It is also a well-researched piece of writing with a twist, where Shahid Nadeem introduces a new historical villain - Nawab Mohammed Ahmed Khan of Kasur - the magistrate who hanged Bhagat. The vaudeville is finally working and the huge cast and chorus put in a performance that was energetic and enthused with a lot of song and dance, live musicians and tunes set to the wealth of poetry written on Bhagat Singh and the songs the three friends sang in the courtroom to mock their trial, then all the way to the gallows to mock despair. To all appearances, Ajoka has come of age.

In Pakistan, we suffer a blindness all our own: a Sikh hero is an embarrassment to the national narrative.Ījoka’s restaging of Mera Rang De Basanti Chola addresses an important erasure from our historyĪs Madiha Gauhar put it in her introduction to the play, “We forget that this country was made in the name of a minority - a Muslim minority - with the help of other people who lived here.” To the credit of Ajoka, they did not use the legend of Bhagat Singh to rehash the Punjabi nationalist narrative, although the young man was unmistakably from an agrarian family of full-blooded, revolutionary Sikhs who loved home.Ī scene from Ajoka’s play Mera Rang De Basanti Chola - Photos: Ajoka Archives Who was this young man so loved to this day, more popular than Jinnah and Gandhi in the 1930s India, and so reviled by contemporary historians in India and in Pakistan where the debate still rages over whether he were a “terrorist” or a “revolutionary”? In India, 60 years of Congress rule have wiped clear the legacy of all other freedom fighters from the textbooks except for Nehru and Gandhi, labelling everyone else either a “terrorist” or “separatist”. He took on the violent and unjust British government with his young friends, a white man’s life was lost, and Bhagat decided to turn himself in to the authorities to own up to what he had done along with Raj Guru and Sukh Dev, his close friends and allies who marched with him to the gallows. My rickshawala, a young man I had asked to wait at the gate, came in along with me and sat right through.īased on the trial and hanging of the 23-year-old young man, Mera Rang De Basanti Chola is the story of a dreamer of revolution that would change the lives of poor people in India. The venue was a public hall and tickets cost nothing but your transport to the centre of town. In a valiant attempt to keep the tradition of dreaming alive, Ajoka Theatre recently staged a play in Lahore on Bhagat Singh. A portrait of Bhagat Singh, the stylish young revolutionary - Photos: Ajoka Archives

Mera rang de basanti chola