On January 1, 1989, the firebrand Communist playwright and actor Safdar Hashmi was in a labour colony in Jhandapur, Uttar Pradesh, when he was brutally assaulted by goons armed with guns and blunt instruments. He was there to stage the street play 'Halla Bol' (Raise Hell), in support of a local CPI(M) leader's election to the Ghaziabad City Council with his street theatre troupe Jana Natya Mancha (People's Theatre Front), or JANAM.

Within minutes of beginning the performance, the troupe was attacked with sticks, iron rods, and guns. In the skirmish that followed, Hashmi received severe injuries to his head. Scans showed that his injuries were so severe, his brain had been smashed and cerebrospinal fluid was leaking through his nose. He died a day later at the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in Delhi. He was 34 years old at the time.

Hashmi became an icon after his death, and his brutal murder became a defining moment in the history of cultural resistance in India. In his afterlife, Hashmi became larger than life — inspiring and mobilising generations of playwrights, actors, writers, filmmakers, thinkers, and artists like M.F. Husain. But his life was no less extraordinary than his death, and his use of the nukkad natak or street theatre as a powerful instrument of social activism and protest has since become an example of how the performing arts can be used to dismantle systems of caste, class, and gender oppression.

Street theatre, in its modern Indian incarnation, was born in the years leading to the Emergency (1975-1977), as a form of resistance to authoritarianism and state censorship. The spontaneous, flash-mob-esque nature of the performances made them difficult to censor in real time, and this made the art form an ideal medium of raising awareness and disseminating political messages among the masses.

JANAM grew out of the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA) in response to the increasingly oppressive atmosphere of Indira Gandhi's India in 1973. Between 1973 and 1975, Hashmi and JANAM performed several open-air street plays for the public, including the street play Kursi, Kursi, Kursi (Chair, Chair, Chair), which narrated the story of a king whose throne moves with him when he attempts to give it up in favour of an elected representative.

The play proved to be a turning point for both Hashmi and the JANAM troupe. When the Emergency ended in 1977, the troupe returned to the streets once again with Machine, in response to a workers protest at a Herig-India factory in Ghaziabad. The performance attracted an audience of 2,00,000 workers and bystanders, and remains one of JANAM's most evocative and powerful productions.

What made JANAM's open-air productions such as Machine, Aurat (Woman), Mai Diwas ki Kahani (The Story of May Day), and Halla Bol (Raise Hell) particularly effective in raising awareness and reaching masses was Hashmi's keen understanding and profound knowledge of regional folk songs and oral story-telling traditions such as dastangoi, which he incorporated into his plays and performances. Drawing on India's heritage of folk art forms and indigenous cultural practices also allowed JANAM to locate itself at the intersection of street theatre as a popular art form and a mode of protest.

Since its foundation almost five decades ago, JANAM has produced over 8,500 performances of about 70 street plays in 140 cities across India. But the JANAM troupe's most pivotal performance was perhaps staged on January 4, 1989, only two days after Hashmi's death, when his wife Moloyshree Hashmi and members of the troupe, returned to the site of his murder to complete the performance of Halla Bol — which has since become and emotional and symbolic call to resistance and collective action in India.

To learn more about the life and legacy of Safdar Hashmi and the JANAM troupe, read Sudhanva Deshpande's 'Halla Bol: The Death and Life of Safdar Hashmi'.

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