Sudhanva Deshpande’s deeply humane new book on the death and life of Safdar Hashmi opens with the sentence, “I wasn’t even supposed to be t...
Sudhanva Deshpande’s deeply humane new book on the death and life of Safdar Hashmi opens with the sentence, “I wasn’t even supposed to be there.” This is how many of us feel in today’s India. There’s a line in Sudhir Mishra’s Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi which says something like when you travel a hundred kilometres from New Delhi you actually travel a distance of a thousand years, that’s the kind of disparity there is between the two worlds. It holds true even when measured in terms of economic growth or basic amenities.
But when it comes to the radical religious and political venom which resides in the heart of the citizens of this nation, there isn’t much difference between a town in Uttar Pradesh and the heart of New Delhi where just a few days ago, a clip went viral in which a group of men were heard chanting “desh ke gaddaron ko, goli maaro saalo ko” – the new favourite battle cry of hate-mongers – inside the busiest metro station in central Delhi.
A thirty-four-year-old Safdar Hashmi, while performing a street play in Jhandapur, a village in Uttar Pradesh not far from Delhi, was beaten to death in broad daylight, hit over twenty times...
