Twenty years ago, on 1 January 1989, Safdar Hashmi was fatally attacked in broad daylight while performing a street play in Sahibabad, a working class area just outside Delhi. Political activist, actor, playwright and poet, Safdar had been deeply committed, like so many young men and women of his generation, to the anti-imperialist, secular and egalitarian values that were woven into the rich fabric of the nation’s liberation struggle. Disturbed by the betrayal of its goals by the post- independence ruling elite, Safdar too had moved closer to the Left, eventually joining the CPI(M), yo pursue his goal of being part of a social order worthy of a free people.

Tragically, it would be the manner of his death at the hands of a politically patronised mafia that would single him out. The spontaneous nationwide wave of revulsion, grief and resistance aroused by his brutal murder transformed him into a powerful symbol of the very values that had been sought to be crushed by his death. Such a death belongs to the revolutionary martyr.

Safdar was thirty-four years old when he died. Those years, during which he had initially tried to find himself in an academic career, eventually encompassed an intense period of revolutionary activity when circumstances and a maturing inclination brought together an early interest in theatre and a growing political commitment. Political theatre, street theatre, and finally the growth of the Jana Natya Manch into a forum for evolving a conception of an alternative people’s theatre and culture.

The goal of strengthening bonds of democratic unity among creative artists had been an important focus of Safdar’s aesthetic and political activities during this period. That it should have been achieved so significantly through his death and through the solidarity surrounding the activities of the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust has sustained and strengthened the resolve of those who uphold the values and objectives that Safdar has come to symbolise.