As the government continues to push its celebrations of India’s 75th year of independence as “Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav”, the Safdar Hashmi M...
As the government continues to push its celebrations of India’s 75th year of independence as “Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav”, the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust, or Sahmat collective, has organised an exhibition in New Delhi that looks back at the milestone events in India’s freedom struggle.
Several projects undertaken by the Sahmat collective in the last 30 years have been put on display at the India is Not Lost exhibition at Delhi’s Jawahar Bhawan, in an attempt to have “moments of public courage and sacrifice in the long struggle for freedom remain palpable and edifying for generations to come”.
Playwright and political activist Safdar Hashmi was fatally attacked by goons allegedly linked to the Indian National Congress Party on January 1, 1989, during a street performance in Ghaziabad. Hashmi succumbed to his injuries the following day. In the aftermath of his death, artists and activists came together to set up Sahmat to “resist the forces threatening the essentially pluralist and democratic spirit of creative expression”.
The artwork displayed at India is Not Lost exhibition covers different parts of India’s freedom struggle, like the 1857 mutiny and the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre, and goes up to Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination in 1948.
Scroll.in spoke to Ram Rahman, a contemporary photographer and a founding member...
