On 1 January 1989, Jana Natya Manch (Janam) was performing Halla Bol in Jhandapur, Sahibabad, in support of workers’ demands when the troupe was attacked. Janam’s convenor, Safdar Hashmi, died in a New Delhi hospital the next day. On 4 January, the troupe returned and completed the play. That return made Halla Bol a defining episode in Indian street theatre’s history and public memory—not because one performance created the form, but because the artists carried it on after violence interrupted it.
Who was Safdar Hashmi?
Hashmi was the convenor of Jana Natya Manch, widely known as Janam, a Delhi theatre group founded in 1973 by theatre amateurs inspired by the Indian People’s Theatre Association. By the time of the Jhandapur performance, Janam had spent years developing a street-theatre practice that brought plays directly to workplaces and residential areas.
Janam says its street-theatre journey began in October 1978 with Machine, a play about industrial labour. The group went on to address trade-union rights, unemployment, rising prices, women’s rights, communalism and education. Its official history describes street theatre as a form that takes topical events and social issues “straight to peoples’ places of work and residence.” Jana Natya Manch’s history
The scale of that work before the attack is captured in a historical total reported by ritimo in 2011: from 1977 to 1988, Janam staged more than 4,300 performances of 22 plays in over 90 cities, reaching about 2.5 million people. These are reported figures for that period, not a current or audited count. ritimo’s account of Janam
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What was Halla Bol about?
Halla Bol brought workers’ material concerns to the centre of the performance. A 2020 review describes worker characters demanding a monthly wage increase from ₹562 to ₹1,050, women workers asking for a factory crèche, and contract workers speaking about insecure employment. Those details are the reviewer’s account of the play, rather than independently verified transcript quotations. The 2020 review
Janam performed the play in Jhandapur on 1 January 1989 at the invitation of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), in support of workers’ right to unionise and demand fair wages, according to SAHMAT. SAHMAT’s account
What happened in Jhandapur on 1 January 1989?
During the performance, Janam was attacked. Hashmi was seriously injured and died in a New Delhi hospital on 2 January, according to the troupe’s official history. Keeping those dates distinct matters: the attack took place on 1 January; Hashmi’s death followed the next day. Jana Natya Manch’s account
Accounts differ in how they characterize the attackers. Janam’s history calls them anti-social elements, while SAHMAT attributes the attack to ruling-party goondas. The central, shared fact is that the performance was violently interrupted while Janam was presenting the play in support of workers’ demands.
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Why did Janam return to perform the play?
On 4 January, Janam returned to Jhandapur and performed Halla Bol to completion. SAHMAT describes the return as a refusal to be silenced and an assertion of artists’ right to perform and express their thoughts; the Janam exhibit also records the return performance. SAHMAT’s account · Jana Natya Manch exhibit
The return gives the event its enduring force. Street theatre places performers and audiences in direct relation, without the physical separation of a conventional theatre building. The Janam exhibit notes that there are no visual obstructions making fellow audience members and performers invisible to one another, as can happen in proscenium theatre. In Jhandapur, the troupe’s return made that public relationship inseparable from the play’s meaning.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How did Halla Bol shape street theatre’s public memory?
It is more accurate to call the interrupted performance and Janam’s return a defining episode than to say that one play changed Indian street theatre single-handedly. Janam’s practice was already established: the group had taken performances into everyday spaces for years and addressed social and labour issues. The Jhandapur events concentrated that history into a stark sequence—an attack during a workers’ performance, Hashmi’s death, and the troupe’s return to finish the play.
That sequence linked the form’s method to its stakes. A play performed where workers gathered could address their demands in the same public space in which those demands were being made. Completing Halla Bol after the attack became a visible act of artistic persistence and solidarity, and a reason the event remains central to accounts of Janam and Indian street theatre.
Further reading on Hashmi and Halla Bol
For a book-length account, Sudhanva Deshpande’s Halla Bol: The Death and Life of Safdar Hashmi is directly relevant. LeftWord Books lists the title, and the Alkazi Foundation describes it as drawing on memories, interviews, Hashmi’s diaries, documents and photographs from the Jana Natya Manch archive. It is a later account of Hashmi and the events around the play, not the text of the original Halla Bol. LeftWord Books · Alkazi Foundation description
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