Safdar Hashmi

[Hueckstedt]

I am not the best person to answer this question, i.e., what happened to 
Safdar Hashmi, but I do know a little. I happened to meet him briefly, in 
the summer of 1988, a few months before he was killed. 
The story I heard was along these lines.

It was during the campaign for elections to, I think, the Delhi municipal 
corporation. Safdar and his troupe were putting on a street play that was 
critical of the Congress (I) person running in that campaign. In the 
middle of the day, I don't know where exactly, while the street play was 
going on, Safdar Hashmi was gunned down and killed. As I understand it, 
this was not a matter of communalism or artistic over-sensitivity. It was 
simply "power" politics. He is memorialized briefly, along with many 
others, at the end of the fine documentary on Punjab called _In Memory of 
Friends_. Also, 
there is now an NGO, I believe, or some such organization, that uses his 
name, the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust. I may have the name all wrong. 
The Hindi writers whose works I translate knew him very well.

Bob Hueckstedt 

Robert A. Hueckstedt, Associate Professor of Indic Languages
Asian Studies Centre, 328 Fletcher Argue, University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, Manitoba R3T 2N2 Canada
http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/asian_studies
fax 1 204-275-5781 phones 1 204-474-8964, 1 204-488-4797