time. He was present that day when the attack occurred on a fellow actor. And he was there the next day at Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in New Delhi, when friends of Hashmi learned he had died.

Hashmi was only 34 when he was killed. “Theatre is make-believe; theatre is life. It is ephemeral, momentary, fleeting, transient, a wisp of smoke; it is palpable, organic, aromatic, acidic, a bean of coffee…And it sometimes reeks of blood. … This is not a story of death, it is a story of life,” writes Deshpande at the opening of the book.

Halla Bol is structured like a musical composition – the first bar of this dramatic musical score segues into the last notes. The murder is what the book opens with; it then leads to a contemplation of life. This is the technique Louis Fischer used in his classic biography of Gandhi, first published in 1951. Just as Fischer’s book offers readers a glimpse of the whole history of the freedom struggle, Deshpande offers a slice of contemporary Indian history in a span of just 250 pages.

Reading Halla Bol while still attempting to follow reports of the violence in Delhi where over 50 were killed, one is startled by the freshness of that old adage, “History repeats itself”. Despande recalls a peace march in Delhi University soon after violence claimed the lives of about 3,000, mostly Sikhs, in the wake of the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984.

The marchers gathered at Khalsa College, and the anger was perceptible. It was not quite the most receptive audience for a performance, and Safdar, sensing the mood, encouraged young undergraduate student Sumangala Damodaran to sing the 1940s anti-war song by Makhdoom Moiuddin, ‘Jaanewale Sipahi’, set to music by Salil Chaudhury for the 1960 film . The young, waif-like Sumangala hesitated, but when she began to sing the anger melted to tears.

“It was an utterly unlikely happening. An anti-war song from 40 years ago by a Hyderabadi communist poet with a Muslim name, composed for a 1960 film by a Bengali, sung by a young Malayali undergraduate with a Hindu name, leading to catharsis among hundreds of angry Sikh youth…”

It is not so different now, in 2020, as poetry and music form bonds of camaraderie among those opposing the Citizenship Amendment Act, hurriedly passed in Parliament last year, and opposed peacefully on the streets across India, with an efflorescence of poetry and drama.

Halla Bol is also an account of remarkable friendships. While offering an overview of the national history of the time, the book is a deeply personal account of a life rich in friends – and not just Hashmi, but Deshpande himself, are lucky to be surrounded by people of phenomenal talent.

And it is not friends alone; Deshpande, in the acknowledgements, mentions his mother: “My mother, Kalindi Deshpande, was at various points in her life a Home Guard, expert rifle shooter, trained firefighter, probably the only woman to have driven a double decker BEST bus through the streets of Bombay.” Imagine the richness of that inheritance!

The author remembers visiting playwright Habib Tanvir and his wife, and being struck by the smallness of their home in Ber Sarai. Tanvir was in his 60s, and collaborating with Hashmi and others on getting plays performed. One project involved re-writing Premchand’s short stories for theatre; this involved long hours of reading Premchand aloud to each other, and this was often done in Tanvir’s home.

Actor Zohra Sehgal too was part of the troupe briefly, but politely declined to continue after some performances because she did not want to colour her hair any longer; as a matter of principle, she would not perform without a fee. And it was clear this poor bunch of actors could not afford her.

Safdar Hashmi was born on April 12, 1954. Had he been alive, he would have been just a few years younger than Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Hashmi’s wife Mala (Moloyashree), a schoolteacher at Sardar Patel Vidhyalaya, a fine actor, would hold the young team together in the moments after the murder, spurring them to perform joyously even though the horrific violence was still a fresh memory.

Had Hashmi lived, he would have served as a huge force for holding communities together in these divisive times. He was a teacher, a communications person, a public intellectual, and had begun to write scripts for TV and film. He had dreams, and he left behind papers from which author Deshpande could piece together all his various activities. He had made proposals for the establishment of a cultural centre in a working class neighbourhood, one that would buzz with drama and filmmaking and draw the young from the working classes into a life of cultural expression.

Some of those dreams have indeed come to fruition – the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT) continues to bring people across communities together; Studio Safdar, which opened on April 12, 2012 in Delhi now serves as a cultural centre. The work of mobilising the working classes continues, although current conditions of work, where the large textile mills, for instance, are gone, makes worker mobilization harder. Also, recent changes in labour laws threaten to erode rights won after decades of struggle.

But to live is to struggle, and there is no room for despair. As Hashmi wrote in

Halla Bol:

“Let us stand as one, my brothers,

All for one and one for all

Like a hundred sparks that made a fire,

Like a hundred streams that make a river,

Like a hundred lamps lit together,

We stand as one

All for one, and one for all.”