Why the dafli packs a big protest punch

Whether in the hands of Raj Kapoor in the fifties or a JNU student now, the dafli is the voice of rebellion

The Birsa Ambedkar Phule Students' Association ( BAPSA) is barely two years old and it has yet to open an account at JNU. But for sheer lung and drum power, there was no beating the vociferously pro-Dalit group at the pre-poll presidential debate on Wednesday night. Their percussive arsenal included a tambourine, a djembe, a parai from Tamil Nadu and even a drum but it was their dafli's insistent note that never flagged.

It wasn't just Bapsa's dafli working up an infectious energy that evening. The left league fighting election jointly this year, All India Students'
Association (AISA) and Students' Federation of India ( SFI), also kept up the strong 1-2-3-4 tattoo. But P Manikanta, joint secretary of BAPSA, believes that there are daflis and daflis, and his speaks.

"I only get my daflis from Hyderabad. The ones you get here simply don't do it for me," says Manikanta, a PhD scholar who used to participate in the Telangana movement as a student at Hyderabad Central University. "We call it dappu there, it is played by the Madiga community, and it is the sound of revolution, pain and resistance for dalits. We play it with passion, it should be a roar not a beat like Gadar's dafli."

For a basic, handheld and easy to play drum, the dafli packs a huge punch.

It is practically inseparable from the street, folk and protest culture of India. And it isn't just the wordless voice of JNU's student culture. Across India's campuses and streets it is easy to fish out a dafli and draw crowds for impromptu performances. Exactly the way the naqara calls people to a nautanki and the mizhavu in Kerala to Koodiyattam.

Sohail Hashmi traces its arrival on the mainstream cultural space to the work done by Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA). "In the 1930s they used to send out song squads and the dafli was easy to carry. Fitted with rings like a tambourine, it also created a counterpoint to the flat dhaap. Its use was widespread during the Telangana peasants' movement. Later, in the 1970s, the street theatre group Jan Natya Manch started using it in its performances at JNU in landmark plays like 'Bakri'," recalls Hashmi. "Even today the Manch uses the dafli at most platforms."

In Hindi films of the 1950s, especially in Raj Kapoor's early films featuring the struggling aam admi, the homeless and the oppressed villager, the dafli was a common sight in songs. None of the later dafli wannabes from Rajendar Kumar to Manoj Kumar to later Rishi Kapoor could quite accessorize it as a part of their screen persona as he did in Shree 420 and Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai.