Version imprimableSAHMAT
Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust
36 Pt. Ravi Shankar Shukla Lane (Canning Lane)
New Delhi-110001
Email: sahmat8[at]yahoo.com
Tel-23381276/23070787
8.11.2025
The DDA decision preventing the Organisers of the Phool Walon ki Sair, from using the Aam ka Bagh, opposite the Hauz e Shamsi for organizing the Annual Mela, as part of the events traditionally associated with the festival of inclusivity, needs to be opposed and condemned in the strongest terms.
The Phool Walon ki Sair , has its origins in the festivities associated with the release of the Mughal Prince Mirza Jehangir from British Captivity in 1812. The festival has been observed since then, with a few interruptions during 1857 and during the riots that followed freedom from British Rule as a festival of the spirit of inclusiveness of Delhi
The festival that underscores the unity of the people of India with all their diversity has taken the shape of a festival of national integration since its revival in 1961s at the initiative of our First Prime Minister Pt. Jawahar Lal Nehru, when he was approached by senior citizens of Delhi requesting that the festival be revived.
DDA is increasingly converting itself into an arbiter of the destiny of the people of Delhi and interfering in areas that it has no business with. This act of disrupting a festival that is more than a century old and one of the major festivals underscoring and highlighting our shared culture and values can not be permitted.
SAHMAT condemns this interference by DDA in the conduct of a popular festival and the planting of deliberately misleading statements to present the open ground as forestland one day and something else on the other. Sahmat stands with the people of Delhi and unequivocally condemns this deliberate mischief. DDA that came into existence only in the 1960s cannot impose its will retrospectively and interfere with secular, inclusive and shared practices more than a century old
SAHMAT
