Statement: Sahmat release, Oct 19, 2001 - India Together

This statement is being released by SAHMAT (Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust), on Friday, 19 October 2001, 3.30 pm in New Delhi, at a press conference being addressed by Shabana Azmi, Javed Akthar and several others. SAHMAT has worked for the last 13 years to build solidarity among artists and intellectuals on questions of conscience in current politics, particularly in the area of communalism. It has attempted, more ambitiously, to build a movement where an alert consciousness will anticipate fundamentalist tendencies in India’s national cultural life and provide a platform for those who want to intervene in the social processes through their practices as artists, writers and academics. SAHMAT has conducted a series of programs on the theme of Artists Against Communalism.