REMEMBERING BHAGAT SINGH
IN HIS ALMA MATER
For the
first time since his execution, the primary school in which Bhagat Singh
studied as a child witnessed his songs being sung. Madeeha Gauhar, the director
of the play Mera
Rang De Basanti Chola, staged
a few songs from the production in Bangay village, Jaranwala (Faisalabad
district), Bhagat’s Singh birthplace, last Saturday.Even now a few classes are
held on the grounds outside of this one-room government primary school as a
mark of respect to Bangay’s most famous son.Ms. Gauhar and her theatre group
Ajoka plan to stage the full play in November. The songs are part of the Bhagat
Singh narrative and celebrate his heroic life. After the songs, the group
visited his old home in the village.
The
school is kept in its original condition but another one has been built
elsewhere. There are some very old trees, Ms. Gauhar says and one of them is
said to be planted by Bhagat Singh. Every November, a free eye camp is held in
the village in his memory. While the play, written by Shahid Nadeem, has been
performed in India from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and in Pakistan, Ms. Gauhar says
this is the first time that anything on the lines of a commemoration took place
in Bangay village, about two hours from Lahore. It was a historical event in
that sense as it has never happened before.“It’s a small attempt on our part to
pay a tribute but the significance of taking it to his village is to reclaim
some of the lost historical connections and narrative denied by India and
Pakistan. Also the play was an attempt to connect with the peace movement,” she
says. “My mother is from Gujarat and father from Peshawar and as an artist I
felt the need for this connection. History in a sense stopped in 1947 and it
was important to rediscover your identity and sense of belonging and continuity
which is totally broken in Pakistan in ’47 in the way a new discourse/identity
was created by the establishment. I wanted to link up all these strands —
personal, political cultural through my theatre which connects us to a deeper
underlying truth,” she says.
It was
also important to bring back the importance of Bhagat Singh. “Many younger
people don’t even know who he is — my son Nirvan plays Singh in the play and a
student of filmmaking he has made a film on how he approached the role.While
doing so he asked students who was Bhagat Singh and the answers he got were
varied — that he was a dacoit, that he killed Muslims and one of them said that
Bollywood actor Ajay Devgan had something to do with it,” she laments.These
were students of a premier institution the National School of Arts and it was
shocking, she points out.She strongly felt the need to bring out the story of
how relevant Bhagat Singh is still to all of us — he was an atheist and had
nothing to do with religion though he is being reconstructed differently in
some sections.
This
March 23, the day of his hanging, where annual demonstrations are held at
Shadman Chowk in Lahore which the government had agreed to rename after Bhagat
Singh, (though it backed out later), the Jamat ud Dawa (JUD) had come to staged
a protest.“We were in for a big shock and the JUD guys defaced our posters.
When I asked the man if he was doing this because Bhagat Singh was a Sikh, he
said no it’s because he was an atheist,” Ms. Gauhar said.On his birth
anniversary on September 28, a small crowd cut a cake in quiet commemoration. “It
is more about reclaiming a secular narrative and that space is shrinking
rapidly,” she addedAjoka is a theatre group which believes in the ideals of
secularism, humanism, democracy and tolerance and it has been performing plays
for the last 30 years all over the world. The play is based on the exemplary
life of Bhagat Singh who was executed by the British in Lahore Central Jail on
March 23, 1931.
Prof. John
Kurakar
No comments:
Post a Comment