How Delhi’s Theatre Capital of Mandi House Has Changed Its Voice

Every January first, Delhi’s theatre community gathers to remember Safdar Hashmi, murdered mid-performance in 1989 for daring to take dissent to the streets. At the 27th Safdar Hashmi Memorial, remembrance becomes reckoning. The memorial, held annually by the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT), serves as both commemoration and continuation of a radical tradition that once defined Mandi House's very identity.

Mandi House, once the moral and political nerve centre of Indian theatre, now tells a quieter story, of institutional endurance, vanished street radicalism, and the uneasy domestication of dissent in public culture.

From Nation-Building to Revolutionary Streets, The Golden Era and Its Martyr

Mandi House's transformation into Delhi's theatrical nerve centre was a deliberate act of nation-building. When Nehru envisioned central Delhi as the amphitheatre for performing the modern Indian state, the establishment of the Sangeet Natak Akademi in 1952 and the National School of Drama in 1959 laid the foundation for what would become India's premier cultural hub. The 1960s and 1970s witnessed the area's metamorphosis under Ebrahim Alkazi's visionary leadership at NSD, where his productions at Purana Qila became defining cultural events. The constellation of venues, Little Theatre Group, Shri Ram Centre, Triveni Kala Sangam, Kamani Auditorium, formed an unprecedented concentration of artistic expression.

“Those days, theatre wasn’t a hobby or a resume line, it felt like a public duty. You’d see queues curling around Shri Ram Centre, people arguing about Brecht and Badal Sircar over chai. There was a sense that what happened on stage mattered to the life of the city, even to the idea of the nation,” reminiscences Ram Rahman, well renowned contemporary Indian photographer and curator, as he talked to us about what the early years meant.

Yet parallel to this institutionalised excellence emerged a radical street theatre movement that would ultimately define Mandi House's moral conscience. The Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA) and its successor, Jana Natya Manch (JANAM), founded in 1973 by Safdar Hashmi and fellow activists, represented theatre's democratic reimagining. JANAM's first street play, Machine (1978), performed before over 200,000 workers, exemplified the group's commitment to taking art directly to the working class, as per reports.

Some reports also mention that the Emergency period of 1975 to 1977 paradoxically strengthened this movement. Repression against political activists forced JANAM to develop shorter, more portable performances that could be staged quickly in public spaces, a form that combined artistry with defiance. Reportedly, by the late 1980s, productions at Shri Ram Centre drew queues stretching around buildings, whilst JANAM's political street plays reached audiences who had never set foot inside a formal auditorium. Theatre existed in productive tension, grand institutions pursuing artistic excellence whilst radical collectives pursued social transformation.

Then came January 1, 1989. Safdar Hashmi was brutally murdered during a performance of Halla Bol in Jhandapur, Sahibabad, attacked by political goons whilst performing for workers. When over 15,000 people attended his funeral procession and JANAM returned to complete the interrupted performance just 48 hours later, it became a defining moment of cultural resistance. On his birthday, April 12, 1989, what has now become National Street Theatre Day, approximately 30,000 performances took place across India, reportedly. Dormant groups revived; hundreds of new collectives formed. Hashmi's death galvanised the street theatre movement into its most vibrant period, a final flowering before the long decline.

The Slow Suffocation And Why Street Theatre Is Reducing

The decline of street theatre from its apex in the early 1990s was neither sudden nor attributable to a single cause, it was death by a thousand cuts. The reasons were manifold and interconnected, representing fundamental shifts in India's political economy and cultural landscape.

“By the mid-1990s, something had shifted. Street theatre stopped being about organising people and started becoming about winning prizes, getting into greater screens abroad and appeasing not the audience locally but globally. Liberalisation changed what young people wanted, and what they had time for. The urgency drained out, and what remained often felt like imitation without conviction,” says Ashish Ghosh, a researcher of children theatre and a former professor of political science at Delhi University, who also performed a piece on how Ramprasadi Shyama Sangeet called for unity in a politically fragmented Bengal of the 1800s.

Economic liberalisation fundamentally altered Delhi's geography and sociology. Some reports state that the rising rentals pushed theatre groups away from Mandi House's prestigious addresses. The competitive nature of Delhi University's street play scene, whilst ostensibly promoting the form, proved fatal to its original purpose. Productions became increasingly confined to college festivals, performed for educated Delhi University circuits rather than the working-class masses for whom street theatre was originally conceived.

“When seniors talk about performing at factory gates or workers’ colonies, it sounds almost mythical now. Today, you need permissions for everything, and even then people are wary of stopping. Public space itself has become political, and not in a way that favours dissent,” says, SFI Member and a political science student at Delhi University, Ruchi Jha.

Perhaps most damagingly, street theatre became NGO-ised. By the early 1990s, development organisations discovered street theatre as a tool for spreading awareness about HIV, family planning, and social issues. This "nukkad natak" for social messaging, whilst well-intentioned, stripped the form of its radical political edge.

The practitioners themselves aged without sufficient renewal. The generation that had braved police lathis during the Emergency grew older, took on family responsibilities, and found it increasingly difficult to sustain themselves through theatre alone. “We didn’t leave because we stopped believing. We left because belief doesn’t pay school fees. Many of us took other jobs, raised families, got tired, physically and emotionally. Street theatre demands your body, your time, your safety. After a point, survival takes precedence,” says Rupa Mazumdar, 60, who came to show her solidarity with her age-old political theatre community.

The Sanitisation of Dissent

Walking through contemporary Mandi House, the grand institutions remain, NSD continues producing acclaimed actors; Shri Ram Centre's repertory maintains regular performances; the Bharat Rang Mahotsav brings together theatre groups from across India; newly formed Triveni Theatre Fest also brings together artists with ideas. Yet something fundamental has shifted. Political theatre, once the lifeblood of Delhi's theatrical culture, has undergone a quiet transformation into something far less threatening to power.

“There’s no ban on political theatre at Bharat Rang Mahotsav or at any other larger festivals but there’s a very clear preference. History is welcome, mythology is celebrated, abstraction is safe. The present, especially if it’s uncomfortable, is quietly sidelined. Politics is allowed, as long as it’s safely in the past,” says a member of the Shoonya Theatre Group, whose Cherry ka Bageecha was given the opportunity to be staged at Triveni Theatre Fest 2025 but another more risque play addressing the raging issue of sanitation workers was not allowed to be screened at another festival.

Abir Mukherjee, part of the puppeteering group founded by Dadi Padumjee, pioneer of the modern puppetry scene in India, whose short puppet play on rights of sanitation worker was showcased at the memorial on January 1 laments, “Increasingly, "political theatre" means historical dramas about pre-Independence struggles or mythological retellings with vague contemporary resonances. Plays exploring caste, communalism, or state violence exist but only if they tone it down to explore it from the sidelines.”

Self-censorship has become endemic. What filmmakers describe as looking at scripts and knowing instinctively what will not see the light of day now even theatre practitioners face similar constraints. 

“I’ve had venues suddenly become ‘unavailable’ once the synopsis circulated. No one says no outright—you’re just advised to rethink, soften, maybe change the emphasis. Meanwhile, mythological productions sail through without friction. You learn very quickly what kind of stories travel smoothly and which ones stall,” says Mukherjee when asked about the challenges and freedoms of a theatre artist in India.

Even groups that maintain independence face existential challenges. Studio Safdar in Shadi Khampur, established to realise Hashmi's dream of accessible, politically engaged theatre, persists, but operates in an increasingly hostile environment. Street performances addressing electoral reform, freedom of speech, or police brutality attract not audiences hungry for political dialogue but authorities viewing political assembly with suspicion. 

“Mandi House has indeed radically changed, much like how the boundaries of it historically have in terms of buildings, even its social and political standings have changed. Now infront of NSD mythological plays, plays of Gandhi, Godse and the great play of “appeasement politics” are plastered with stages. Plays about social themes are all hush hush and need to be staged carefully. With increasing scrutiny, street theatre is almost non existent except proper college campuses or fests or dedicated spaces like competitions.

And where are plays about actual things that matter? Rarely any, sadly,” says Sohail Hashmi, brother of Safdar, for whom the memorial is much more than just memory; it is also hope, that this will ignite the community and enable whatever space exists.

The 27th Safdar Hashmi Memorial stood again as an annual reminder of what was lost. Every  January first, performers gather to stage works of political critique; audiences gather in solidarity. At least in this little space, this year it gathered in the HKS Surjeet Bhavan, theatre got the true artistic freedom it deserves.