Khooni Vaisakhi- A Poem From The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, 1919
2019.04.18 The great Punjabi writer Nanak Singh was present at Jallianwala Bagh on 13 April 1919 and twenty-two years old at the time. As the British troops opened fire on the unarmed gathering protesting against Rowlatt Act, killing hundreds, Nanak Singh fainted and his unconscious body was piled up among the corpses. After going through the traumatic experience, he proceeded to write Khooni Vaisakhi, a long poem 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. As we step into 100th year of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, this talk features the poems translated into English by Navdeep Suri, Ambassador of India to the UAE, in conversation with Justin Rowalatt, whose great-grandfather, Sir Sydney Arthur Taylor Rowlatt, drafted the Rowlatt Act. His Excellency Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Minister for Tolerance in the UAE H.E. Navdeep Suri, Ambassador of India to the UAE Justin Rowlatt, BBC South Asia Correspondent Moderated by Toral Gajarawala, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, NYU