Confluence of Culture, Intellectual, Political: 34th Safdar Hashmi Memorial

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceEdit in Ginger×AFTER a gap of two covid years, the 34th Safdar Hashmi Memorial was observed at HKS Surjeet Bhawan on January1, 2023 – a unique confluence of cultural, intellectual and political.

‘Safdar’s Passion was Social Change’

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceEdit in Ginger×“I FIRST heard of Safdar Hashmi around 1970, when I joined the National School of Drama in New Delhi. All I wanted was fame and popularity, and I couldn’t understand how an artist as accomplished as Safdar would not care for that. It took me a long time to realise that Safdar’s passion was social change. For him, his principles were more valuable than his life. I was deeply distressed when I heard of his killing.

A Leading Man of the People: Soumitra Chattopadhyay

SOUMITRA Chattopadhyay died at mid-day on Sunday, November 15, 2020, after treatment in a Kolkata hospital for 40 days. He was 85. He would be missed by millions, for he was among the top Bengali leading men of his generation in cinema. But he was much more: an accomplished dramatist, theatre-director and stage-actor, a poet, a reciter, an editor, a painter in his last years, and an exemplary representative of civilized grace.

Saying No to NPR and CAA, the SAHMAT Way

WHAT do you do on an evening of dissent, especially at a time when the very essence of the Indian constitution is under grave threat? You dance, you draw, you perform and yes, you sing. For as the vibrant banners, strung at the annual SAHMAT cultural event, reminded us of Bertolt Brecht’s iconic words, “Yes, there will be singing about the dark times”.

Safdar Hashmi’s Life and Death

‘SEASONS come and go – as do governments – and currently Delhi is witnessing a particularly cold spell.’ When the noted poet and lyricist Javed Akhtar said this, an ostensible statement about the weather became a poetic barb at the ruling dispensation. He was addressing hundreds of workers and their families on January 1, 2020, at the site of Safdar Hashmi’s killing at Jhandapur in the Sahibabad Industrial Area on the outskirts of Delhi. ‘But one season doesn’t change, for the poor – the season of exploitation and oppression.’It is this ugly reality that the rulers want to hide.

Restore Communications in Jammu and Kashmir

Artists, historians, academics and concerned citizens have issued a statement on September 20 saying that they are greatly disturbed by the shutdown in communication network for well over five weeks in Jammu and Kashmir which is causing extreme hardship to the people there.

PUBGwale, Culture and Politics

MOBILE gaming or broadly video gaming has caught India like fire. It has become a common sight to find people fiddling with their mobiles in any public place. Even in interactions within a family or closely-knit friends, ‘phubbing’ (the act of ignoring someone you are with, and giving attention to your mobile phone instead) has become common. The spread of internet availability also is making us give more importance to our mobiles than to other forms of social interactions. One of the major pass-times for the young is to play various games on mobiles.

Centenary Observation of Jallianwala Bagh

WHO killed the unarmed Indians in Jallianwala Bagh? Not General Dyer, he did not fire a single shot, he commanded to fire; the Indian soldiers of the British Indian army killed more than 1,000 people on April 13, 1919 on the Baisakhi day.

Girish Karnad, the Playwright against the Right

IT is both apt and reductive that two images dominate others as Girish Karnad is remembered on social media: one, with Gauri Lankesh, protesting the killing of Karnad’s fellow Dharwadian Prof M S Kalburgi; the other, wearing the MeTooUrbanNaxal placard, at the memorial to mark the first anniversary of Gauri Lankesh’s own killing. Over the past few years, Karnad was seen as one of the most consistent, fearless and principled defenders of freedom of speech, cultural diversity and democracy.

Take Punitive Action for Lauding Gandhi’s Assassin

Hundreds of academicians, intellectuals, cultural activists and others have jointly issued the following statement on May 17WE are deeply shocked by the statement of Pragya Thakur, the BJP candidate for the Bhopal Lok Sabha seat, lauding Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, as a “desh bhakt”. This amounts to endorsing the murder of the Mahatma as an act of “desh bhakti” or patriotism. It is not enough for the BJP to distance itself from Thakur’s remarks, or to ask her to apologise.

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