About Naujawan-E-Hind

Naujawan-E-Hind (NEH) is a non- profit organisation, with an objective to create awareness on social issues, through the medium of street plays. The street theatre enthusiasts from this group have been actively involved in raising social awareness among the citizens of our city and country alike, on issues like National Integration, AIDS, Drug Abuse, Illiteracy, Communal Harmony, Population, Pollution and other relevant topics.

These street plays have proved to be an effective way of 'edutainment' to our society, be it ignorant or well-informed people. Street theatre is a helpful medium that enables us to reach out to the masses across the country. It is a platform that enables face to face interaction with people, educating them on the causes as well as the precautionary measures that need to be implemented by them to fight against social issues.

Naujawan-E-Hind (NEH) have over 4000 performances to their credit. NEH has organised two national street theatre festivals under the banner “Bol Jamoore”. NEH has performed plays for organizations such as The Indian Navy, The Indian Army, Mumbai Police, CRY, DAIRRC, Nirmala Niketan, Department of Adult Education, Govt of Maharashtra and a host of others.

Naujawan-E-Hind Contacts: naujawan_e_hind@rediffmail.com
Bhushan: +91 9819029294, Chintaman: +91 9920656296,
Omkar: +91 9892603229, Kishore: +91 9819022888,
Pritam: +91 9930645488, Shailesh: +91 9819060089
Mumbai, India.

Naujawan-E-Hind was established on 24th May 1992 by a group of young students from SIWS College who wanted to be united in performing various arts even after college. We started of with a streetplay called ‘Ek Ajnabi Lash’ which went on to become a milestone of Indian street theatre. 18 years since, the play still attracts the same kind of attention and also gets us wonderful laurels.

So we humbly start of this blog with ‘Ek Ajnabi Lash’….

Ek Ajnabi Lash

Ek Ajnabi Lash: Ek Ajnabi Lash deals with the twin issues of national integration and communal harmony. It's a satire on the socio-political system of our country. Lucid and crisp dialogues, entertaining gimmicks, a compact yet effective script and heavy energy acting has made Ek Ajnabi Lash a landmark in street-plays.

NEH has been performing this play since 1991 continiously (even before our group was officially inaugrated) and the group has won several accolades and awards in the last 19 years of its performance all over India. This picture is of us performing at the busy Dadar T.T. Circle during our college days.

The Vintage Play

This vintage photo is of sometime in early 1992 at Hutatma Chowk. In the span of 18 years NEH has traveled a long distance. In this journey we met many friends, colleagues, admirers, leaders and general public. The knowledge, confidence and strength that street theatre gave us has helped us develop our personality and make us better human beings. Though not many of us who started the group could last this long, nevertheless we have had people joining us in our endeavor at regular intervals. Only two members namely, Bhushan and Chintaman have lasted this long span of 18 years.

We Entertain, Educate And Enlighten The Masses

Ek Ajnabi Lash has survived for 19 years and yet it still seems to be evergreen. We have incorporated new scenes and modified some old ones in this long course, but the basic theme has remained the same. This play has won more than 500 awards in the last one and half decades and has been performed almost all over India.

We started of by performing in college and inter-collegiate festivals then we moved on the actual streets. Performing regularly we realized that street theatre is the most effective medium of creating social consciousness along with entertaining, educating and enlightening the masses.

Established 1992

This picture is of our inaugration day - 24th May 1992. We had a small function on the terrace of one of our member's builing, which was followed by a street-play competition and festival held in the closeby MIG ground in Adarsh Nagar, Worli. This was the first street-play festival of its kind in the world. You'll find more information and pictures about this day ahead in this blog.

All The Street Is A Stage

We use streets as a platform to reach out to the masses across the country to spread knowledge about the social issues. To get the message clearly across to the audience, the group learns and uses the local language in the play. The success of this medium of communication is measured when people approach us after each performance seeking additional or complete information.

We believe in using ample histrionics and loud expressions – combining entertainment with education. This also ensures rapt attention and provides enough amusement to hold audience attention till the end of the play. In addition to the use of appropriate language and techniques, we adhere to the system of performing in the centre, with spectators encircled around us.

The Group

Improvisations, extempore handling of situations and creating unusual gimmicks have always been a hallmark of NEH’s performances. Our experiments on plays have always got us appreciation from our contemporaries. Our spots of performance have ranged from college campus to urban streets to rural markets to crowded stations to dirty slums to jazzy red light areas. We’ve been there all.

NEH Core Team: Padam Bhushan, Chintaman Sahasrabudhe, Kishore Salvi, Omkar Subramanian, Pritam Kori, Shailesh Dhoke, Gautam Prakash and Manisha Misra.

NEH Support Team: S. Ramachandran, Mari Muthu Raju, N. Satyanarayan, N. Anandhi, Usha Mani-Munshi.

We Are Interactors Not Actors

We always interact after our performance. Gard Aur Gardan is one play that has always garnered a lot of interaction. When we had performed for the first time at V.T. Station and Masjid Bunder at Bombay, we had actual drug addicts coming up to us and asking us for more information and rehabilitation centre details. And this effect continues. We always try and perform this play at sensitive areas where we know drug addiction prevails.

Gard Aur Gardan

Gard Aur Gardan when started was actually a joint venture between a NGO and NEH, but later we realized that NGO was actually using the services of NEH to gain publicity, we separated ways. Thereafter Gard Aur Gardan was performed by us individually at all our target areas. Performances of three artistes in this play Chintaman (Sanjay) and Kishore (Salim) and Satya (Albert Pinto) deserves special mention. Their reallife portrayal of addiction and drug craving got our pictures on the front page of several high profile newspapers.

Combining Drama With the Message Provides Edutainment

This picture is from the play Gard Aur Gardan performed sometime in late nineties. Drug abuse is just one of the many social issues that NEH has tackled. While performing this play on world anti-drug day on June 1 one of the players actually fainted due to sun stroke and one had his back totally burnt as he had to lie on the blazing ground while acting.

Jaag Uthi Antaratma

“Jaag Uthi Antaratma” a play on Gandhian ideals and values targeted at awakening the young generation was performed many a times on every Gandhi Jayanti Day. Rama, our ‘journalist’ member portrayed Gandhi; his get-up was the main attraction along with stupendous performances by our child artistes.

Revival of Street Theatre

One of the many activities of NEH is training young kids to perform on streets. The idea is 'Revival of Street Theatre'. Street-theatre is a dying art, so we believe and our effort is to infuse some life in it. The best way to do so is by creating interest in the new generation for this medium. We started with training the students of St. Xavier’s High School, followed by The Little Flower of Jesus High School both based in Marine Lines. The picture that you see here is of Xavierites performing outside VT station in Bombay.

Street-play Workshops

Children have always proved to be quick learners. They pick-up gimmicks, dialogues and actions in minutes and add their own histrionics and innocence to it. Kids performing on streets help in garnering more audience and also the attention of the media. As you will see in this picture, this play that was performed by the school kids got us rave reviews from the press. This motivated us to now start conducting regular vacation classes and workshop for school children on street-plays. Anyone interested? Please write to us on naujawan_e_hind@rediffmail.com

Kahani Pradushan Ki

Kahani Pradushan Ki this play on environment conservation has now been rechristened Ek Ajnabi Dushman. In this play we not only talk about conserving our natural resources but also alert people about the repercussions of unhygienic lifestyle and appeal to them to keep our neighborhood, city and the earth clean. Seen in this picture is our performance inside VT station in the early nineties.

The Battle Of Paani

The Battle Of Paani - this was a play devised to create awareness on the conservation of water. It was a single day project that we did in association with the eco-friendly hotel Orchid. We performed at ten different centres of the city within the time span of eight hours. As the picture suggests this play attracted loads of crowd and we almost met with a stampede while performing in Kherwadi, Bandra East. Novelty of this performance was a take-off on the popular TV game show Kaun Banega Crorepati which we did in one of our scenes.

Bol Pandu Bol

Bol Pandu Bol – this play was conceptualized for spreading awareness on literacy. Initially it was performed in slums of Bombay as a part of our NSS Literacy Drive but later on we moved on to performing this play in various rural areas of Maharashtra. A big high was when in 1992 we performed this play in midst of several ‘Ramlila’ performances during Navratri festival in Bombay.

Bol Jamoore - The first ever national street theatre festival ever organized in the world.

Naujawan-E-Hind shares this rare distinction along with CRY - Child Relief And You. This festival was held in Bombay in 1996 and in Bombay and Bangalore in 1997. More than 35 teams from various corners of our country participated in this festival. We at NEH take pride in saying that we arranged an event of colossal magnitude; after all, it was for the first time ever in the history of the world that a street-theatre festival was being organized on a national level. Here we would also like to thank the team of volunteers that had worked spiritedly and diligently around the clock to make the event a huge success.

Rehearsals On Road

One of the reasons that we are always comfortable performing plays on streets is that we actually rehearse on streets too. Our idea of setting up a play is to try doing things extempore and enact that on the road creating a make-believe situation. Our acting exercise includes playing decoy on the street; we actually ask our artiste to go berserk on the road by playing a madman or any such character. This helps him in shedding his inhibitions.

Bharat Parikrama - Phase 1

Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata & New Delhi January 23, 1999 to February 3, 1999





Bharat Parikrama, an ambitious street play project against AIDS, was conceived, conceptualised and implemented by the joint efforts of Naujawan–E–Hind and Kankabati (a socio-cultural organisation). The project was an endeavour to bring about awareness on AIDS, through the medium of street theatre. The mission was to tour the entire nation with the play -“PRATIBANDH”, which awakens the consciousness of the common man on the menace of AIDS.

This phase of Bharat Parikrama was sponsored by Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd.

Bharat Parikrama - Phase 2

Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Shimla and Jammu
October 15, 1999 to October 28, 1999




‘Combining drama with the message provides
Edutainment’ ‘Our success is measured by audience interactions’

This phase was sponsored by IBP CO. LTD.

Bharat Parikrama - Phase 3

Mumbai, Vapi, Daman (Daman & Diu) and Silvassa (Dadra & Nagar Haveli)
December 24, 2000 to December 26, 2000




This phase was sponsored by BHARAT PETROLEUM CORP. LTD.

Bharat Parikrama - Phase 4

From Boribunder to Porbunder: Mumbai, Manor, Dahanu Road, Vapi, Valsad, Navsari, Surat, Ankleshwar, Bharuch, Baroda, Nadiad, Anand, Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Jamnagar, Porbunder
April 14, 2001 to April 21, 2001




This phase was sponsored by RELIANCE INDUSTRIES

Bharat Parikrama - Phase 5

Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bhubaneshwar, Patna, Lucknow, Dehradun and New Delhi
October 25, 2001 to November 04, 2001




This phase was sponsored by OIL AND NATURAL GAS CORP. LTD.

Bharat Parikrama - Phase 6

Mumbai, Bhopal, Nagpur, Raipur, Jamshedpur and Ranchi
April 7, 2002 to April 14, 2002




This phase was sponsored by HINDUSTAN PETROLEUM CORP. LTD.

Bharat Parikrama - Phase 7

Bombay to Goa: Mumbai, Sawantwadi, Mapusa, Margao, Ponda, Vasco & Panjim
June 01, 2003 to June 4, 2003




This phase was sponsored by Kankabati and Naujawan-E-Hind

NEH Kids Performing in Prithvi Theatre

Platform Performance at Prithvi

Training in Villages

'Rangmanch' In The Open

Summer Workshop By NEH for School Kids

Practise On A Village Road

Interested Youths

Workshop for University Students

We have been conducting street-theatre workshop for the students of mass communication and journalism studying in the Bombay University since one year. As you see in the picture we use the uni-campus just outside the Convocation Hall and opposite the famous Rajabai Tower to conduct our classes.

Enviornment Awareness Workshop

NEH Inaugrates

NEH formally inaugurated its activities on 24th May 1992 with small function in MIG colony, Worli Mumbai. This was followed by a street-play competition. 24 Teams from different parts of Bombay (Mumbai was still called Bombay then) and Maharashtra participated. Noted playwright and dramatist Mr Bal Kolhatkar presided over this function. Later, when the fourth estate gave us rave reviews for this event we realized that what we had done was first of its kind in this field. Our endeavor to bring together fellow folks of street-theatre had just begun!

Navnirmiti Performs

One amongst the many groups that performed on that day was Navnirmiti. This Vasai based group has been actively performing in Vasai-Virar belt since many years. They have been crusaders against the problems of common middle class citizen and they leave no stone unturned in reaching out to the authorities with their grievances. The hallmark of their performance always has been superb acrobatic gimmicks and splendid embellishments of live and rustic music.

Youths Giving A Dramatic Interpretation

In street-play the only prop that you use is your body. We learnt many a thing in this first venture of ours from our contemporaries. This group had the rare ability of bring about dramatic interpretation to various themes. As you can see in the above picture the actors have made good use of bodily form to depict a demon which was used as a metaphor for the evils of our society.

Little Kids Were In The Forefront

Even young artistes led from the front. These children from the Bal Sanskar Kendra performed a play on the topic of child labour. They did win a lot of laurel for their cute histrionics and humorous lines in lucid language. Street-plays do have a huge following; age certainly does not come in the way.

Senior Women Were Not Far Behind

Women from the Mahila Grahak Panchayat were the surprise packet of the event. When we received the entry form from this group, we definitely had no idea what their team is going to be but when we saw them performing we were awestruck! They performed with a lot of gusto and were hard hitting on the issues of consumer grievances.

All Girls Group

The Winners

Celebration

NEH Performing (1992)

NEH Performing (1992)

NEH Performing (1992)

NEH Performing (1992)

NEH Performing (1992)

NEH Performing (1992)