Wading through Jallianwala Bagh...

The core conflict in Ram Madhvanirsquos series The Waking of a Nation drops March 7 on Sony LIV is that its Amritsari protagonist Kantilal Sahni Taaruk Raina was a lawyer who helped draft the draconian Rowlatt Act 1919Which could randomly imprison Indians without defence or trial during the British RajAfter his own moment of awakening Sahni also argued against the British at the Hunter Commission instituted to investigate the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar that followedExcept this character Sahni actually never existed in life or history Neither did his three friends whom we closely follow through the seriesJallianwala Bagh of course did Wherein around 400 peaceful protestersmdashas per British official records over a thousand by independent estimatesmdashwere shot dead under the orders of the British General Reginald Dyer on April 13 1919What had also happened shortly before Jallianwala Bagh were Civil Lines Riots in Amritsar leading to 25 deaths Five of them being British civiliansRam Madhvani the director of the seriesIn a way the massacre was seen as retaliationrevenge for innocent Brits slain This is a lesser known backstoryOnly as the series arguesmdashthrough a courtroom drama without a counterpointmdashthose riots too like Jallianwala itself were engineered Hence part of a wider British conspiracyItrsquos this deliberately constant switching between fact and theory myth and reality that rattles my brain sometimesmdashwhen I canrsquot tell between history and speculative fiction on the screen whether with movies or seriesI tell director Madhvani Neerja Aarya this soon as I get on the phone with him after watching The Waking of a NationldquoItrsquos fine if yoursquore upfront about itmdashhistorical fiction as a literary genre has lined shelves at bookstores foreverrdquo Madhvani arguesHe throws back to practitioners of ldquoNew Journalism such as Tom Wolfe Hunter S Thompson with the term lsquofactionrsquo for fact plus fiction thatrsquos been in currency since the 1970srdquo The Hunter Commission Report itself was a document of British whitewashing wasnrsquot itI agree Creative licences ought to be weighed against emotional intentions foremost And the series seems befitting enough once you consider that ldquoof the 12 British actors in it none had even heard of the Jallianwala Bagh massacrerdquo as Madhvani points outThatrsquos including Paul McEwan who brilliantly portrays Punjabrsquos Lt Governor Michael OrsquoDwyer McEwan you notice also had a short role of a governor in Peaky BlindersOrsquoDwyer is the one that the revolutionary Udham Singh went on to assassinate as darkly depicted in Shoojit Sircarrsquos 2021 biopic on Prime Video starring Vicky Kaushal thatrsquos an apt sequel to Madhvanirsquos seriesMadhvani tells me he exchanged notes with Sircar and producer Ronnie Lahiri before filming his showThe irony of Rowlatt Act was that people would be jailed under the same law they were protesting against in Amritsar or elsewhereAnd itrsquos not like independent India has altogether given up on imperialist notionsideas of sedition let alone fresher laws to book activists even private individuals in line with ultradreaded terrorists on occasionControlling impulse of the powerful against dissent isnrsquot a colonial monopoly These are contemporary concerns you could draw from the series if you like Take heart from the fact that the Rowlatt Act was eventually repealedMadhvanirsquos lens though as he particularly points out is wholly centred on foreign rule its ldquocivilizing missionrdquo racism and our continued obsession with the English language or indeed using knivesforks to eatmdashthe colonisation of the Indian mind that the British were so successful atHe says ldquoIn the 1980s I was on a flight with my motherinlaw in the backrow of economy class I had to walk across the aisles when a white man blasted lsquoSit down you brown bardrsquo Itrsquos taken me these many years to answer himrdquoWhite supremacists are surely a thing of current western politicsThe Waking of a Nation sounds like a play on the Making of a Nation The latter was what Nikkhil Advanirsquos Freedom at Midnight 2024 also on Sony LIV was aboutmdashbased on Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierrersquos groundbreaking 1975 bookWhich emerged from talking to key protagonists of the transfer of British power such as Lord Mountbatten who were still alive Madhvanirsquos series naturally lacks that level of material drama or cast of charactersHe once made a film on Cyril Radcliffe 18991977 though Thatrsquos the guy who had literally drawn a line named after himmdashcutting through the subcontinent splitting it into India and Pakistan with millions affected and dead Radcliffe had visited India for about 40 days to figure thisW H Auden wrote a devastating poem on him Madhvani imagined Radcliffersquos last days for the screen I remember it as such a clever subject for his short filmThe Waking of a Nation seems a drier document equally reimagining Jallianwala Bagh massacre and Hunter Commission hearingsBetween my laptop and the phonemdashI watched the sixpart series as I might read a detailed cracker coverstory in The New Yorker or Caravan for a patiently told piece of narrative nonfiction or historical fiction in this case Glad that streamingOTT so inherently personalised allows you that kinda space In a way that TV or cinema for communalfamily viewing never didMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass cultureHe tweets mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper