Thisis a commemorative volume published to mark the 100th year of one of the bloodiest milestones in India’s fight for freedom: the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of April 13, 1919. The volume comprises 11 works of fiction — one of which is a play — and poetry, the genres placed in two separate sections. This made me wonder: Why is there no work of non-fiction here — for surely, non-fiction writing too could satisfy the parameters of being “literary”? The editor has the answer in the introduction: “While a great deal of scholarly work has been done on the Jallianwala Bagh, its reflection in Indian literature in the different bhashas and also in English has been overlooked. I was curious to see how an incident that stirred the conscience of millions, one that had far-reaching implications for the national freedom struggle, that made British colonial interests in India morally untenable, found its way through pen and paper to reach the nooks and crannies of the popular imagination filtered through the mind of the creative writer.”
The collection opens with a powerful story by Sa’adat Hasan Manto, ‘An Incident from 1919’, translated from Urdu by Rakhshanda Jalil. In this story, the narrator is speaking to a man who is recounting the heroics of a man named Thaila Kanjar who was apparently “hit by the first bullet fired by [a] white soldier” at Jallianwala Bagh on the day of the massacre. Thaila Kanjar, whose original name was Mohammad Tufail, was the son of a professional courtesan. His two sisters, Shamshad and Almas, too were prostitutes.
Grand narratives
Kanjar’s martyrdom at Jallianwala Bagh changes people’s perception of him. While alive, he was seen as a “good-for-nothing” for no other reason except that “[he] had been born from the womb of a prostitute.” After his death, Kanjar is celebrated: “Loud cries of lamentation had rent the neighbourhood” when his corpse was brought home.
Then the English sahib at Amritsar summons Shamshad and Almas to sing and dance for him. The women go, and what they do at the sahib’s is described by the narrator’s companion as “[defiling] the name of their martyred brother.”
More than being a story about the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, this is a sharp commentary on people’s nature, on patriarchy, and how the disadvantaged and under-privileged are perceived. Kanjar’s sisters earn their livelihood by servicing society, which is blind to this fact. They demand something heroic — heroism being defined by society itself — to sanitise them. Manto’s story aptly demostrates how grand narratives like those of nationalism overshadow the lives of lesser beings.
Several stories in this collection demonstrate shades of patriarchy. In fact, according to the stories here, one reason behind the massacre was an attack on a British woman named Marcella Sherwood. Sherwood, supervisor of the Mission Day School, was mobbed in a lane in Amritsar on April 11, 1919, just two days before the firings.
Woman question
Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, who has gone down in history as the “Butcher of Amritsar”, is a character in the novel, The Crown and the Loincloth , by Chaman Nahal, an excerpt from which has been included in this collection. While discussing his plan for a firing at Jallianwala Bagh, General Dyer tells Kenneth Ashby, Assistant Commissioner of Amritsar, that the crime of the men who would gather at Jallianwala include, among other things, “[beating] up and [humiliating British] women.”
In another powerful work, ‘Amritsar, Before Independence’, an excerpt from Krishan Chander’s Amritsar, Azadi Se Pehle, Azadi Ke Baad , translated by Raza Naeem, four women are called “the very embodiment of virtue” because they are “domesticated women, veiled women.”
Brave resistance
The best story in this collection, in my opinion, is ‘Those Who Crawled’ by Ghulam Abbas, translated from the Urdu original by Jalil. The Martial Law established after the massacre decreed that those who wished to cross the lane in which Sherwood had been assaulted would have to crawl on their bellies. In Abbas’s story, two athletic young men, “about 17-18 years old”, voluntarily cross the lane crawling on their bellies. They are about to start their third round of crossing when the white sergeant, irritated by their defiance, threatens to shoot them. On being asked, the young men tell the sergeant they were only racing each other.
The boldness and humour with which these young men resist authority reminded me of the photograph of Saffiyah Khan smiling at an officer of the English Defence League at a rally in Birmingham in 2017.
It is in the poetry section that the beauty of translation seems to be best realised. Zafar Ali Khan’s poem, ‘The Tyrannies in the Punjab’, translated from Urdu by Jalil, is a satirical take on the massacre.
One day I said to my Lord and master in Amritsar
You too begin to crawl on your belly, O benefactor
One layer of swelling should be added to the obesity
You too must taste the whip morning and evening daily
I have not read the original but the use of rhyming words in the translation gives an enjoyable flow to the poem, inspiring one to look for the original.
Opening windows
Josh Malihabadi’s ‘An Address to the Sons of the East India Company’, translated from Urdu by Jalil, recounts the entire history of atrocities by the British till Jallianwala:
In the name of Mir Jafar, tell me, was Siraj such an enemy of truth?
Do you remember how you tormented the Begums of Awadh?
Do you remember the time of the Rani of Jhansi?
Do you remember the departure of the Sultan of Delhi?
Sohan Singh Misha’s poem, ‘The Bullet Marks’, translated from Punjabi by Jasdeep Singh and Amarjit Chandan, is a visually rich description of Jallianwala Bagh, the place, and the incident.
True to the editor’s claim in the introduction, this collection “[opens] a window into the world of possibilities that literature offers to reflect, interpret and occasionally analyse events of momentous historical import.” It is not just an interesting read but also a valuable source of reference.
The writer’s new book is the novel, My Father’s Garden.
Jallianwala Bagh: Literary Responses in Prose & Poetry; Introduced and edited by Rakhshanda Jalil, Niyogi Books, ₹495
