Jallianwala Bagh. 13 April 1919. Twenty-two-year-old Nanak Singh joins the mass of peaceful protestors agitating against the Rowlatt Act. What then turns out to be one of the worst atrocities perpetrated by the British Raj, and a turning point in India's independence movement, also becomes a life-changing experience for Nanak Singh, who survives the massacre, unconscious and unnoticed among the hundreds of corpses.
After going through the traumatic experience, Nanak Singh proceeds to write Khooni Vaisakhi, a long poem in Punjabi that narrates the political events in the run-up to the massacre and its immediate aftermath. The poem was a scathing critique of the British Raj and was banned soon after its publication in May 1920. After sixty long years, it was rediscovered and has been translated into English for the first time by the author's grandson, Navdeep Suri.
Featuring the poem in translation and in original, this bilingual book is accompanied by essays from Navdeep Suri, Punjabi literature scholar H.S. Bhatia and BBC correspondent Justin Rowlatt. This commemorative edition of Khooni Vaisakhi is not only a poignant piece of protest literature but also a historical artefact and a resurrected witness to how Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims came together to stand up to colonization and oppression in one of India's darkest moments.
About the Author
NANAK SINGH (1897-1971) is widely regarded as the father of the Punjabi novel. With little formal education beyond the fourth grade, he wrote an astounding fifty-nine books, which included thirty-eight novels and an assortment of plays, short stories, poems, essays and even a set of translations. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1962 for Ik Myan Do Talwaraan. His novel Pavitra Paapi was made into a film in 1968, while Chitta Lahu was translated into Russian by Natasha Tolstoy.
NAVDEEP SURI joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1983 and has served in India's diplomatic missions in Cairo, Damascus, Washington, Dar es Salaam and London and as India's Consul General in Johannesburg. He was India's High Commissioner to Australia and Ambassador to Egypt prior to his current assignment as Ambassador to UAE. He has translated into English his grandfather Nanak Singh's classic Punjabi novels Pavitra Paapi (as The Watchmaker) and Adh Khidya Phul (as A Life Incomplete).
Loading...
