What role did performance play in the Indian anticolonial struggle? What forms and genres did ‘protest performance’ adapt for the conditions and questions that framed decolonisation? By protest performance I am referring to the connected and mutually constituted set of poetic, musical, and theatrical experiments inaugurated by anticolonial artists and intellectuals in the 20th century.
These forms of protest performance spanned a range of genres. They included theatre productions such as Utpal Dutt’s Mahavidroh, which dramatised the 1857 War of Independence, the first pan-Indian anticolonial uprising against the East India Company’s regime. They also included the street performances and guerrilla theatre of the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) that gave voice to anticolonial resistance and critiques of imperialism. For example, IPTA’s repertoire prominently featured songs and plays that addressed the 1946 Bengal famine, during which an estimated 3.8 million people died due to British war-time policies. These plays and theatrical productions often incorporated musical renditions of movement poetry penned by prominent anticolonial intellectuals and political leadership. This kind of movement poetry, i.e. protest verses produced by political workers and organic intellectuals of the anticolonial struggle, emerged as the definitive form of anticolonial performance in India.
The vast majority of Indian protest poetry from the colonial period relied heavily on popular imagery and symbols drawn from local languages and everyday speech. This protest poetry mobilised a direct form of address that relied on simple, colloquial language to frame a call to arms against empire. Many of these poems can be accessed by historians and researchers today in the pages of countless anticolonial periodicals that made up India’s emergent print culture. However, these poems also exceeded the print form, circulating in song, performance, and oral practices. This was especially true of India’s rural expanses, where a vast majority of the population remained functionally illiterate and had limited access to infrastructures of print and its circulation.
In a context where the peasantry was the backbone of the anticolonial movement, this oral-textual form was essential. Revolutionary poetry became a mobilisational and intellectual tool of anticolonialism in response to material conditions. The protest poem was shaped by the peasantry and their oral and performative culture, often drawing closely on imagery and symbolism rooted in regional vernacular poetic traditions and popular practices. This is the legacy that vernacular anticolonial poetics passed on to postcolonial movements against authoritarianism and neocolonialism in South Asia.
Below, I present and contextualise two postcolonial poems in translation that embodied and expanded this anticolonial poetics. I focus in particular on the region of Punjab, and poetry written in the Punjabi language, a regional vernacular that remains under-studied and marginalised within institutional spaces of literary and intellectual production. This is largely because of the hierarchising logics of colonialism and dominant nationalism. As historians and language activists have argued, British colonial administration and policy privileged English, the colonial language, and Urdu, the preferred vernacular, over regional languages like Punjabi. Colonial knowledge declared Punjabi “a vulgar patois”, unsuitable for governance and high culture. As a result, a language hierarchy was sedimented in which Punjabi, and those who spoke it, came to be viewed as inferior and backward.
The situation remained largely unchanged following formal independence in 1947. In the newly formed nation-states of India and Pakistan, Hindi and Urdu came to operate as “national languages”. English remained dominant as an ‘official’ language of the state, as well as a language of prestige spoken by urban elites. While in Punjab, India, Punjabi eventually became the official language of the state, it continued to function as a marker of class and rural/urban divides. In Punjab, Pakistan, on the other hand, Punjabi was not institutionalised at all. To this day, in a province where it is the first language of the majority of the population, it is not taught in schools and is not the medium of instruction.
As a result, an anti-elitist language politics crucially informs the regional, popular, and rural-focused character of Punjabi revolutionary poetics in the 20th century. Punjabi intellectuals echoed their contemporaries elsewhere like Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, an iconic Kenyan writer who rejected writing in English and wrote exclusively in his native Gikuyu. Ngũgĩ was a pioneer of East African fiction in English, and his writing was crucial to developing critiques of colonialism and neocolonialism in African writing in the era of decolonisation. He argued that until Africans ‘decolonised their minds’ by writing national literatures in their own languages, anticolonial liberation would remain out of reach. Punjabi revolutionary poets like Daman and Udasi, who I will now introduce below, embraced a similar language politics to Ngũgĩ. They cultivated a linguistic and literary practice that sought decolonisation in substance, and not just in name, i.e., a total transformation of oppressive economic and cultural structures inherited from empire, rather than a mere transfer of power from the coloniser to postcolonial ruling elites.
Resisting empire and neocolonialism
Ustad Daman hailed from Lahore, in present-day Pakistan. Daman was a working class poet, a tailor who was drawn to the Indian anticolonial struggle during the 1920s and 1930s. This was a period of heightened militant and mass anticolonial organising in the city. Lahore’s streets jostled with “America-returned Sikhs”, immigrants who had travelled to the Americas as farm workers and students in the early 20th century, and returned to India radicalised by their connected experiences of colonial dispossession and racist exploitation. Organisations like the Kirti Kissan Party (Workers and Peasants Party) and the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association synthesised Marxist internationalism with Indian anticolonialism, improvising movements of militant struggle that did not shy from the use of revolutionary terror. The Indian National Congress, the largest national-level mass organisation at this point, launched demonstrations and protest actions, demanding “purna swaraj” – complete self-rule.
Daman began reciting and singing his verses at the Congress’s rallies across the city, to thunderous cheers from crowds that continued to swell. As a result, he became an important figure within the city’s political and literary circles. But unlike his close friends, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian National Congress leader and future Indian Prime Minister, and Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Communist poet and editor of Afro-Asian magazine Lotus, Daman was not canonised within accounts of Indian anticolonialism. This is partly due to the privileging of the written word: Daman’s poetry was mostly oral, it travelled through word of mouth and through his performances and recitations at mass gatherings and political meetings. The only extant anthology of his works was compiled and published posthumously. Engaging with his verses is therefore a crucial step towards broadening the collective and institutional memory of progressive movements today.
In the following clip, Daman recites an untitled poem in a radio interview. He punctuates his verses colloquially, offering contextual information and directing the listeners’ attention to particular turns of phrases and images. In response, the audience chimes in, echoing certain phrases, and adding “wah” (bravo!) audibly. In this mode of oral performance, a dialogue is established between the poet and the listeners that invites the audience to participate in both the performance and its interpretation.
Relevant timestamps: 52:59-54:23
As most of Daman’s poetry circulated orally, it is difficult to date this poem. The interview itself was conducted in 1974. Given the tenor and topic of the poem, it was likely written after 1947, addressing the many years of military and authoritarian rule in postcolonial Pakistan. I came across this poem in this radio interview, while trying to find out more about Daman. I realised how under-represented he remains in official archives and institutional histories of the left and anticolonialism in Pakistan, despite his looming presence in the collective memory of literary activist communities in Punjab. This clip is a reminder that expanding our sources beyond the traditional archive, to include audio, photographs, oral culture, performance, life writing is essential to excavating histories at the margins of national and cosmopolitan literary cultures.
Aithay inqilab aavay ga zaroor
Saday hathaan diyan rekhaan
Pairaan naal meetan valeyo.
O makhmalan te reshaman de
Vich lapaytann valeyo.
O do hatheen daulataan nu
Aj samaitann valeyo.
O luttay puttay hoyaan di
Saff lapaitan valeyo.
Kar leya kothiyan vich chaanan
Kho ke saadi akhiyaan da noor
Aithay inqilab aavay ga zaroor.
Tuseen kehdi laikhni naal
Saday laikh likhne chahnday ho
Saday bharavan de hathon bharan
Mardeyaan vaikhnay chahnday ho
Sadiyaan haddian de bhambad
Baldeyaan vaikhne chahnday ho
Kahno hashr tohn pehlaan
Phooknay shuru keetay ne tanoor
Aithay inqilab aavay ga zaroor
The revolution will come for sure
O you, who stamp out the lines in our palms
Under your feet.
O you, who recline amidst
The softest muslins and silks.
O you, who grasp at wealth today,
With both your hands.
O you, who extinguish the ranks
Of the looted, the wretched.
Your mansions burn bright,
With light taken from our eyes,
The revolution will come for sure.
In which of your texts
Will our destinies be scrawled?
You wish to see brothers die,
At the hands of their own.
You seek the warmth of fires
That burn the fodder of our bones.
Why light this furnace,
Before the end of the world.
The revolution will come for sure.
Anthems of peasant rebellion
Sant Ram Udasi was born in Raisar, Punjab in India in 1939. During the 1960s, the Naxalbari movement, a peasant-led Maoist militancy swept across the Punjabi countryside. The Naxalites advanced a Marxist critique of ‘semi-colonial’ conditions in India, pointing to the ways in which the country may have achieved formal independence, but remained chained to the uneven system of global capitalism through the collusion of elites that controlled the postcolonial state. Like the anticolonial Ghadar Party and Kirti Kissan Party, the Naxalbari movement situated the rural worker and peasant at the vanguard of their armed struggle. Poets like Udasi furnished the Naxalbari movement with a distinct poetics that both invited and celebrated militant resistance with imagery and oral poetic forms embedded in the regional vernacular. Much like Daman, Udasi’s poetry circulated primarily orally, and he drew heavily on popular rural rhymes in his performance. For example, Udasi composed the following poem along the lines of a popular folk tune:
The poem redefines Indian nationalism, demystifying statist appropriations of “homeland” that serve only dominant elites. The poem’s affective power rests on images drawn from everyday rural life: the fields, the birds, the changing seasons. The rustic beauty of these visuals is juxtaposed against the “blood-sucking leech”, which the collective voice in the poem vows to crush. The image of the leech evokes Karl Marx’s description of capitalism in Capital, where he declares it to be “vampire-like”, feeding on labour to keep itself alive. Here, Udasi’s nod to Marxist critiques of capitalism is synthesized with an anticolonial politics centered on the homeland and the nation, “its people”, the peasants and workers.
Desh hai pyara sanu zindagi pyari naalon
Desh tohn vi pyaray aiday lok haaniyaan
Asaan tor deni lahu peeni jok haaniyaan
Sadi peliyaan da noor
Charhay vekh ke saroor
Tor deyaan ge gharoor
Hunn chalna nahi tera koi zor velda
Gajange sher jadon bhajange kayr sabhay
Rajannge kirti kissan murr ke
Zara halla maro kirti kissan jurr ke
Russiyaan baharaan asaan mor ke leoniyaan ne
Akhday ne lok hikkaan thok haaniya
Hadh lokta da kehda sakay rok haaniya
Vehladaan ne maaneya svad hai azaadian da
Kaameyaan di jaan leero leer hoi ae
Tere zulmaan di zalma akheer hoi ae
Sunn lavo kaago tuhanu kar dena assi putthay
Kugghiyan de bacheyaan nu kohn valeyon
Roti bacheyan de hathan vichon khohn valeyon
Kiranaan da ahlnaan taan banega akash vich
Bhaur vi vasayga hun navay yug da
Sanu surgaan da laara aj nahiyo pugda
Our homeland is dearer than life itself,
But dearer still are its people, my friends,
We are going to crush this blood-sucking leech, my friends.
The light from our fields,
It brings us relief,
We will break your conceit,
Your time in power is past.
The cowards will run when the lions roar
Worker and peasant will go hungry no more,
Workers and peasants, come together and fight.
“We must bring back the lost spring,
Who can stop this flood of humanity flowing?”
Thumping their chest, the people proclaim.
The lazy have savoured freedom too long,
While workers’ lives are threadbare, forlorn,
Your cruelty, o oppressor, has reached its peak.
We will force you on your backs, you crows,
You killers of the innocent babes of doves,
You who snatch bread from the mouths of kids.
A nest of light will appear in the sky,
The bee shall thrive, a new time will arrive,
False promises of Afterlife will do no more.
Our homeland is dearer than life itself,
But dearer still are its people, my friends,
We are going to crush this blood-sucking leech, my friends.
This poem was likely written during the 1970s, when Sant Ram Udasi composed the bulk of his poetry and performed it at rallies, meetings, and cultural events organised by the Punjabi left. Much like Daman’s poetry, Udasi’s verses straddle the oral-textual social worlds through which Punjabi poetry circulates. His poetry often made its way from his fiery oral recitation into the clandestine print forms, pamphlets, and political magazines authored by underground movements like Naxalbari. However, apart from this proscribed archive of texts produced under conditions of state violence, his verses have come to us through the collective memory of struggle. This was most recently witnessed in the 2020 Indian farmers’ protests, when many of Udasi’s poems emerged as anthems of resistance binding the contemporary movement. Similarly, Ustad Daman’s voice continues to haunt the postcolonial state in Pakistan, as cultural activists and political organisers rework his fearless verses to challenge authoritarianism and censorship. In this way, forms of protest performance forged in the smithy of anticolonial struggle continue to fire dissent and resistance in the postcolony.
Note: The translations are by the author.