New Delhi: Retired JNU Professors BS Butola and Prakash Upadhya don’t attend May Day rallies anymore. The factories of Delhi have long been shifted, the trade union movement has become weak, and the heady days of May Day marches have disappeared. Instead, for the past 13 years, the professors have been coming to a small bookstore in Shadipur, searching for hope. For them, seeing hundreds of young people looking for alternative politics, culture, and academia is heartening.
“It makes me feel like they have a dream to realise,” said Upadhya.
On 1 May, along with International Workers’ Day, May Day Bookstore, the only Leftist bookstore in Delhi celebrated its 13th anniversary by hosting a wide array of performers and speakers, as well as by offering special discounts on select volumes. Singers, poets, and activists spoke on diverse topics related to workers rights in short 10-15 minute slots.
The sessions were interspersed with lengthy breaks where the audience browsed the bookstore. Despite the blistering heat of May, over 600 people were in attendance, drawn by the promise of meeting like-minded people exchanging revolutionary ideas. Over two-thirds of the people were below the age of 30.
By 12:30 pm, there was already a crowd of tote-carrying, kurta-clad students making their way to the bookstore’s deliberately unobtrusive location between a home and a garment shop, far from the intellectual hubs of Delhi. A crowd of about 50 waited for the first two performances to start outside the bookstore: a poem by writer and performer Ashok Tiwari and a street play dedicated to Palestine by theatre group Jana Natya Manch.
Student volunteers handed out badges to the audience, each one inscribed with a quote by poet Sahir Ludhianvi—“Subah humi se aayegi (Only we will bring the dawn)”—while locals recorded with their phones and peeked from their windows.
Rickshaw pullers on the street sat on top of their rickshaws to get a better view of the street play. Around 1 pm, as soon as the schools ended, the crowd was suddenly filled with a sea of children curiously watching the actors drag bags and tin trunks with the Swedish song Leva Palestina playing in the background.
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‘Roti and hak’
Sudhanva Deshpande, one of the founders of May Day bookstore, said the store was created not only to make Leftist literature more accessible, but also to serve as a hub for activists, artists, and academics to engage with alternative political and social issues. That mission was on full display on Thursday.
Inside, as buzzing ceiling fans shifted the hot air, small gaddas were put in front of a makeshift stage with two mic stands and a speaker. A broad spectrum of speakers addressed a packed room. Among them were author and scholar Shaswati Mazumdar, journalist Teesta Setalvad, joint secretary of the All India Agricultural Workers Union Vikram Singh, journalist Sumedha Pal, student activist Dipsita Dhar, and lawyer Jawahar Raja.
The conversations spanned a wide range of issues, from the history of May Day to the gig economy, influencers, UAPA, and agriculture labourers.
For May Day, the bookstore was divided into two halves. The studio space attached to the store had rows of donated books that student volunteers had been sorting for the past few weeks to be sold at a nominal price.
The visual media exhibition displayed photographs by Manisha Mondal, Senior Multimedia Journalist at The Print, covering a wide range of gender- and caste-based stories. One of the striking pictures showed a woman protester holds a poster which read, ‘Dalit Women Matter’ and ‘Jai Bheem’ following the alleged forced cremation of a Dalit rape victim in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh. Another documented wrestler Vinesh Phogat’s head being dragged by the Delhi Police.
Eager students rifled through hundreds of books while photographs of protests and solidarity hung above. The main bookstore sells a wide array of brand new books by independent publishers. A small cafe was set up by volunteers for the occasion, offering the audience some cakes and drinks.
The May Day bookstore’s long history of working with performers is rooted in its founding alongside Studio Safdar, a performance space, and being supported by the Jana Natya Manch. It was no surprise, then, that the event saw heavy participation of revolutionary poets and singers.
Poet Akash Gautam, who recited a set of poems titled Naukri, said, “Some people wonder if celebrating May Day means that we only think about workers’ rights for one day, but when no one thinks about workers right at all, thinking about it on one day is a start”. He added that workers rights were all about “roti and hak”.
Rigvajit and Kamlesh, a duo of theatre practitioners inspired by Jana Natya Manch and Pete Seeger, sang self-composed songs on topics such as farmers’ protests and city life. The evening ended with the voice of history student Yusra Naqvi, who defiantly sang Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s Hum Dekhenge.
For most independent bookstores, the months of May, June, and July are bad for business. It’s too hot for people to venture out in search of books, and Amazon is too convenient of an alternative. For May Day bookstore, however, the next three months are likely to see a spike in sales because of Thursday’s celebrations. Excited students will talk about this day for months to come and drag their friends to the store.
Toward the end of the event, Deshpande announced that a book on Palestine by Ghassan Kanafani had been sold out and restocked again.
The day seems to have been a success.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)