French artists and Jamia arts grad forced to deface own wall painting of Urdu couplet in Delhi

Two French artists and a Delhi artist, a Jamia arts graduate, have claimed that they were forced by a crowd to deface their own wall painting near Shahdara last week. They say they were writing an Urdu couplet but were forced to paint it over and replace it with the words ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’.
Swen Simon, Julian Dafu and Akhlaq Ahmed were painting on the wall ‘Dilli tera ujadna, aur phir ujad ke basna.Woh dil hai toone paya, sani nahi hai jiska’, an Urdu couplet, when locals from the area objected to it. The effort is part of the MyDilliStory urban project, which is supported by the Delhi government, and has artists painting on walls in the city in the four official languages of Delhi – Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu and English. The couplet was chosen in a Twitter competition and was submitted by a DU student, Zeeshan Amjad.
Akhlaq Ahmed aka Shabbu, who has completed an MA in Fine Arts from Jamia, told us, “When we were painting the wall, a few people came to us and asked us why we were writing in Urdu. I explained to them that it was a winning tweet and told them about the MyDilliStory project. Then they asked me to change the language. Unhone bola, ‘Theek hai, phir Hindi mein likho, English mein likho, koi bhi bhasha likh do – Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi… bas Urdu mat likhna’. We argued at first and then continued our work. Then more people joined in – 20 se 50 aur phir kareeb 150 log aa gaye.”
They say the crowd started shouting slogans and called the artists ‘Lahoris’. Akhlaq told us, “When I told them my name was Shabbu, they assumed it was Shambhu. So they said, ‘Tu toh bhai hai apna’ and then they started abusing my French colleague, Swen Simon, asking him to pay me my wages and “go back to Lahore”. One of them asked me, “Pakistani ne paise diye toh tum unke liye kaam karoge? Bhejo iss Pakistani ko Lahore”. Swen doesn’t know Hindi. I requested them to leave him alone and told them he was French, not Pakistani.”

He says the crowd then ‘forced’ him to use orange and white and write ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’. He said, “When the crowd swelled to around 150 people and started abusing me and asking me to write ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’, I told them that I had no issues with writing it, and if they would visit Lodhi Road, they would find my wall painting on the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. But they refused to listen to me. Some people picked up the brush and started defacing the wall and asked me to paint it in “yellow and orange”. When they held my hand and started forcing me, then I agreed, because I didn’t want them to harm my French colleagues. After I finished painting the line, they started forcing me to write ‘Narendra Modi’. I was shocked and asked why. Meanwhile, someone informed the police and they arrived.”

He adds that even the police asked them why they were painting the wall. Akhlaq told us, “When I informed the team behind the MyDilliStory project, they asked me to click a photo of the wall, but when I did, one of the people in the crowd snatched away my phone and deleted it. The police were quite rude – they also took away my phone and even questioned us about why we were painting the wall. But when the Delhi tourism minister called them, their behaviour changed – they took us to the police station and offered us snacks!”
When asked if the team would paint the wall again, he says, “Why not? If we are asked to paint the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan message or the Urdu couplet, we will do it, but maybe this time with police security.”