SAHMAT NEWS

Redefining the Secular in Indian Society

2012-01-16T12:12:00.000+05:30

Redefining the Secular in Indian Society

Sukumar Muralidharan

IT is a word that has been tossed around in political contests and minutely dissected in scholarly circles. But “secularism” still remains an elusive concept. And in practice, “secular” politics is besieged at a number of levels, unable at any time to rise above particular, sectional interests.
An event on December 7, organised by the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT) and Social Scientist, was the occasion for a scholarly inquiry into the deeper meanings and definitions of the “secular” in Indian society. There are numerous --- and mostly irreconcilable --- definitions already in circulation. December 7 became, for this reason, an exercise in redefinition and rediscovery, in retrieving a principle from depths of conceptual confusion.
The event had to be organised on December 7 as it was the Muharram on December 6, the anniversary of Babri Masjid demolition.

MEMORABLE
OCCASION
As it happened, the event took place only a few days after the eightieth birthday of Romila Thapar, one of India’s greatest historians. Though this aspect was downplayed in deference to the individual’s unease with the public observance of a personal milestone, all speakers opened their remarks with eloquent tributes to an institution builder, teacher and mentor for generations of scholars. Beyond the world of academia, Romila Thapar has illumined trails of history that have long remained obscure for the wider public, considerably enhancing the quality of public discourse.
The historian K N Panikkar recounted some part of the public debt owed this remarkable career as an academic and public intellectual. Romila Thapar combined “scholarly pursuit with social commitment” in a manner that lent “direction to many a public issue.” While exploring new frontiers in historical scholarship, she also had time to frontally combat the “political abuse of history” – which indeed was a term of her coinage from the dark days of the Ayodhya movement, when the forces of Hindutva had managed to recruit large numbers to the cause of effacing a medieval mosque. Aside from giving a rigorous scholarly orientation to the effort of defeating the spurious historiography of Hindutva, Panikkar remarked, Romila Thapar was at the forefront of the campaign for sanity and tolerance in public life.
In remarks that opened the evening’s discussions, Romila Thapar spoke about the shifty and elusive character of “secularism” as a political principle. It is not difficult to identify events and actions that are antithetical to secularism. But as an affirmative principle, “secularism” is very difficult to pin down.
In this conceptual vacuum, parties of an overtly communal stripe have portrayed secularism as a denial of religion and the primordial identities that make the Indian nation what it is. Others have turned its supposed principle of religious tolerance into the sanction for the perpetuation of a clerical hegemony. Still others have recoiled from the futility of the entire project of building a secular order in a society of intense religiosity, ascribing the pathologies of modern sectarian politics entirely to the denial of identities held basic to social existence.
Romila Thapar warned against all these possible outcomes of a muddled thinking. The definition popular in India, she said, “either equates secularism with atheism….. or else, more commonly, (refers) to the coexistence of all religions.” Neither has great validity, since “personal belief is not central to the secular” so much as the “control of society by religious institutions.” And religious coexistence or tolerance is a meaning that has evolved specifically in the Indian historical context, as an antidote to the communal politics of both the Hindu and Muslim stripe. Yet it is a definition that has not accounted for either the “fact of religions being of unequal status,” or for the “underlying hierarchy in concepts such as the majority and the minority communities.”

FOCUS SHIFTING
TO SECULARISATION
Coexistence or religious tolerance cannot in this sense be a primary criterion. The secular ideal originates in the western milieu where the issue of coexistence was of relatively little consequence, since subjects of the sovereign were normally enjoined to follow the faith he patronised. What was germane rather was the subordination of the religious authority to the worldly power. In the Romila Thapar’s words: “The secular implies the primacy of civil laws….. Identities of religion, race, caste, language and so on would be subordinated to the identity of citizenship, based on equal rights, duties and obligations of all citizens on the state.”
The focus then shifts from secularism as a principle supposedly embedded in the institutions of governance, towards secularisation as a process accompanying the consolidation of the nation-state. Religion loses its primary claim to citizen allegiance and is confined to a private sphere, while the civic compact takes over the public domain. People live together in “civil society” not because they resemble each other in terms of religion or any other marker of identity, but because they share a common set of values, embodied in a system of civil law.
But is this separation of the private and public spheres always feasible? And can religion be all that easily confined to the private sphere or demoted as a primary criterion of identity fixation? Religion is of course a medium for the socialisation of the individual and a private religion would be in some senses, a contradiction in terms. A more credible approach would be to view secularisation in terms of the balance of power between social institutions, as a process by which the civic compact as embodied in a secular constitution supersedes the decrees of religious authority.
Historically, secularisation has also corresponded to the diminution of the political power of the ecclesiastical orders, typified for instance by the loss of their tithes and titles to land. That understanding though, is of limited relevance in India, where an ecclesiastical order on the lines of the Catholic Church never really existed.
Instances when sovereigns have specifically enjoined tolerance for various faiths as a political commitment are not lacking from Indian history. So too are there numerous instances of the sovereign power patronising a variety of religious institutions and orders. But these cannot be used to buttress the argument for secularism, since their focus was “the furtherance of religion as a social force.”
A more credible source for secular doctrines in Romila Thapar’s assessment could be found in the various nastika sects which existed from the earliest times in India and despite all their internal disagreements, were almost all “opposed to divine sanction as necessary for civil laws.”
The nastika view was that “the universe is self-created” and life itself constituted by a combination of elements. Human consciousness and knowledge are finite and derived from perception, rather than revelation. In Romila Thapar’s words again, the nastika sects held that “laws, being man-made, can be changed.” These were arguments that the Buddhists and Jainas found extremely congenial to their mission of propagating “social ethics as the mainspring of human behaviour, where the laws and values of society should ensure the equality and dignity of its members.”

INDIAN TRADITION
& MODERN DEBATE
Moving rapidly forward to contemporary times, these aspects of Indian tradition are of obvious relevance to the modern debate on secularism. From being a rather pale assurance of religious tolerance, secularism becomes a more robust principle of ensuring that constitutional guarantees of liberty and equality are fulfilled. Key assurances of the Indian constitution, such as equality before the law and fair opportunity, have obviously been breached repeatedly and without any gesture of redress from the state. Words and deeds are being increasingly subject to control and manipulation in accordance with “invented laws of what are described as religious and cultural tradition.” The rich multiplicities of history are being effaced in “monolithic structures” that answer the seeming need for a nation-state to define itself by primordial identities rather than the civic compact.
For Romila Thapar, these circumstances made the task of “redefining the secular in Indian society” an absolute imperative. Opportunities were available, since as a nation, India still has “the freedom to choose the values that should govern our society.” The retrieval of the secular could begin by shifting the focus “from a passive coexistence of religions to the more dynamic coexistence of citizens with….. equal rights and obligations, guarded by the vigilance of a free and just society.”
Picking up on some of these themes, K N Panikkar drew attention to the need for understanding secularism in the context of “community formation” in modern times and the newly minted forms of religious identity that emerged within the colonial milieu. Small and diverse communities that existed on the basis of their economic and social functions, were under the influence of colonial modernity, incorporated into one or the other religious group. Religion had been a “perceived and experienced reality” in pre-colonial times, without generating a consciousness that transcended the local milieu. These identities became entrenched as civil society was incorporated into the colonial system. Moreover, in early nationalist propaganda, these newly minted identities were seen as congruent with “national” identities.
To view secularism as an outcome of religious harmony is to invert the perspective, since tolerance only emerges when secularism is in place. Secularism as a principle, however, began its journey in India burdened with the deadweight of religion, which in turn was perceived as a monolithic doctrine in which the multiple cultural diversities of the real world were effaced. Religious harmony fails to achieve the secular ideal because every religion has within it, various kinds of cultural and social hierarchies. Coexistence thus becomes a formula for the sustenance of difference and for the perpetuation of these inequalities within each religious order.
It was “logical” to have accorded a degree of priority to religious harmony, given the reality of Indian society, where multiple religious traditions had at various times sprouted and flourished. But the notion was not sufficient to achieve a truly inclusive social order. “For realising inclusiveness, cultural plurality is not sufficient,” said Panikkar, “what is essential is cultural equality.”
In its practice in India, secularism in both its state and society centred versions, was enclosed within the discourse of “religious consciousness.” It failed to reconcile between the “religious and material conditions of existence.” Redefining the secular requires that areas of human existence other than the religious, such as culture and economy, be incorporated into its praxis. It requires that “the values of democracy and social justice and cultural equality” be introduced as integral elements of the secular compact.

REDEFINING THE SECULAR:
A PROGRAMME OF URGENCY
Secularism accorded priority to the political values of liberty and equality, over the codes of duty and obedience ordained by religion. Concluding the discussion, Prabhat Patnaik argued that what is often taken to be the purely ethical impulse towards freedom has a basis in reason. Every individual has a rational cause to struggle for freedom as part of a human collective, since nobody can call himself free while there are many who are unfree.
This collective endeavour for freedom fosters the domain of the “secular.” It creates the community that strives for a transcendence of narrower values imposed by religion. But it is threatened by the forces of reaction which seek to impose an order based on religious values. More subtly, the bourgeois order which retains a formal commitment to secularism, may seek to engineer schisms in the collective struggle for freedom, reducing each individual to an atomised existence, impelling him in turn to seek an anchorage in an older, familiar network of religious community.
The denial of human freedom then is the logical course of a bourgeois political order which exalts an individual’s seeming gain at the expense of society, as the ultimate benchmark of achievement. With the untold riches foretold on that pathway now proving illusory and the world order built on the unfettered and unaccountable rampage of finance capital in palpable crisis, the forces of reaction seem poised to resume their push towards absolute political power. A redefinition of the secular in Indian society is clearly a political programme of surpassing urgency.
Rajen Gurukkal and P Sainath also expressed their opinions on this occasion.

23rd Safdar Hashmi Memorial, 1st Jan. 2012

2011-12-21T15:53:00.003+05:30

SAHMAT CALENDAR 2012

2011-11-25T14:27:00.001+05:30

Letter for Donation

2011-11-03T10:04:00.001+05:30

Dear

For over two decades, SAHMAT has been actively celebrating our secular, multilayered cultural tradition and resisting the communalisation of our society. Exhibitions, performances, lectures and street events, all free and open to all have become an annual tradition. These activities are sustained by donations from friends, and most of all, from the creative community.

We request you to contribute towards the Twenty-third Anniversary Memorial to be held on January 1, 2012. This year’s memorial is going to celebrate the progressive poets whose centenary falls during 2010-12.

We have held an all India symposium on ‘ The Legacy and Relevance of the Progressive Cultural Movement’ during October 13-15, 2011. We plan to bring out a publication soon with the material presented at the symposium.

You may send your contributions to:SAHMAT, 29, Ferozshah Road, New Delhi-110001.

SAHMAT continues to grow because all of us contribute to it all the time.

Donations to SAHMAT are exempt under section 80 G of the Income Tax Act.

‘Awaaz Do’: Legacy & Relevance of Progressive Cultural Movement in India report

2011-10-27T13:59:00.001+05:30

CULTURE & PEOPLE’S MOVEMENTS

‘Awaaz Do’: Legacy & Relevance of
Progressive Cultural Movement in India

From Our Correspondent

THIS wasn’t meant to be a purely academic occasion, though there’s nothing wrong with professional academics, of whatever political hue, discussing the relevance of left-wing cultural and intellectual movements, past, present and future. The Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT) had invited a good number of academics to a three day symposium held in New Delhi on October 13-15, 2011, but the gathering also comprised practising artists and activists, many of them young, and this gave a density and immediacy to the discussion not often found in learned assemblies. Most of the participants, while presenting papers or commenting on them, were moving constantly from the past to the present, discussing in the main what the radical movement, specifically the PWA (Progressive Writers’ Association) and the IPTA (Indian People’s Theatre Association), did and how, but probing at the same time the historical imperatives behind the movement’s decline and the possibilities of time present emerging from the promises of time past. There was a good deal of critical introspection and a certain affectionate remembrance of things past, as is only right and proper, but there was a palpable urgency in posing questions of the here and the now. The legacy of the progressive cultural movement was viewed as an active set of principles and values which are germane to the cultural practices of the day, particularly because the crisis in the lives and liberties of the people has continued, and in some respects worsened, in the intervening years. There is a great deal to be done, therefore, to record and re-assess what the progressive movement promised and achieved, and how it set up a model for a representative relationship with the people and their organisations. This is precisely what SAHMAT had stated in its preliminary note, and this theme came up again and again in the discussions over the three days. Sohail Hashmi, on behalf of SAHMAT, welcomed the participants on the 13th morning at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. Mahesh Rangarajan, director, NMML, pointed out the importance of studying culture as an integral part of the social sciences and explained the role of NMML as a pioneering institute in the field. Incidentally, NMML was a generous partner of SAHMAT in this enterprise, the Indian Council of Social Science Research and the ministry of culture, Government of India provided financial support.
The first session had four senior speakers, a bit ‘star-studded’ as Mihir Bhattacharya commented from the chair. Prabhat Patnaik, in his paper, ‘Politics, Culture and Socialism’, told the story of transition from feudalism to capitalism and the subsequent movement, historically prolonged as the working people consciously struggle for it, from capitalism to socialism. A cultural revolution is logically entailed in the second instance, for the transformation of petty property into collective property leaves open the danger of values and practices of the old community – the caste system, for instance, or the subjection of women – lingering in the new. This is the result of the historical failure of the bourgeoisie to complete the democratic revolution and liberate the individual, as India today illustrates in the juxtaposition of shopping malls and khap panchayats, and the active combinatory of values appropriate for both institutions. The liberation can come only from a worker-peasant alliance which frees itself from the global capitalist order and avoids, through rigorous theoretical practice, the easily handed down baubles often called ‘socialist values’ or ‘socialist culture’. Implicit in the argument is the understanding that the progressive cultural movement in India continues to this day the tradition of this kind of necessary theoretical practice.

K N Panikkar’s paper, ‘What Is Progressive about the Progressive Cultural Movement?’, concentrated precisely on the moment of this theoretical labour in the array of concepts and textual practices of the past and the present. The creative moment is also the political moment in the history of the movement, and this led to heated debates regarding tradition, some advocating a total rejection of the past, others following the logic of Lenin and Namboodiripad towards a retrieval of what is of the people and for the people in bourgeois and even feudal culture. But the primacy of the political often meant the subjugation of cultural work to the exigencies of strategy and tactics, making creativity largely instrumental. The new situation in India today is more complex and more difficult than in the thirties and forties of the last century, due to the rapacious grasp of transnational capital on social life, and this demands a rethink of older ways of fashioning progressive cultural texts. Some new developments in Kerala and Tamilnadu point both to the problems and possibilities of an emerging perspective in both individual and organised cultural work, re-inscribing the incisive insight from the past that cultural interventions must necessarily be interventions in culture.

Aijaz Ahmad presented a paper on ‘The Progressive Movement in Its International Setting’, and started off by reminding the audience that internationalism was a fundamental value for the progressive cultural movement. This value is manifest once again in the current radical movements sweeping across the Arab world, and in the wave of protests and demonstrations moving from southern Europe to the northern and crossing the Atlantic to the US; Latin America had started it more than a decade ago. The people have taken on hand the forging of a new politics and a new aesthetic, which incorporates many things and invents many more. The older progressive movement too presented a historical break which worked through the convergence of many strands of thought and practice, even weaving heterodox traditions of many centuries’ standing into the texture of creative work across diverse languages and art-forms. The new cultural forms of that period emerged from the juncture which was marked by the reality of socialism in the Soviet Union, the anti-colonial struggle across continents, and the worldwide democratic movement struggling for emancipation from the bondage of race, class and gender. The commanding heights of ‘high culture’ and ‘higher thought’ cannot be properly described without inscribing the radical moment into the core of its being, just as the new waves of political struggle cannot be explained without assuming the continuity of the people’s will to change things round.

Sashi Kumar’s paper was on ‘The exercise of hegemony in contemporary culture and media and the need for a counter-hegemony initiative’, offering an incisive analysis of the international scene in the ‘mediosphere’. The historical shift from classic capitalism to monopoly to finance capital entails a parallel shift in the media-culture confluence, realism to modernism to post-modernism being grounded on the technological move from the photographic to the cinematic to the electronic. One characteristic of this rapid shift has been a tendency towards ‘flatism’, the world of representation shunning depths and contours, and directing all gazes to surfaces and spectacles. The synchronic organisation of texts yields place to the non-linear. Consequently, the attention becomes habitually flitting and homogenised, parallel to the miscellaneous flow, or rather, the torrent, of images and sounds. The texts become self-reflexive, minimising their referential function, so that nothing outside the closed sensorium of texts disrupts the cosy feel-good quiescence of the great consuming public. But the hidden agenda of finance capital and the conniving state apparatus makes this sensorium a part of the surveillance ever-tightening its grip over the people, denying space to social desire, stifling access to inter-communication. The working of the Internet shows up the trend. The job of disruption and resistance falls therefore to the vanguard of the people who work in the interstices of the system to subvert its ends, and to those who physically come out to be together and tear asunder the magic web of media. The recent upheavals in the Arab world and elsewhere demonstrate the power of the radical tradition which seeks both to understand the world and change it.

The second session on the first day had four speakers, all involved in various sectors of Cultural Studies, with Sashi Kumar in the chair. Samik Bandyopadhyay presented a paper on ‘Defining Progress Culturally: The Aborted Project’, bringing up a particular moment in the 1930s in Bengal, with Rabindranath Tagore at the centre, and a number of other figures around him. There was a progressive wave in Bengal even before the left-wing movement started, and Rabindranath was a major figure who kept pace with the times. His radical humanism had led him to an anti-imperialist position, reaching a profoundly stirring eloquence in The Crisis of Civilisation (1941), and this made him vital to the cause of progress, though there was a crassly doctrinaire position decrying his ‘bourgeois’ leanings. The best of Bengali culture entered the progressive moment, and made it rich and innovative and genuinely representative.

IMPORTANCE OF
CULTURE
Sadanand Menon’s concern was ‘Art as Resistance’, and his audio-visual presentation focussed on the fascinating figure of Harindranath Chattopadhyay, man of learning, classical singer, radical poet and composer, theatre-person, actor, choreographer, political agitator, member of parliament, spiritual seeker, man about town, and a great deal more. Harindranath wrote and composed in Hindi (Hindustani, more often than not), bringing his natural gifts and acquired expertise to bear on the new set of cultural tasks demanded by his left-wing politics. This was a sign of the times, for classical culture, folk forms and modernist experiments were all being accessed for the cause of the people, and even artists of less rigorous commitment like the young Ravi Shankar joined the ranks. The written word was important, but the visual and the auditory forms took precedence. The theatre and, later on, the cinema became important; music and dance thrived; the visual arts took off in new directions. The cultural scene was hectic with experiments in the thirties and the forties, and there was easy traffic between modernist experiments and the new people’s culture, the latter often aspiring to extend the horizons of the former. Harindranath was a central figure in that endeavour.

Ram Rahman’s illustrated presentation was titled ‘The importance of culture in direct political action: P C Joshi’s seminal influence on cultural practitioners through the words and photographs of Sunil Janah’. The detailed analysis of Janah’s path-breaking photographs and a reading of his meticulous notes point to the dynamics of a new visual culture which restores to the working people their central position in history. The versatility of his technique came from the photographer’s ideological position. Janah not only directed the viewer’s gaze to the new subject of history, the working people, but also invented newer technical means to accomplish the task. The cause was prime mover. The artist in Janah trained himself to be with the people and with other artists engaged in the same task. There was no reward, not even much recognition from polite society, but it was a happy ambience of creativity and commitment which made many artists and activists live together in a minimalist material environment. The commune was the preferred abode and working place of both the activist and the artist. P C Joshi, who had trained himself to be an organic intellectual of the working class, provided the leadership to this notable coming together of aesthetics and politics.

Sumangala Damodaran’s presentation titled ‘Singing Resistance: The Musical Tradition of IPTA’, traced the many dimensions of the rich musical repertoire of what she referred to as the ‘IPTA tradition’, comprising the IPTA itself and other organisations like the Kerala People’s Arts Club in Kerala and the Praja Natya Mandali in Andhra, which aligned themselves with the IPTA. Underscoring the fact that there was hardly any collection or analysis of music as a significant part of the progressive cultural movement in the 1940s and 50s, she argued that the actual repertoire demonstrates that protest music as a genre is not stereotyped by limited number of forms or styles, as is usually perceived. The sheer range in the repertoire across the country helps establish the legitimacy of protest music as good and rigorous music on the one hand and also as constituting a very significant element in the aesthetics-politics relationship on the other. She highlighted that in the Indian case as well, like in various other parts of the world, the protest music movement engaged with and threw up serious debates on the relationship between the individual and the collective, the ‘authentic’ and the ‘crafted’ musical form and between the simple and the complex. She also played clips of the IPTA tradition’s songs to illustrate her arguments.
The first session next day, on October 14, was dedicated to a discussion on the progressive movement and its tradition in Hindi and Urdu. While conducting this session, Murli Manohar Prasad Singh presided over it as well.
Presenting an overview of the development of progressive movement in Urdu, Arjumand Ara underlined how the changes in Urdu literature following the Great Uprising of 1857 reached their logical culmination in this movement. At the same time, she pointed out the new questions and issues that have come up in Urdu literature in Pakistan and India after 1947. She particularly drew attention to the process of how the question of Urdu has been reduced in India to a question of Muslims and how Urdu has been discriminated against in independent India.
In her brief overview of the history of progressive literary movement in Hindi, Rekha Awasthi linked it with the struggle between traditional schools and the new creative concerns that was already going on. Her presentation forcefully negated the thesis that the progressive movement was something foreign and an artificial transplantation in India.
Presenting a brief survey of the role of the progressive movement, Manmohan described it as the culmination of the renaissance that was already going on in the Hindi-Urdu region. He stressed, in particular, the role of the movement in placing realism at the centre of the creative process, in making the process of democratisation consistent and complete, forging the secularisation of our society, solving to an extent the question of linguistic nationalities, forging a critical relationship with tradition, forging counter-traditions, and in radicalising the whole atmosphere. At the same time, however, he pointed out how the movement lost its sheen and role in the changed circumstances after the country’s independence, stressing how the multi-class front which the freedom struggle had forged suffered a dissipation and how the progressive movement proved to be incompetent to deal with the new situation. In the end, Manmohan also underlined how the present juncture is different from the heyday of the progressive movement, so that the progressive movement cannot be revived and channelised in the same manner. He also drew attention to the changing situation when the growing discontent against neo-liberalism is creating the possibility for the progressive forces to forcefully intervene in the situation.
Taking Manmohan’s logic forward, Asad Zaidi underlined how the progressive movement was a movement for modernity. But at the same time he drew attention to its contradictions. In this context, he drew attention to the progressive movement’s failure to overcome the separate development paths in Hindi and Urdu after independence, and to the bitter reality that after independence the progressive current in Hindi has increasing moved towards the rightist position on the question of Urdu and its rights.
Anis Azmi presented a brief survey of the growth of Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) in the area of Hindustani, and its role in ensuring for the genre of drama a place of honour in society, as a cultural form, and making it an instrument of socio-cultural awakening. While stressing the achievements of the progressive movement, Chanchal Chauhan also drew attention to how it put the writer and not the writing at the centre of the creative process and how it suffered weaknesses like sectarianism.
In his concluding address, Murli Manohar Prasad Singh underlined how the progressive movement was the biggest socio-cultural churning in this area after the Bhakti movement of the medieval period and what multidimensional changes it did bring about in our society. At the same time, he stressed the necessity of unification of all transformative currents in accordance with the requirements of today.

The fourth session was chaired by Basudeb Chatterjee and had four speakers. Mihir Bhattacharya presented a paper on ‘Moment and Movement’, in which he proposed that a political movement of the people introduces a moment in culture which acts as something like a singularity, altering the configuration of its dynamics, and though the movement dies out, the moment stays, and works often as a manifest power in the construction and reconstruction of texts, and sometimes as an immanent force which enters into a relationship with other forces. The progressive culture in Bengal was such a singularity which found cognate forces in both the traditions of enlightenment, particularly the radical enlightenment, and the streams of people’s culture which continuously revitalise the elite culture and the mass culture. Rabindranath Tagore was an exemplar of what the enlightenment could contribute to the process. Someone like Manik Bandyopadhyay, on the other hand, took off from classic realism and brought his radical politics to bear upon his art, thus creating a cultural break and bringing into the scene a new kind of fiction. But the historical moment of the break goes deeper and spreads wider. Satyajit Ray was a beneficiary of both the enlightenment and the radical moment of the thirties and forties; Pather Panchali of 1955, work for which started a few years earlier, is unthinkable without the latter, just as the creativity of Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen, who had a more direct involvement in the movement, bears more manifest traces of a new political aesthetic.

Anuradha Roy spoke on ‘Music as a Mass Movement: Bengal in the 1940s’, describing the innovative music of Jyotirindra Maitra, Salil Chowdhury and others, and holding that this had entered the political landscape in a limited fashion, rousing the elite among the activists to greater fervour but failing to reach the masses in general. The Communist Party had presumably faltered in declassing its cultural apparatus and politicising its supporters. The people in the countryside, in the main, were still immersed in ‘folk’ culture, which had an element of radical thought embedded in it. The creativity of the radical elite was hobbled by city-based techniques and traditions; that is the factor which allegedly inhibited the production of a play like Nabanna outside the limits of the city.

Subodh More read a paper on ‘Progressive Movement in Maharashtra in the 1940s and 1950s’. He traced the beginnings and development of the cultural movement in the context of two developments: the growth of the Ambedkarite movement from the 1930s and the links between it and the early Communist movement, and the growth of the trade union movement in the city of Bombay. In a richly textured presentation, he talked about the creation of progressive consciousness among the peasantry and working class and the growth of the literary movement alongside the cultural movement. He particularly focussed on the creative work of two doyens, Annabhau Sathe and Amar Sheikh, who played a major role in the transformation of the cultural consciousness, in defining new, yet rooted cultural forms in Maharashtra.

Sunil P Elayidom’s paper was titled ‘Imagination and the Making of the Real: a critical reading of the progressive cultural practices of twentieth-century Kerala’. Progressive cultural practice in Kerala during the middle decades of the twentieth century was one of the finest examples of culture acting as a constitutive element of the real. It was a historic juncture where the domain of culture evidently attained the status of a determinant of the real, rather merely representing or reflecting the conflicts and contradictions of social life. Through explicit interventions in the making of the real, imagination established its own materiality, overthrowing the modern understanding of the function of art and ideas. The first part of the presentation located the materiality of the imaginary against the modern understanding of it, drawing from contemporary Marxist notions of the function of art. The second part summarised the history of progressive cultural practice in twentieth-century Kerala with an emphasis on the paradigm shifts that occurred in the domain of sensibility. The third and final part explained the challenges of the present and pointed to the urgency of developing a new perspective for progressive cultural practice, to address the emerging societal reality and to intervene in it.
HISTORY OF
RADICAL ART
The fifth session on October 15, was in two parts. The first part was chaired by Geeta Kapur, who started with comments of her own on the artistic breaks which punctuate the history of radical art. The relationship of the visual to the visible is mediated by the means of artistic representation which have to be re-fashioned for the juncture. Chittaprosad and Somnath Hore brought in the austerity of an involved gaze to transcend mere pity and terror which often aid the pornography of the visual. This part of the session had a paper entitled ‘Articulating Suffering, Voicing Protest: visual art in solidarity with the “people”’ from Sanjoy Mallik, which took people through Chittaprosad’s reportage for the Party on the man-made famine of 1943, culminating in a publication titled Hungry Bengal. The copies of the book were confiscated and destroyed by the British as it was critical of the policies that led to the famine. Showing pages of the book on the visual projection, the presentation discussed the propagandist nature of Chittaprosad’s satirical posters and gave a critical overview of the imagery therein. Mallik’s presentation also dealt with Somnath Hore’s engagement with similar issues through his early sketches, drawings, portraits of peasants, pulp prints, lithographs, and his book Tebhaga: An Artist's Diary and sketchbook. Akansha Rastogi, who first presented Mallik’s paper (since he could not attend the symposium), then added her own comments on Chittaprosad. She sought a different approach to discuss the artist, presenting six different drawings done by him on one day (January 7, 1945) in Titvala, Maharashtra, during the CPI's first Kisan Sabha conference. From a large panoramic view of the session in progress, the artist moves on to sketch a group of women attending the conference and then portraits of the headman and local peasant leaders.

The second paper of this part of the session was by Santhosh S on ‘Ramkinkar Baij: A Chronicle of Redemption Foretold’. Ramkinkar was an adivasi who had risen in the ranks of Santiniketan artists through sheer talent, but he never forsook his roots. The work that he did there, for instance, the large cement sculptures in the Kala Bhavan complex, points to the uprooting of the indigenous people from their habitat and to the defiance which the sinewy and graceful bodies articulate. He moved thoughtfully away from the graces of the Bengal School, not disowning the masters like Abanindranath and Nandalal and Benode Bihari, but placing a separate agenda for art next to their visionary invocation of India. In this effort he was right next to Rabindranath himself, who was delving into the dark recesses of a modernist psyche in his enigmatic and teratological universe. But Ramkinkar’s was a more historicised world, ravaged by time and torn by conflict, in which the everyday labour of women and men and their bonding through the graces of common life stand out in their dynamic plasticity.

The second part of the fifth session was chaired by Malini Bhattacharya. Moloyashree Hashmi made a presentation on ‘The Jana Natya Manch experience’, narrating the genesis and explaining the rationale of this particular street theatre movement founded by Safdar Hashmi and others. The aim was to reach out to the working people, and this was an overt and deliberate strategy to politicise the theatre movement in a particular direction. The technical transformation of the performance text and the over-all dramaturgy followed from this avowed political aim. The result had been a series of ‘entertainment’ events in the Brechtian sense, not just some political preaching with a bit of clowning added on, since Safdar’s – and Janam’s – enterprise was to reach that point in the working people’s consciousness which looked critically at the world. Janam has continued its work with a considerable degree of success, part of the serious left movement in India but not a mere appendage to electoral campaigns.

The second speaker, Lata Singh, spoke on ‘“Transgression” of Boundaries: Women of IPTA’. She narrated the point of departure for the women who joined left-wing movements in general and the IPTA in particular, defying familial and social taboos in place in all parts of India. The practical problems were well-nigh insurmountable, given the stigma that was attached to genteel women’s public role in general and appearance on the stage in particular. Sheela Bhatia, Dina Gandhi, Reba Roychoudhury and Rekha Jain, among others, went through both the agony of the wrenching of bonds and the ecstasy of liberation. But, significantly, though the women of the IPTA were held precious and greatly respected, their creative possibilities did not really find enough of an outlet in the organisation. They remained largely at the level of performers. The net gain was, however, in setting up a model for transgression, moving to a different gender culture and overcoming class boundaries.

Malini Bhattacharya made a brief presentation, pointing out that IPTA productions were not merely insertions in the continuing history of the Bengali theatre or music with a bit of leftism added, but attempts to disrupt the mainstream in terms of both aesthetic construction of texts and organisation of cultural events. A theatrical text like Nabanna (1944) brought in new stage techniques in the interest of a realist representation of the life of the peasant, but its authenticity flowed from its politics, which also demanded creating a new audience for the new drama, reaching out to the people in settings of large political gatherings in city as well as country. Nabanna was by no means confined to Kolkata; it went on tours as well, just as other cultural events moved with the squads from town to country. She referred to forms of performance of and by the rural poor, and the IPTA’s efforts to open up communication with these as a legacy that needs to be renewed.

Session Six was chaired by Saeed Mirza and Sadanand Menon. Kalpana Sahni spoke on the two brothers, Balraj and Bhisham Sahni, who had both disappointed their father by forsaking the family business in Lahore and joining up the IPTA movement in Bombay. Their families were involved, just as others were, for the IPTA of the thirties and forties was more a way of life than a cultural association. Impoverished but intrepid, Balraj brought his enormous acting and directorial talents into the new theatre and the new cinema, introducing ‘method’ acting in both. Bhisham was more into theatre and writing. This was the time of shoestring budgets when invention was spurred by necessity and the artist was a worker living with other workers in communes. The morale was high because they knew the importance of the cause and drew inspiration from fellow artists and audiences. This feeling of solidarity was largely due to the active support of the Party. That is why many were heart-broken when P C Joshi was removed from leadership and the squads broke up. The political and artistic values were not lost, but the tradition of working together for the people's cause became a casualty.

M S Sathyu spoke of his own association with the movement and with some of the stalwarts who had brought so much creative energy to the cause. The astonishing thing about the PWA and the IPTA was the extent of support which these organisations commanded all over India. Hardly any major language community or ethnic group remained outside their sphere of influence. In a sense, the progressive cultural movement was the first organised attempt at forging a pan-Indian cultural identity. And the spread was swift, the scope very large. Even after the organisation was wound up the vitality of the movement was not lost. One must look at the whole of India, not just Maharashtra or Bengal, to realise the extent of its impact. The cinemas of Karnataka and Kerala, for instance, thrived on the progressive impetus of the earlier movement and went on to carve their own space in the cinematic map of India.

V Ramakrishna presented a paper on ‘Left Cultural Movement in Andhra Pradesh: 1930s to 1950s’. He offered a detailed historical survey of the cultural scene against the political and economic background of the region, and explained the meshing of culture with politics in the anti-colonial struggle and the Telangana People’s Movement. Two significant things happened. Some of the established writers – Sri Sri, for instance – were drawn to the progressive cause and contributed seminally to the forging of a new kind of literature and drama, in which the people’s cause would be foregrounded. The other was the transformation of some of the traditional rural forms – Burrakatha in particular – into an artistic vehicle of progressive thought. This drew many talents from outside the educated middle-class into the creative pool and deepened the base of the movement. The Andhra experience shows how the people themselves, the labouring poor from the villages, the ordinary citizens from the towns, women from all classes, would be active agents of cultural change and would take part, as conscious political subjects, in the struggle for emancipation. The Party organisation helped the cultural surge, but the latter had a momentum of its own. The visible success of the progressive movement might have been limited, but its impact has been long-lasting.

Biswamoy Pati read a paper titled ‘Imagined Realities: The left-wing cultural movement in Orissa, 1930-47’. The Orissa scene was not really conducive to a sustained cultural movement of the kind witnessed in some other parts, but the impact of the anti-colonial struggle was deeply felt by the intellectuals and the artists, and the surge of popular movements turned some of them in a progressive direction. The New Age Literary Forum was set up in 1935, giving a coherent direction to the collective self-awareness of committed artists, and one can see how a socially felt demand was met by authors like the Panigrahi brothers, Kalindi Charan and the short-lived Bhagavati Charan. The progressive turn was also pivotal in the works of Sachi Raut Roy and Nityananda Mahapatra, and later on, Gopinath Mohanty.

Prachee Dewri presented a paper on ‘IPTA and the Music of Assam’. Her paper focussed on the music that was composed during the 1950s, with special focus on the works of Jyotiprasad Agarwala and Bishnuprasad Rava, who were two people who worked as partners in most of their artistic endeavours during this period. Prachee began with noting that these two artists had already begun experimenting with music in the thirties, moving away from the classical based music of people like Lakshmiram Baruah, and exploring the ‘folk’ genres of the region and used this music in their plays and films and had also recorded them. Agarwala and Rava also theorized on art after their involvement in the IPTA. She linked up how their theorizing on performative arts, like Agarwala’s “Shilpir Prithivi” and Rava’s “Asamiya Krishtir Samu Abhash” was manifested in their creations. The work of many more musicians who entered the fold of the IPTA during this period, some of whom were discovered by Agarwala and Rava, such as Bhupen Hazarika, Dilip Sharma, Sudakshina Sharma, Anandiram Das and Pratima Pandey Barua and who sang in diverse genres such as the Borgeet, Bongeet, Kamrupiya Lokageet and the Goalpariya Lokageet, was also traced briefly through playing some musical clips. Specifically, Prachee’s paper also focussed on how the IPTA promoted lesser known genres, and how these genres themselves influenced the composition of new music in the subsequent decades.
One would like to think that this was not a symposium of the ordinary kind, which are a dime a dozen in season, particularly in New Delhi. The rationale of this particular exercise was an exploration of the Marxist view of culture, particularly people’s cultural movements, and that surely entails something like a paradigm shift, transcending, but not necessarily denying, the established values of academic discourse. The activists and creative people who joined the discussion, the political workers, the media professionals, the younger crowd which stayed throughout -- all these people brought perspectives which helped place the movement in its setting, and pointed to directions which progressive culture has to move towards in order to solve its current problems and renew its pledge to the people. One remembers in this connection the two occasions in Vivan Sundaram’s house in Kasauli, the first in 1979 and the second a couple of years later, when a closely knit group had met to discuss similar issues, and which had resulted in the birth of The Journal of Arts and Ideas. Some of these people were present on this occasion too. The level of commitment and intellectual rigour was very much in evidence more than three decades later, with newer and younger people joining in. As expected, the three days of the symposium saw the core crowd stay together late into the evening of each day, with SAHMAT showing some of the best films of the progressive movement, Dharti ke Lal, Neecha Nagar and Komal Gandhar, before a late community supper. The discussion, needless to say, continued till the end.

SAHMAT Seminar - 13th to 15th Oct. 2011 on Progressive Cultural Movement in India

2011-10-07T15:01:00.002+05:30

New: 2nd Sudeep Banerjee Memorial Lecture

2011-10-01T12:16:00.002+05:30

MARXISM TODAY on the occasion of Professor Irfan Habib’s 80th birthday

2011-07-30T10:34:00.000+05:30

M. F. Husain

2011-06-09T14:12:00.000+05:30

Easily the most iconic artist of modern India, Maqbool Fida Husain passed away in London on 9 June 2011. M. F. Husain was born in 1915 in Pandharpur, the famous temple town in Maharashtra. Bereft of his mother’s presence since childhood, Husain grew up in the multi-cultural milieu of Indore where his father migrated around 1919.

Indian civilization, in all its diversity, had been Husain’s basic inspirational project. Since the year of Independence, through the Nehruvian decades and thereon, cognizant of all the challenges involved in nation-building, Husain had been steadfast in maintaining a most affirmative relationship with the Indian peoples’ consciousness of their national identity. Through him, we have learned to address a whole gamut of issues pertaining to the interactive dynamic of modernity with the country’s many-layered art and culture.

He had made a signal contribution in reworking the aesthetic traditions of India including especially the tradition of iconographic innovation. He is among those few modern artists who had focused on mythological and epic narratives, and, for over half a century, he had painted themes from the epics in literally thousands of paintings and drawings. This alone speaks of his passion for these narratives and, further, of his understanding that their literary, performing and visual form has changed through the centuries, and therefore carries the mandate for new articulations within the contemporary.

Equally important, these series of Husain paintings have been shown in urban and rural sites through unique modes of public dissemination. And it speaks of the generous comprehension of this project by viewers all over India, viewers who cut across barriers of class and culture, that they have been received with the affectionate regard and playful participation they require.

Posterity will certainly name Husain as one of the most prominent post-Indpendence artists to shape the contemporary in the spirit of a living and changing tradition. More than any other modern artist in India, he has understood how a syncretic civilization and the dynamics of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious nation have together prompted these interpretations and empowered the community of artists to evolve a uniquely modern language consistent with the complexity of these civilizational narratives.

Indeed, Husain was such an iconic figure that we could use the very iconography of Maqbool Fida Husain, of the person himself, to forward ideas about Indian visual culture in the framework of a dynamic public sphere. Already, his life and work are beginning to serve as an allegory for the changing modalities of the secular in modern India — and the challenges that the narrative of the nation holds for us.

It is unfortunate that this very aspect of his persona led to a relentless campaign of villification and calumny against him by bigotted Hindu fundamentalist groups since 1996. After a decade of standing up to threats to his person and vandalising of his art works in public spaces, M.F.Husain went into a self-imposed exile in 2006. Four years later he was offered and accepted the citizenship of Qatar. The artistic community, secular and democratic opinion in the country however stood steadfastly with him and had been urging the government to bring him back.

We believe that India will be the poorer if a proper monument to Husain and his paintings is not created in the country for posterity.

Nagarjun Janmashati Utsav, 15 June 2011

2011-06-06T14:45:00.000+05:30

About NAGARJUN

This year Hindi writers, their organisations, cultural activists and poetry lovers are celebrating the centenary year of Nagarun, a progressive Hindi poet who wrote poems and novels in Hindi, Maithili Sanskrit and Bangla. He is known as Baba Nagarjun and peoples’ poet.
Nagarjun, whose real name was Vaidyanath Mishra was born at Tarauni, a small village in Darbhanga (Bihar) in 1911, according to Vikram calendar on the full moon of Jyeshtha month, that falls on the June 15 this year. .He studied Sanskrit and Budhdhist literature, travelled far and wide, adopted Budhdhist religion for some time and used Nagarjun as his nom de plume. In Maithili he wrote under the pen-name, Yatri (Traveller). He wrote more than six novels in Hindi, more than a dozen collections of poems, two epic poems, two collections of poems in Maithili, one novel in Maithili, one epic poem in Sanskrit and some poems in Bangla. He was awarded by Sahitya Akademi for his collection of poems in Maithili. He died on November 5, 1998..

He began writing poems in Maithili at an early age, but he wrote in Hindi when he came in contact with Hindi writers at Varanasi where he stayed for learning Sanskrit. After that he wandered from one place to another. In the words of Vishnu Khare, he “continued to write both in Maithili and Hindi and while only two Hindi pamphlet-poems, Shapath (Vow) and Chana Jor Garam ('Mighty' Hot Grams) were circulated in 1948 and 1952 respectively, his first, compact yet comprehensive (28 poems) Maithili collection Chitra appeared in 1949 and became perhaps the first modern classic and a standard university textbook in the language. It is a microcosm with poems on the Mithila region and Gandhi and the state-of-the-nation jostling with nature- poems, nostalgia, love and social reform and commitment. Romantic lyricism gradually surrenders to a resolute realism. The longest (169 lines) poem of the collection, Dwandwa (The Duel Within), is uniquely central to the understanding of the poet's painfully chosen way of life and his awareness of the irrevocable, dynamic dialectics of human history. It is uncannily like the testament of a modern Buddha after the renunciation, vulnerable to accusation of heartlessness, selfishness and escapism, yet resolute and unapologetic in its larger decision.”
If his first collection, in Maithili, was appreciataed for its pictorial quality, Yugdhara, the first one in Hindi, was considered as "the Stream of the Age." By 1953, the year of its publication, Nagarjun had left behind the nostalgic association with his Meghaduta-Kalidasa Sanskritic lyrical romanticism. He became the forerunner of a new wave of writing in Hindi of progressive content and satirical form. To quote Vishnu Khare again, “he is perhaps the only Hindi poet who saw and wrote about the mighty Indus during one of his wanderings in pre-Partition India. His 1O-line, 1950 poem about "the five worthy sons of Mother India" is a piece of classic satire, which he used to recite like a dancing Baul. The still shorter, 8-line poem on "The Famine and After" remains a masterpiece of tragedy and resurgence, hunger and satiety, gloom and cheer, establishing him as a major talent in Hindi poetry.”.
He did not confine himself to the genre of poetry to depict the reality of his land. He took to novel writing and wrote novels in Hindi in the rich tradition of Premchand.
Ratinath Ki Chachi (Ratinath's Aunt), his novel in Hindi is considered by critics as ‘one of the most realistic--and feminist--novels in Hindi.’ This novel depicts adulterous carnality and foeticide, but it is a rich conjuring - up of Maithil society, culture and ecology, interspersed with irony and humour so characteristic of the region.
Balchanma his second novel in Hindi, was published in 1952. This novel also depicts the social reality telling the harrowing tale of abject poverty and naked exploitation, it promises liberation to such rebellious youngster as Balchanma only to end in his brutal murder by the mercenaries hired by the upper-caste kulaks and landowners.
Varun ke Bete (The Sons of the Water-God Varuna), written in 1954 and published in 1956, is yet another unconventional work. It is a story of the (low-caste) village fishermen fighting for their fishing rights and trying to form a fishermen's cooperative.
Nagarjun wrote 13 novels, 11 in Hindi and two in Maithili, and each of them centres around a socio-economic-political theme, making him one of the most 'programmatic' novelists in Indian literature. His stories are invariably set in rural or semi-urban Bihar and tell the story of the downtrodden and the exploited, amongst them women and children.
Vishnu Khare while writing on his death wrote, “Nagarjun remains predominantly a poet of politics and people, of the peasantry and of the proletariat. He was angrier than any angry young poet but also possessed a typically robust Maithil-Bihari sense of humour and savage satire… His poetry and fiction are polyphonic; they have more than one sub-text and can be read as subaltern sociology and history but there is nothing subordinate about them--they belong to the real, dominant mainstream of Hindi literature. On the other hand, he is at core a vulnerable individual, with love, yearning, guilt and tenderness, tormenting and ennobling his soul. Its inner demons turned him into a tireless traveller--he was no profligate philanderer…To those who read him, he is a deeply committed humanist with a rare mastery over language(s), style and craft. Now that the canonised and mobbed "Baba" is gone, one hopes that his devotees will turn to his works where he lives as the ever- readable, relevant and breathless Nagarjun.”

Statement on Mehmood Dholpuri

2011-05-25T16:03:00.000+05:30

Born on March 23, 1954 in the Dhaulpur District of Rajasthan, Mehmood Dholpuri was one of the country's acclaimed harmonium players. Initiated into music by his grandfather Buddha Khan, Dholpuri began to play the harmonium as early as when he was merely eleven years old. Later, his close association and training with the masters of the Dilli Gharana including Nasir Ahmad Khan, honed his talent and skills and he soon became a front ranking harmonium player who accompanied legendary vocalists like Parveen Sultana, Pandit Bhimsen Josji, Pandit Jasraj, Girija Devi and many others luminaries on the firmament of the Indian classical music. Dholpuri became the first harmonium artiste to be awarded the prestigious Padmashri by the Government of India.

Apart from his deep commitment and dedication to the world of Hindustani Classical Music and the harmonium, Dholpuri resolutely upheld the composite secular cultural fabric of the nation. Born a Muslim, he spent many years living in temple precincts in Delhi, and was a long time supporter of SAHMAT raising his voice against communal forces through the power and strength of his music.

2010-12-24T10:46:00.001+05:30

The Friday Times

22nd SAFDAR HASHMI MEMORIAL
1st JANUARY 2011

Remembering Faiz Through Safdar’s Memories

Raat yun dil mein teri khoee hui yaad aai
Jaise veerane mein chupke se bahaar aa jaye,
Jaise sehraon mein haule se chale baad-e-naseem,
Jaise beemar ko be-wajh qaraar aa jaye.

JANUARY 1, 2011: The beginning of the New Year bringing to us the memory of our beloved Safdar --- a poet, theatre worker, an exemplary political activist. Asking us to renew our pledge of creativity. The day of warmth and love again saw a gathering of poetry, music and dance.
This year, the audience on the occasion also remembered their unparalleled bard of revolution, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, with a new hope and outspokenness --- singing him, feeling proud of his legacy.
We are now in the birth centenary year of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, a great progressive poet of Asia, nay of the world, who was born in Sialkot (now in Pakistan) in the year 1911. A favourite poet of martyr Safdar Hashmi, and of all of us. The New Year this time was thus a very special occasion. The Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT) has decided to observe the whole Faiz Centenary Year in a special way and began the process on the New Year itself. The day, thus, turned to be a memorable one.
People, one and all, were invited this year too, like the years gone by, to this Jashn-e-Yaaran, and much before the scheduled time they began to throng the huge people’s pandal, a covered big tent, put up in the lawns of Vithalbhai Patel House in New Delhi. Full of vigour and enthusiasm, a play by Act One as if came to us as a revolutionary song. Like the earlier years, a street theatre troupe coming from Rohtak was permeated with the same emotions. Manu Kohli regaled the audience with Faiz’s ghazals and nazms. Next, Dr Anju Raina took to the stage and, in her heart-moving voice, presented “Dasht-e-tenhai mein ai jaan-jehan larzan hai,” a moving piece of romantic poetry by Faiz Ahmed Faiz. The following stanza of the poem

Is qadar pyaar se ai jaan-e-jehan rakkha hai
Dil ke rukhsar pe is waqt teri yaad ne haath
Yun guman hota hai, garche hai abhi subh-e-firaaq
Dhal gaya hije ka din, aa bhi gayee qasl ki raat

intensely brought to the audience the fond memories of Faiz as well as Safdar, and thus set in motion the caravan of colour and music.
The audience felt spellbound as soon as Astad Deboo, an Indian dancer of international renown, came to the stage. The music descending down into the souls and the dance presentation by Astad Deboo --- time was moving moment by moment, giving new dimensions to Faiz’s poetry. The atmosphere was getting surcharged with emotions. As soon as Astad concluded the ‘bol’ of his dance, the temperature inside began to rise even though the polythene-made roof of the tent was getting affected by chilly winds. Maybe it was something like what Ghalib had called “raqs-e-sharar” (the dance of sparks). Modern art experiments in the East have received their sheen from the struggle for independence, and revolutionary poets like Faiz have played a notable role in this process. It would not be out of place if we situate the dance experiments by Astad Deboo in this very tradition.
Sentiments further deepened when the high-pitch voice of Rekha Raj began to call the years gone by, through her rendering of the poetic creations by Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Rekha received her training from her maternal grandmother, Khursheed Begum of Sheikhupura (Pakistan), and from Vasant Lal Ji of Rajasthan (India). She presented the well known poem “Mujh se pehli si muhabbat meri mehboob na maang” and some other pieces including “Rabba Sacchya,” a Punjabi poem by Faiz Ahmed Faiz.
The offspring of a Muslim mother and a Hindu father, Rekha presents an image of the Ganga-Jamni (syncretic) culture of this country. However, Inder Salim of Kashmir did not lag behind. With his toy-like puppet, he linked our life today with Faiz’s legacy.
Then came the storytelling pairing of Mehmood Farooqi and Daanish Hussain, Reading out their prepared script for about an hour. Teasing all of us. Telling us something. Making us laugh. The way the pair, with perfect ease, took the audience through Fiaz’s legacy and Faiz’s period, was a novel experiment by itself. With their presentation, Mehmood and Daanish introduced the audience to a new art-form, full of vitality, whose importance will no doubt be recognised in the days to come.
The evening was progressing. The cold was intensifying outside but the people in the pandal were feeling increasingly warm. Now they were waiting for Vidya Shah, a renowned singer. On her part, by her very first presentation, Vidya took music to new heights. Her rendering was, on the one hand, a dialogue with the world gone by; on the other, it presented a new, intensive understanding of Faiz’s poetry. She again and again appeared to be talking to several of the renowned figures of yore; in particular, the images of Begum Akhtar, Malika Pukhraj and Iqbal Bano came to us several times. Her presentation of “Saath raho” and “Aaiye haath uthayen hum bhi” left a deep impact on all those present.

A member of the Planning Commission Syeda Hameed not only recited Faiz’s poems in her inimitable voice but also brought out the nuances by explaining the meanings for the non-Urdu speaking audience.

The evening was at its height when young Pakistani novelist Ali Sethi, clad in jeans and a jacket, came to the stage. Many of the audience could not even think that he would present something traditional. Ali Sethi highlighted in detail the times in Pakistan’s history which he had himself gone though or which his near and dear ones had experienced. In particular, his narration of the history behind the rendering of “Mujh se pehli si muhabbat” by Nurjehan was not only binding but also highlighted an episode of revolutionary resistance. Ali Sethi’s musical presentations added lustre to his narration.
In the end, Madan Gopal Singh paid his tributes to this great poet by presenting two Punjabi pieces by Faiz in the Punjabi sufi style.
Suhel Hashmi admirably discharged the responsibility of conducting the programme, presenting in between some selected nazms and ghazals by Faiz, which brought to the audience the depths of Faiz’s legacy in a clear-cut manner.
Another significant event of the evening was the release of a special number of Naya Path, brought out by Janvadi Lekhak Sangh. Renowned Hindi poet Kunwar Narayan Singh released this issue that was dedicated to Fiaz Ahmed Faiz. Kedar Nath Singh, another notable Hindi poet, was present on the dais on the occasion. About 200 copies of this magazine of 450 odd pages were sold out on the spot. Earlier, Qamar Azad Hashmi, martyr Safdar Hashmi’s mother, released the New Year’s calendar brought out by SAHMAT; this too was dedicated to Faiz Ahmed Faiz. The calendar is based on colour and line drawings by M F Hussain to picturise Faiz.
While going home in this chilled night of Delhi, I recalled my meeting with Safdar 30 years ago. Safdar Hashmi was then the information officer in West Bengal Information Bureau and his office in a small room had got very soon converted into a cultural hub. Poets, fiction writers, playwrights, film-makers, students of art and culture, and saddened lovers --- everyone passed this way. Once Mani Kaul, a leading light of New Wave cinema, and me were having tea with Safdar in his office when he opened a book, as he often did, and began to recite a nazm containing the line “Koi ujra hua benoor purana mandir.” Though we both were fond of Faiz’s poetry, this nazm in Safdar’s voice left upon us a unique impact and we found ourselves dumbfounded for some time. The following lines of the nazm

De koi sankh duhai, koi payal bole
Koi but jaage, koi sanwali ghunghat khole,

remained with us for long after we came out.
Faiz Ahmed Faiz, the people’s poet, comes to us in this very manner --- carrying everybody with him, celebrating our common identity, forming a fraternity of revolution!

Press Release: Three day symposium Fact and Faith: Democracy After the Ayodhya Verdict

2010-12-09T17:40:00.000+05:30

Sheerin Moosvi, Irfan Habib, Prabhat Patnaik
Date:- 9-12-2010
Press Release

Systematic decimation of the basic rational principles of the rule of law laid down in the Indian Constitution, historiography, archaeology and logic are the critical features of the infamous Ayodhya verdict of September 30, said speakers Justice P.B. Sawant, Justice Hosbet Suresh, Justice SHA Raza,

Justice Rajinder Sachar, economist Professor Prabhat Patnaik, historians Professor Irfan Habib and Professor Shireen Moosvi, during the three-day symposium Faith and Fact: Democracy after the Ayodhya Verdict that concluded in Delhi today. Elucidating on the social composition of India’s judiciary as also the inability to bring to book corrupt, casteist and communal practices among Indian judges and lawyers, the discussions and analyses at the symposium also highlighted the need to draw attention to the politics within the judiciary.

Over three days of intense sessions at the symposium, the issues that were discussed included: the consistent failure of the criminal justice system, including non-investigation of the FIR registered on the vandalism of the Babri Masjid on the night of December 23, 1949; the systematic dilution of the criminal cases against the masterminds who instigated the criminal conspiracy behind the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992; and the motivated maligning of historians and archaeologists who testified with evidence during the pendency of the Ayodhya dispute before the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court. All these were held to be the collective reason for the passage of a verdict that has seriously shaken the faith of the common Indian in the administration of justice.
The deliberate and conscious absence of any substantive mention of the criminal acts of 1949 and 1992 by the two majority judges while dealing with the title suit was, in the words of advocate Anupam Gupta, counsel for the Liberhans Commission for over 12 years, the singular injustice in this verdict. The judgements go into thousands of pages over mythology and faith, but ignores the criminal incursions on the Babri Masjid under law. Even worse, the evidence presented by historians and archaeologists in court was formally recorded in monosyllabic answers to deliberately curtail and hide explanations that are critical in explaining historical theory and evidence. Today archaeologists and their publishers face contempt notices served by the Allahabad bench of the Lucknow High Court.
Professor Irfan Habib pointed out that the present government at the Centre was complicit in allowing a flawed report of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to stand. A 96-page critique on Justice Sudhir Agarwal’s judgement has been published by the Aligarh Historians Society.
Commemorating the 18th anniversary of December 6, 1992, the symposium was jointly organised by SAHMAT, Communalism Combat and Social Scientist. Over 200 activists, lawyers, artists and academicians gathered to develop a deeper understanding of all the implications of the Ayodhya verdict. Over four dozen organizations represented by activists from Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh participated in the deliberations. The assault on the Baba Boudhangiri shrine in Chikmagalur in Karnataka, the vigorous struggle against the divisive hate speech of Swami Adityanath in Gorakhpur in eastern Uttar Pradesh and other such struggles were reported by them.

Over three days, many speakers made the point that the recent Ayodhya judgement is actually an assault on the Indian Constitution and the foundations of a secular democratic state. The Ayodhya verdict, moreover implicitly justifies the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid and related criminal acts and, if upheld, will have consequences for the future of democracy itself.

A Symposium: DEMOCRACY AFTER THE AYODHYA VERDICT

2010-12-01T10:01:00.000+05:30

SAHMAT Statement on Rohinton Mistry 20-10-2010

2010-10-22T11:34:00.000+05:30

We are shocked and shamed by the abrupt withdrawal of the Rohinton Mistry novel Such a Long Journey from the English Literature syllabus of the University of Bombay, on an order from the Vice Chancellor, following an explicit threat from the newly anointed youth leader of the Shiv Sena. This blatant capitulation to the threat of mob violence is a serious assault on the autonomy of our academic institutions and should be condemned by all who stand by basic democratic values. The Vice Chancellor has acted without due attention to the procedures prescribed under university rules. He has to be severely sanctioned for this shocking neglect of his responsibilities to the academic community and to the student body of Mumbai.
We equally condemn Chief Minister Ashok Chavan’s thoroughly opportunistic statement denouncing the supposedly 'offensive' language of the Mistry novel. This indecent haste in seeking a peace treaty with the Shiv Sena – nominally the opposition party in Maharashtra but increasingly seen to be dictating the ruling party’s agenda through its ability to cause havoc on the streets -- comes in the wake of Chief Minister Chavan’s statement that his government will not allow the sale of the book on Chhatrapati Shivaji by the scholar James Laine, despite a ruling by the Supreme Court which underlined a Bombay High Court finding that the ban on the book was unfounded and unsustainable under the law.

It is deeply alarming that the freedoms of academic research and artistic expression are increasingly being curbed by the threat of mob violence and through unconstitutional means. Publishers in this country fear printing academic books on Indian mythology, though these are freely available around the world; outstanding scholars like Wendy Doniger decline to attend academic symposia in India because of the constant threat of physical assault; the country’s greatest living artist, M.F. Husain, has been exiled; and certain films are banned from states that are governed by individuals who are seen to be supporters of extremist religious militias. The threat against the Rohinton Mistry novel and its withdrawal from the university syllabus is the latest in this series.

Instead of bowing to these threats, the Central and State Governments should have acted against the groups who use violence and the threat of violence. We take note of the irony that the Maharashtra Government deployed its security forces in strength to ensure the release – per schedule – of the Hindi film starring Bollywood superstar Shahrukh Khan. That it has now buckled under a similar threat of mob violence by subverting the autonomy of one of India’s oldest and greatest universities is a matter of deep distress.

Issued on behalf of SAHMAT
Ram Rahman, M.K. Raina, Indira Chandrasekhar, Parthiv Shah, Madangopal Singh,
N.K. Sharma, Sohail Hashmi, Sukumar Murlidharan

Statement on Ayodhya Verdict

2010-10-01T16:18:00.000+05:30

Date 1.10.2010

Statement on Ayodhya Verdict

The judgement delivered by the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid Dispute on 30 September 2010 has raised serious concerns because of the way history, reason and secular values have been treated in it. First of all, the view that the Babri Masjid was built at the site of a Hindu temple, which has been maintained by two of the three judges, takes no account of all the evidence contrary to this fact turned up by the Archaeological Survey of India’s own excavations: the presence of animal bones throughout as well as of the use of ‘surkhi’ and lime mortar (all characteristic of Muslim presence) rule out the possibility of a Hindu temple having been there beneath the mosque. The ASI’s controversial Report which claimed otherwise on the basis of ‘pillar bases’ was manifestly fraudulent in its assertions since no pillars were found, and the alleged existence of ‘pillar bases’ has been debated by archaeologists. It is now imperative that the site notebooks, artefacts and other material evidence relating to the ASI’s excavation be made available for scrutiny by scholars, historians and archaeologists.

No proof has been offered even of the fact that a Hindu belief in Lord Rama’s birth-site being the same as the site of the mosque had at all existed before very recent times, let alone since ‘time immemorial’. Not only is the judgement wrong in accepting the antiquity of this belief, but it is gravely disturbing that such acceptance should then be converted into an argument for deciding property entitlement. This seems to be against all principles of law and equity.
The most objectionable part of the judgement is the legitimation it provides to violence and muscle-power. While it recognizes the forcible break-in of 1949 which led to placing the idols under the mosque-dome, it now recognizes, without any rational basis, that the transfer put the idols in their rightful place. Even more astonishingly, it accepts the destruction of the mosque in 1992 (in defiance, let it be remembered, of the Supreme Court’s own orders) as an act whose consequences are to be accepted, by transferring the main parts of the mosque to those clamouring for a temple to be built.
For all these reasons we cannot but see the judgement as yet another blow to the secular fabric of our country and the repute of our judiciary. Whatever happens next in the case cannot, unfortunately, make good what the country has lost.

Romila Thapar
K.M. Shrimali
D.N. Jha
K.N. Panikkar
Amiya Kumar Bagchi
Iqtidar Alam Khan
Shireen Moosvi
Jaya Menon
Irfan Habib
Suvira Jaiswal
Kesavan Veluthat
D. Mandal
Ramakrishna Chatterjee
Aniruddha Ray
Arun Bandopadhyaya
A. Murali
V. Ramakrishna
Arjun Dev
R.C. Thakran
H.C. Satyarthi
Amar Farooqui
B.P. Sahu
Biswamoy Pati
Lata Singh
Utsa Patnaik
Zoya Hasan
Prabhat Patnaik
C.P. Chandrasekhar
Jayati Ghosh
Archana Prasad
Shakti Kak
V.M. Jha
Prabhat Shukla
Indira Arjun Dev
Mahendra Pratap Singh
Ram Rahman
M.K. Raina
Sohail Hashmi
Parthiv Shah
Madan Gopal Singh
Madhu Prasad
Vivan Sundaram
Geeta Kapur
Rajendra Prasad
Anil Chandra
Rahul Verma
Indira Chandrasekhar
Sukumar Muralidharan
Supriya Verma
N.K. Sharma
S.Z.H. Jafri
Farhat Hasan
Shalini Jain
Santosh Rai
Najaf Haider
R. Gopinath
R.P. Bahuguna
G.P. Sharma
Sitaram Roy
O.P. Jaiswal
K.K. Sharma

SAHMAT 29, Feroze Shah Road,New Delhi-110001 Telephone- 23381276/ 23070787 e-mail-sahmat8@ yahoo.com

‘Violence in the Valley has ravaged its culture’ , Mail Today, 30-08-2010

2010-08-30T14:25:00.000+05:30

ARTIST- ACTIVIST Ram Rahman feared that Srinagar- based conservation architect Saima Iqbal wouldn’t be able to make it to a talk that cultural NGO SAHMAT had organised in the Capital on Saturday.
Titled Cultural Interventions in Kashmir, the discussion was about the impact of escalating violence in the Kashmir Valley on the cultural capital of the state. Iqbal could make it to the discussion because curfew had been lifted partially in the Valley on Friday after the separatists called off their protests for a day.
At a time when the window of relief in the Valley sometimes is open only for a day, Iqbal’s presence at the discussion was important for more than symbolic reasons. As a member of the Srinagar chapter of INTACH ( Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage), she, along with other young Kashmiris, has been ploughing a dangerous furrow in documenting local architectural heritage, or what has survived of it in the two- decade- long turmoil.
With the help of a slide show, Iqbal provided examples of efforts being made to preserve Kashmir’s vibrant cultural heritage, especially in Shahar- e- Srinagar, the old city, which is replete with buildings made with local material and are earthquake resistant too. Lending poignancy to this effort is the fact that it is carried out in the constant shadow of the gun.
The discussion took place on the sidelines of an exhibition of paintings by the senior Vadodara- based artist Nilima Sheikh titled Each Night Put Kashmir in Your Dreams at the Lalit Kala Akademi. It brought together artists, heritage conservationists and activists who showcased their efforts towards salvaging the cultural wealth of their ravaged state.
Rahman, who moderated the talk, said, “ Nilima had almost thought of cancelling the exhibition; everybody is so disturbed by the situation in Kashmir.
The social and political violence has only escalated in the state and culture has been a major victim.” The eclectic panel included theatre director- actor M. K. Raina, who has been involved with cultural projects in his native Kashmir for many years.
Raina recounted his experience of working with village actors to save the Bhand Pather folk theatre form in Kashmir.
“ I have been working with the young people of Kashmir and I can tell you that they want to talk,” he said. “ They’re full of angst but young Kashmiris want to connect with the rest of India.”

The Hindu Coverage

2010-04-17T11:44:00.001+05:30

A PERSPECTIVE Sitaram Yechury, Javed Akhtar, Sohail Hashmi, Zoya Hasan and Aijaz Ahmad at the unveiling of the book launch

Some six years ago Mahmood Mamdani, Professor of Government in the Departments of Anthropology and Political Science at Columbia University in the U.S., wrote a book called “Good Muslims Bad Muslims: America, the Cold War and the Roots of Terror”. The well-received book also brought brickbats for the author, for it made a powerful statement that indicated that the so-called “bad Muslims” were actually once “good Muslims.” And that this entire enterprise is less about religion or Islam, more about American power politics — that has corrupted not only the American government and American ideals but also Muslims in the Middle East.
Already translated into Hindi, the book has been translated into Urdu by Qamar Azad Hashmi, the assassinated theatre personality Safdar Hashmi's 86-year-old mother and his brother Sohail Hashmi. The book was released by poet Javed Akhtar at the Constitutional Club this week in the presence of Sitaram Yechury, professors Aijaz Ahmad and Zoya Hasan and theatre director M.K. Raina.
Why translate the book into Urdu six years after it was printed? Reasons Sohail, “Because those people, especially Muslims who know only Urdu and are caught in the quagmire of what and who is a good and bad Muslim, need to know who created this entire concept and why.”
A hate campaign
In a heady discussion, the think-tank present gave their take on the book. Raina, who convened the meeting, admitted he hadn't read the whole book but from whatever he read he was shocked to see “how faceless criminals were brought into the Taliban army”. Columnist Zafar Agha threw light on what the book is all about. He said, “The book was understood as explaining only civilizational conflict. But it attempts to differentiate between illiterate and literate Muslims. And it is not about a clash of civilization but the sheer politics that spearheaded a movement of hatred against Muslims and Islam. The word ‘Jehad' didn't exist in the Muslim dictionary before US intervened. The book is honest and clinical in its approach.”
Meanwhile, Raina shared that Hashmi family's social justice organisation, SAHMAT, which has published the Urdu version, is taking the book to Pakistan “to avoid confusion of people about good and bad jehadis,” said Raina, who is taking the book to Jammu and Kashmir for the Urdu readers.
Professor Aijaz said that the book is still relevant after 9/11 and the invasion on Iraq. Javed Akhtar took the conversation to a different level. He justified it with one sher by Majaz, “ Kuch tumhari nigah kaafir thi, kuch mujhe bhi kharab hona tha', adding, “Why has there been no voice of dissent from any reputed organisation representing Muslims when the Taliban was getting formed? Why do we not fight the villains within the country?” Zoya Hasan, who chaired the meeting, concluded by saying the book provides a conceptual foundation of American strategic policy.

National Street Theatre Poster

2010-04-12T11:40:00.000+05:30

SAHMAT

Invites you to Join Us

at the release by poet Javed Akhtar of
Achchha Musalman Bura Musalman

the Urdu Translation of Good Muslim Bad Muslim By Prof Mahmood Mamdani
A seminal work about America, the Cold War and the Roots of Terror.
Translated by Sohail Hashmi and Qamar Azad Hashmi
Chair: Professor Mushirul Hasan

Thursday, the 15th of April at 5.30 pm
at the Deputy Speaker’s Hall, Constitution Club,
Vithal Bhai Patel House, Rafi Marg, New Delhi 110001

The Watercolour is from the Faiz series by MF Husain. The text on the poster is by Edward Said:

To see a poet in exile - as opposed to reading the poetry of exile - is to see exile’s antinomies embodied and endured with a unique intensity. Several years ago I spent some time with Faiz Ahmad Faiz, the greatest of contemporary Urdu poets. He was exiled from his native Pakistan by Zia’s military regime, and found a welcome of sorts in strife-torn Beirut. Naturally his closest friends were Palestinian, but I sensed that, although there was an affinity of spirit between them, nothing quite matched - language, poetic convention, or life history.
Only once, when Eqbal Ahmad, a Pakistani friend and a fellow-exile, came to Beirut, did Faiz seem to overcome his sense of constant estrangement. The three of us sat in a dingy Beirut restaurant late one night, while Faiz recited poems. After a time, he and Eqbal stopped translating his verses for my benefit, but as the night wore on it did not matter. What I watched required no translation: it was an enactment of a homecoming expressed through defiance and loss, as if to say, ‘Zia, we are here.’

EDWARD SAID From ‘Reflections on exile’, Granta (no. 13, Autumn 1984)

2010-02-16T12:41:00.000+05:30

Press Release Date: 27-01-2010

SAHMAT is deeply disturbed by the scheme of Samsung-Tagore awards launched on the eve of the Republic Day. Showing no disrespect to the awardees, SAHMAT wishes to point out that the entire plan and its execution is demeaning for the Indian writers as well as for Rabaindra Nath Tagore whose name has been associated with the awards.
The association of Sahitya Akedemy with this scheme of awards is totally non-transparent. The collaboration of a public-funded autonomous institution like the Sahitya Akedemy is not only regrettable but dangerous. The name of a prestigious institution like Sahitya Akedemy is now being used to promote and legitimize a foreign multi-national corporation driven by profit motive alone. The Sahitya Akedemy by this act has undermined the prestige of its own awards and has surrendered its own autonomy which has been so assiduously guarded by the litterateurs of this country over the last 50 years.
We appeal to litterateurs and all concerned to protest this action of the Sahitya Akedemy.

Statement on Shah Rukh KhanDate: 04-02-2010
We, the community of artists, musicians, actors, writers, academics and cultural acticists are in full solidarity with the clear stand taken by Shah Rukh Khan in facing up to the recent threats against him by the Shiv Sena. This threat issued by the Shiv Sena is only the latest in a series of campaigns by many sections of the Hindu right against actors, artists and writers. The state, for its part, has always capitulated to these forces instead of confronting them head on. We salute the courage displayed by Mr Khan in standing up to these threats. He should know that the entire creative community stands by him and is willing to protect his right to have his films screened anywhere if the government is unwilling to ensure this. We call upon citizens to come out in defence of the cinema houses screening Mr Khan's films.

The state government in Maharashtra and the central government should act immediately against those making violent threats, but given their past record, we do not have much confidence in them taking the necessary steps. We believe, however, that democratic sections of the Indian people are strong enough to face up to these forces which seek to use fear and hate to advance their narrow political interests. It is time to put an end to this once and for all.

Ram Rahman, MK Raina, Vivan Sundaram, Parthiv Shah, Indira Chandrasekhar

2010-01-28T15:18:00.000+05:30

There was a hotly debated report in Jansatta in Delhi on the 8th of January, 2010 on a discussion during the symposium on censorship during the National Theatre Festival in the National School of Drama (NSD) in Delhi. The initial report in Hindi and Sahmat's reply are attached below.

Translations of the relevant passages from the report:

" During the symposium 'Theatre and Censorship' attended by theatre artists, specialists etc from across the nation, differences came out into the open. Going beyond the question of censorship on theatre, the discussion got diverted into a debate on the eminent painter MF Husain, Tasleema Nasrin, West Bengal's Left Front government, Delhi's Hindi Academy, Left forces and SAHMAT. "

" Publisher Ritu Menon said that we keep talking about and focussing on censorship imposed by right-wing groups. We never talk of censorship imposed by left wing groups which is no less pernicious. She asked why actor MK Raina and SAHMAT had never picked up the issue of Tasleema Nasrin. She said this was a carefully thought out political strategy to defend Husain and ignore Tasleema. "

Translation of SAHMAT's reply published on January 11th, 2010:

TASLEEMA AND SAHMAT

In Jansatta's report of the 8th of January on "A Debate on Censorship" it is stated: " She (Publisher Ritu Menon) asked why actor MK Raina and SAHMAT had never picked up the issue of Tasleema Nasrin. She said this was a carefully thought out political strategy to defend Husain and ignore Tasleema. "

The publisher's statement is not based on facts. SAHMAT had come out in for the first time defence of Tasleema Nasrin in 1994, and led a demonstration in her defence to the Bangladesh high commission on July 8th, 1994. Perhaps at that time the publisher had no interest in Tasleema. After that on 9th of August 2007, when Tasleema was assaulted by Muslim fundamentalist groups in Hyderabad, SAHMAT had issued a statement condemning the attack.

After this SAHMAT had issued two statements in support of Tasleema. The first on 23rd November 2007 when Tasleema was forced to leave Kolkata and the other on 13th February 2008 when the question of the issuance of a visa to Tasleema had become an issue. These statements, as often happens, were carried only in the Hindi press, and perhaps because the publisher's familiarity with the Hindi press is scant, they did not come to her attention. All these statements are posted on the SAHMAT website and can also be read in English.

Rajendra Prasad, SAHMAT, New Delhi

1st Jan. 2010 Safdar Hashmi Memorial

2010-01-13T12:34:00.000+05:30

OBSERVING 21ST SAFDAR HASHMI MARTYRDOM DAY

Remembrance

FIRST January is the day of remembrance. On this day we remember our friends who fearlessly charted the path of cultural diversity and actively espoused the plural and celebrative ethos of life. Their unconventional spirit was not only endearing, it also deeply impacted forms of contemporary cultural practice. Safdar, in whose memory SAHMAT was set up, was one such iconic activist.
Amongst the cultural luminaries who led us in the past two decades were towering figures like Bhisham Sahni and Habib Tanvir whose creative interventions inspired us through dark times. This year, we dedicated our 1st January programme at the Constitution Club, where friends and well-wishers gather each year in a show of solidarity, to the memory of Habib Sa’ab who left us in 2009 remaining intellectually vibrant till the very last.
This was also the day when we remembered the revolutionary poets such as Makhdoom Mohiuddin, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Sahir Ludhianvi, Kaifi Azmi and Avtar Singh Paash in addition to invoking our Sufi-Bhakti heritage from where our secular ethos draw their primary sustenance.
The day-long programme began with theatre presentation of two poems --- Keshav Anuragi by Manglesh Dabral and America Prem by Vishnu Nagar, by the Haryana Gyan Vigyan Samiti. Though the presentation of poems in this form is a difficult task, HGVS won a huge applause.
The day’s proceedings opened with the contemporary modern dancer and choreographer, Astad Deboo, presenting three short but eloquent pieces dedicated to the memory of the late Romana Hussain, Manjit Bawa and Habib Tanvir who always comprised the formidable vanguard of SAHMAT. Playing with the matric props on stage, Astad executed choreographic movements with unbelievable lightness of being. The graceful economy with which his body moved invoking a sense of a richly lived and creative time had the audience mesmerised.
The impact of Astad’s performance is always so strong that it is not easy for the artist immediately after him to command undivided attention of the audience. It is, therefore, to Rekha Raj’s great credit that she was able to not only do that but further extend the resonant core of things past. With her powerful voice harbouring a vintage grain, Rekha Raj was able to bring memories of the late Iqbal Bano alive with her impassioned renderings of some of the thumris and nazms for which the late maestress is so dearly remembered and missed .
Coming after Rekha Raj was the eminent Punjabi poet, Amarjit Chandan who recited three short poems from his forthcoming anthology which has been introduced to the English speaking world by the legendary cultural critic, John Berger. This was also in a manner of speaking a tribute to the late Avtar Singh Pash who would have been 60 if he had not fallen to the bullets of the fundamentalists in 1988 – coincidentally the same year that Safdar was fatally attacked. MK Raina, who worked closely with Chandan, Amitoj and Sumit Singh in the 70s, poignantly recalled the years of his association with these creatively charged young poets and cultural activists when he worked on the path breaking Punjabi adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle during the infamous Emergency. Madan Gopal Singh read out the poems in English translations.
The recitation was followed by a vigorous and energetic performance by the group Act One under the inspired guidance of NK Sharma who enjoys the status of a radical faqir and a reluctant father figure amongst many a theatre activist across India. In an unusual move, his group deviated from their conventional performative mode and chose instead to sing their newly created musical compositions in which they celebrated the radical spirit of Kabir and Faiz.
Vidya Shah - the singer, scholar, activist and a fellow traveler - designed her performance as a tribute to both Iqbal Bano and Faiz. She opened with Dasht-e-tanhai, Nasib Azmaane Ke Din, Dhaka se Vaapsi, Kab Tab Dil Ki Khair, Dua and followed it up with many of his other poems. Her evocative voice created a veil of warmth and assurance around the listeners on an otherwise a very cold day in New Delhi.
The musical part of the day was brought to a close by Madan Gopal Singh who sang his new composition reviving a tradition of secular, syncretic ‘bujharataan’ or poetic puzzles to be creatively solved by children who get to learn of their past and present through a participative role playing. This was followed by a ‘takrar’ from Baba Bulle Shah and a Simon Garfunkel canticle in Punjabi.
Those who arrived unfortunately a little late to the venue and could not perform included Rabbi Shegill and Jasbir Jassi.
Two books on this occasion were released. The book Habib Tanvir: Reminiscences and Reflections has been edited by Neeraj Malik and Javed Malik and was presented by the editors to Nagin Tanvir before the commencement of the play. Another book in Hindi D D Kosambi (1907-1966) edited by Rajender Sharma was also released. The birth centenary of D D Kosambi, pre eminent Marxist historian was observed last year. Earlier on December 6, 2009 a calendar for 2010 fore grounding the anti communal posters of SAHMAT was released.
The tour-de-force of the evening was a theatric performance of Habib Tanvir’s – the doyen of Indian theatre - Charandas Chor put together by his prodigiously talented daughter Nagin Tanvir. Charandas Chor is considered along with another of Habib Sa’ab’s production, Agra Bazaar, as a decisive moment in the history of the contemporary Indian theatre. It was, therefore, a fitting tribute to the memory of the perhaps the grandest maestros of theatre we have known in the 20th century and whom we have had the privilege of knowing and learning from at SAHMAT as the chairperson of our Trust. We salute his ever inspiring memory!

Madan Gopal Singh

Letter to Home Minister

2009-10-26T15:52:00.000+05:30

To: Hon. Home Minister
Government of India
North Block
New Delhi
October 19, 2009

Dear Shri Chidambaram,

Following the press reports regarding the bomb blast in Margao, Goa, on Friday the 13th, we see that the investigating agencies are looking into the possible involvement of the Sanathan Sanstha in that blast as well as earlier ones in Thane etc. We would like to bring to your notice the fact that the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti (www.hindujagruti.org) website is funded and run by the same organisation. This site has led the vicious and communal hate-campaign against the artist MF Husain, amongst many others.

We are attaching the recent letters addressed to both our trust and to the Jamia Millia Islamia when we held an art exhibition at Jamia to celebrate Husain's 94th birthday in exile on September 17th. These are obviously threatening, and many of the campaigns launched through this website around the world and in India, have led to physical attacks on exhibitions, such as the vandalisation at the Husain exhibition in Asia House in London in 2006 (web page instigating that vandalisation is attached http://www.hindujagruti.org/news/392.html), which led to the closure of that show.

We strongly urge the Home Ministry to investigate the website along with the group, and call on you to have it shut down. The freedom of speech does not mean the freedom to spread false information and slander, threaten, intimidate and cause violence, which this site has been only too successful in doing. We strongly believe these actions are criminal, and action should be taken under the law.

With Regards,

Ram Rahman

for SAHMAT

Video on Safdar Hashmi

2009-08-29T15:40:00.000+05:30

Telegraph Report on Intelligence official in Sahmat net

2008-09-13T16:38:00.000+05:30

‘Spy’ who got caught- Intelligence official in Sahmat net
ANANYA SENGUPTA

New Delhi, Sept. 12: A “spy” sat staring at his polished shoes locked up in the small office of cultural group Sahmat for almost an hour today, after hamhanded snooping blew his cover and gave a telling insight into the working of the Intelligence Bureau.
“I am an FCRA (foreign contribution regulation) official and am here on official duty,” Praveen Sharma (name changed) insisted, fidgeting with his phone.
But Rajendra Prasad, the Sahmat member he had first approached with the introduction and a long list of queries, was not buying this any more. He had called police.
Sahmat, set up in January 1989 after actor, poet and political and street theatre activist Safdar Hashmi was killed performing a play 20km from Delhi, brings together a cross-section of people to defend democracy and freedom of expression.
In white T-shirt and grey pants, the bespectacled Sharma had walked into its office posing as an FCRA official under the home ministry.
“He wanted to know every detail of the organisation, and I gave it to him. I didn’t even ask for his identity card. He initially started with who the members of the organisation were and also details of the kind of work we do. He asked me if Sahmat took foreign funds for their work, and when I said no, he said if I was offered, would I take it? I had no problems answering those questions,” Prasad said.
Then he named two people, who he said were connected with the Maharashtra blasts, and asked me if I knew them. I realised he was asking me if our group had connections with terrorists. That’s what made me suspicious. I asked for his identity card and he just flashed some card at me. I asked him which blasts he was talking about, and he couldn’t even answer that,” the Sahmat member said.
Soon, Sharma had been locked up and the police called.
“It’s the recent blasts in Maharashtra,” Sharma said in answer to this correspondent’s question as he tried to contact his bosses.
So where was his office? Sharma didn’t remember.
When the police arrived, the mystery was solved. “He is with the Intelligence Bureau and it was his mistake that he barged into Sahmat’s office and intimidated them. Sahmat can officially register a case if they want,” the Parliament Street SHO, Vijay Chandel, said before the police took him away.
It is not uncommon for officials of the Intelligence Bureau, the country’s internal spy agency, to make discreet enquiries about organisations. But to go about it as Sharma did provides a clue perhaps to the intelligence failures blamed for blast after blast.
“What’s completely unacceptable is that at the time of the incident, there were two artistes in the room — young women, one from Pakistan and the other a Bangladeshi, who are in the country for an international art workshop. He made such a fuss about their nationalities that they ran away from the spot,” said photographer Ram Rahman.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1080913/jsp/frontpage/story_9828535.jsp

Frontline Report on M.F. Husain Attack

2008-09-13T16:32:00.000+05:30

CONTROVERSYArt on trial
AJOY ASHIRWAD MAHAPRASHASTA
The attacks on M.F. Husain’s art must be seen in the context of communalism thriving on economic liberalisation.
V.V. KRISHNAN An exhibition of reproductions of M.F. Husain’s paintings and some photographs of the artist, organised by SAHMAT in New Delhi, was vandalised on August 24. Here, a destroyed photograph.
LET us begin with two recent, and seemingly unrelated, events in New Delhi.
First, at around 3.30 p.m. on a dusky afternoon, on August 24, eight or 10 Hindu fanatics, identifying themselves as belonging to the little-known “Sri Ram Sena”, vandalised an exhibition showcasing reproductions of some paintings by Maqbool Fida Husain and some photographs of Husain taken by Parthiv Shah. Furniture and a television set showing Husain’s films were also broken. The exhibition was going on outside the SAHMAT (Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust) office in New Delhi.
Only a few months ago, some miscreants attacked Husain’s exhibitions at India International Centre, New Delhi, and in London. Facing seven cases for “obscenity in his paintings” and “causing offence to religious sensibilities”, Husain has been living in self-imposed exile in Dubai and London, fearing physical danger from people who are opposed to his paintings. Photographer Ram Rahman said that Raghu Vyas, a painter and a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), and the Hindu Janjagruti Samiti spearheaded the campaign against Husain.
Second, the India Art Summit 2008 in Pragati Maidan from August 22 to August 24. With the objective to tap the expanding art market in India, this was the first full-fledged corporate initiative in getting 34 art galleries from India and abroad on one platform. Sunil Gautam, the managing director of the Summit’s organising company, Hanmer MS&L, said during the event: “The Indian art market is worth Rs.1,500 crore and is growing at 35 per cent a year.”
The buzzword at the Summit, unsurprisingly, was “art market”. Phillip Hoffmen, who owns 16 art funds across the world, said in his well-received speech, “Art of making money”: “The August 2007 credit crunch has still not affected the art market, and in India the market should be worth Rs.400 million in five years.”
He went on to say, “Pseudo-collectors are dominating the market now. In future, I anticipate around 20 billionaires in different pockets of the world spending $100 million each. The market would slowly become more limited and richer.”
These, which prima facie look like unrelated events, have more than one missing link. SAHMAT decided to hold the exhibition after the organisers of the India Art Summit decided to exclude Husain’s paintings from the displays of all the participating galleries. Three galleries from New Delhi, including the famous Delhi Art Gallery and the Dhoomimal Art Gallery, which wanted to display Husain’s paintings, were told not to display any of his paintings before the Summit began.
SAHMAT believed that while the organisers might have made the decision out of fear of attacks or protests against the works of Husain, by giving in to such threats by communal political groups they were playing into their hands. Gautam, quoted in a newspaper, said at the event: “We issued an advisory about the real risk of including Husain…. India is the fourth most buoyant market in the world. Must it be derailed by controversies attached to one artist?”
In solidarity with Husain, SAHMAT displayed images of his work through all three days of the Summit. SAHMAT had informed the nearby Parliament Street police station of the exhibition. No police protection was provided.
The organisation had demanded that Husain’s works should be displayed with police protection at the India Art Summit, too. The decision not to do so in effect ostracised India’s Picasso. Husain’s role in putting India on the world art map is phenomenal. He is also one of the principal forces behind the world market boom for Indian art. SAHMAT members said that without Husain’s contribution to art, an event like the India Art Summit would not have taken place in Delhi.
The communal attack on Husain’s exhibition comes at a time when there is a booming art market in the country. Over the past decade, the Indian art market has grown by leaps and bounds. Over the same period, attacks on artists and their works have escalated. Be it the Chandramohan case of 2007 in Vadodara or the seven legal assaults on Husain, there is a build-up of fascist tendencies in the way art is perceived.
It is debatable whether economic liberalisation and fascism grow simultaneously. But the constant emphasis on the art market in recent times can be definitely branded as a by-product of the economic changes witnessed by India since the early 1990s. “Artists like M.F. Husain characterise the function of a national artist,” writes Geeta Kapur. “He marks the conjunction between the mythic and the secular and then between secular and aesthetic space.”
Jawaharlal Nehru’s left-liberal ideology gave the Indian state a basic infrastructure for culture and the arts, as well as the confidence to host international modernism. However, there was a significant shift that began in the early 1990s. With the consistent demand for “global art”, the arts in India came off the path of progressive nationalism, a trend manifested in the Art Summit’s motto emphasising global art. From the 1990s, artists broke their pact with progressive nationalism, leaping beyond statist parameters to grasp the discourse of contemporaneity. With this pact broken and the demand for more global art increasing, the public presence of art and artists such as Husain, who intended to create art for an audience beyond the esoteric realm, kept decreasing.
V.V. KRISHNAN A framed print after vandalisation.
The political scientist Aijaz Ahmed writes about the inevitable link of capitalism and fascism in history. He says that “policies of liberalisation can succeed only if Indian nationalism can be detached from its historic anti-colonial origins and redefined in culturalist, irrationalist, racist terms, so that the national energies are expanded not on resistance against imperialism but on suppression of the supposed enemy within: the denominational minority, the communist Left, the ‘pseudo-secularist’, any and all oppositions to ‘tradition’ as defined by Hindutva”.
It is in this larger perspective that the ideological construct of Hindutva and the public policy of liberalisation are not only reconcilable but also complementary. With the secular parties liberalising the economy in India, additional spaces are being created for the growth of Hindu fundamentalism in the country.
Economic globalisation not only ensures a complete reorganisation of culture, it also depoliticises people in the process so that they fail to resist. Thus, the rich become unconcerned and the desperate poor incline towards sectarian ideology, which promises to liberate them from their deplorable situation.
It is not surprising, then, that the India Art Summit 2008, touted as the first biggest art summit in the country, steered clear of Husain. The art galleries, except for a few, did not protest, knowing full well the damage that they would incur if Husain were to be included. There is clearly a transition in the way art was perceived before and the way it is now.
Husain, in an interview to a magazine, said that he had been inspired by Hindu mythology. His controversial paintings are those that were made for Ram Manohar Lohia for his Ramayan Mela (1960s) as part of his political campaign in the rural hinterland. “It is people in the villages who understand the sensual, living, evolving nature of Hindu gods,” says Husain. He sees purity in nudity and says that his study of the Hindu culture has only reaffirmed his belief. The renowned Bharat Mata, a work that has been attacked by Hindu fanatics, was so named not by him but by an art gallery that exhibited it long after he painted it. He imbibes the spirit of the Indian Constitution that guarantees freedom of speech and expression to every citizen of the country and is a torch-bearer of its core secular values.
When ideologues of Hindutva such as Arun Shourie complain that the proponents of freedom of speech did not come forward to support the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten when Muslims all over the world agitated against the cartoons of the Prophet that it published in September 2005, what they conveniently overlook is that the cartoons provocatively represented the Prophet as an accomplice in terrorism. Journalist Sukumar Muralidharan writes, “Far from being an exercise in the right to free speech, the newspaper was, by in its own boastful claim, engaged in an effort to rub in the superiority of Western culture.” Husain, in contrast, has never harboured any malicious intent and each of his work aims at connecting with people at an aesthetic level.
The Summit organisers’ attitude towards Husain’s works persisted despite the historic May 8, 2008, judgment by the Delhi High Court, which gave Husain a reprieve in three of the seven cases against him. In his judgment, which was also an indirect attack on the growing communalism in the country, Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul mentioned in point 120: “In the end, it may be said that education broadens the horizons of people and means to acquire knowledge to enhance one’s ability to reason and make a sound judgment. However, when one is instructed to only view things in a certain manner, regardless of truth and facts, this is actually a form of programming – not education.”
Contextualising Husain’s case, he said, “There are very few people with a gift to think out of the box and seize opportunities and therefore such people’s thoughts should not be curtailed by the age-old moral sanctions of a particular section in the society having oblique or collateral motives that express their dissent at the very drop of a hat.” Husain’s exclusion not only amounts to encouraging communal tendencies but also boosts the “programming” Kaul talks about.
The Ministry of Culture and the leading art auction house Sotheby’s, which supported the Art Summit, assumed strategic silence on the issue. Ambika Soni, Minister of Tourism and Culture, made an unconvincing request to the Summit organisers to include Husain. The statement in solidarity with Husain said, “As far as the present India Art Summit is concerned, the Union Ministry would be happy if all major artists and their works including the paintings of Shri M.F. Husain are displayed at such event.”
Though the letter of support was seen as a positive development, SAHMAT felt the need to stand up for the artistic community and its creative freedom at the Summit. The point of contention is whether it is the market that stifles the creative voice or a process that thrives on the gradual co-option of artists into a class – apolitical and implicitly communal – that has the capacity to buy paintings at astronomical sums.
The Mexican Mural movement, Fluxus, Arte Povera, Installation art and Dadaism were all attempts to further artistic practices that interacted with people. They represented anti-war and anti-imperialist sentiments. However, it can be argued that global capitalism and its cultural fallout cancel the very concept of the avant-garde.
Not everyone, however, was silent on Husain’s exclusion from the Summit. Peter Nagy of Nature Morte Gallery showed the courage to distribute SAHMAT pamphlets at the exhibition. He also displayed one of Ram Rahman’s photographs of Husain painting a horse in his gallery. He said, “If the Art Summit is not a safe place to show Husain, where will it be shown? You have got to start from somewhere. It is about the freedom of speech.” He declined comment on the artistic community’s silence but said that people had not known about the exclusion until the last moment. Dhoomimal Art Gallery actually had on display a painting named Judaism by Husain but had to remove it on the second day under pressure from the organisers. Rob Dean Art, U.K., also followed suit.
Rajendra Prasad of SAHMAT said, “It is an attack on the plural representation of our culture. They are people who want to impose a majoritarian representation of our culture.” The question that looms large is who this “majority” is? Is it just the Hindu fundamentalists or people for whom economic liberalisation is the solution to all woes? This trajectory of thought is becoming increasingly majoritarian, assisting fundamentalists in reorganising culture.
Today, the libertarian thought has led to a summit where not art but the art market is important, where not Husain but the absurd controversy surrounding him is important, where not ethics but potential buyers are important. Art history made transitions at important historical junctures as and when the artistic community stood up for progressive streams of thought.
In the age of economic liberalisation and state withdrawal, art is moulding itself to turn its back on the historical. Geeta Kapur says, “Such contemporary art will meet its nemesis in obsolescence, in a premature, death-driven decrepitude.”
Artists have often found themselves in exile during historic upheavals. Nazi Germany, General Franco’s Spain, Porfirio Diaz’s Mexico before the revolution, all have witnessed mass exoduses of artists. Husain, largely seen as not an overtly political painter, is in exile today because for a large section of society his identity is confined to that of a Muslim. Ram Rahman contextualises and links this kind of attack on a pluralistic culture to the increasing intolerance by Hindu fundamentalists.
He said that what was happening in Orissa – the violence against Christians – could be directly linked to the attack on the exhibition. It is in such contexts that the attack on Husain’s paintings should be looked at. Whether only Hindu fundamentalists are responsible for such attacks or state-supported global capitalism should also share the responsibility remains an open question.
Communalism in art is a result of depoliticisation and a simultaneous “valorisation of the un-theorised contemporary”, as Geeta Kapur points out. It should be looked at in the context of a larger process of economic liberalisation. Contemporary artist Jitish Kallat said at the Summit: “The operational term in art has shifted from creativity to production.”
The implications of this trend are countless. What if the popular comic character Calvin had seen Hobbes, his dear friend, as just a soft toy? It is human imagination that allows art to flow unrestrictedly, creating for us our fantasies, wonderlands, angels, demons and adventures. The hour demands that art be set free to explore the endless horizons of the imagination unbridled by fascist and communal forces.
As lawyer Lawrence Liang puts it, “The true test of democracy lies not in the volume of speech that it is willing to grant its citizens but in the volume of uncomfortable speech that it is willing to listen.”

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/20080926251904300.htm