Navtej Sarna’s ‘Crimson Spring’: After-effects of Jallianwala Bagh

Salil Misra

‘Crimson Spring’ is an unusually remarkable novel in the sense that every piece of information provided in it is factually absolutely correct. Yet, the author Navtej Sarna probably felt the great need to liberate the theme of the novel from the empirical shackles to be able to explore the world of subjectivities — sorrow, trauma and anger — and demonstrate how ordinary lives were transformed by the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. This transformation in people’s lives is the central theme of the novel.

It proceeds at three separate yet intertwined levels. First, in some ways, it is the story of the making of Punjab, of its villages, economic life, institutions, traditions and a somewhat atypical religious profile. It is a region where religion did not make its appearance in an exalted, high and doctrinal way, but rather in a low, Sufi and ritualistic way. This feature of Punjab blurred the dividing lines between different religions, and it became difficult to explicitly identify where one religion ended and another began. Much of the socio-religious life in Punjab proceeded like this, till the 19th century at any rate, but did not entirely disappear till much later. This trait can be identified as the Idea of Punjab, or rather Punjabiyat. It was this composite Punjabiyat which began to be mutated into a hyphenated Punjabiyat when the erstwhile Punjabis began to emerge as Muslim Punjabis, Hindu Punjabis and Sikh Punjabis. This is the landscape that pervades the novel and constitutes its general setting.

At a more specific level, the novel tells the stories of a few ordinary men and women who were caught unawares by the momentous events in Amritsar in April 1919. Maya Devi prays regularly so that she may be blessed with a son. Ralla Singh is very anxious to meet Kirpal Singh, his nephew who has just returned from the Great War. Gurnam Singh is a pleader quite favourably inclined towards the British. But he is very disappointed with the Rowlatt Act introduced by the government, which would put pleaders like him out of job. If the legal trials would be rushed through without requiring any daleel, vakil or appeal, people like Gurnam Singh would become jobless and would have to go back to farming in the village. Sucha Singh is a compounder with Dr Hardit Singh who has lived a chequered life. Quite clearly, there were not too many people in Amritsar in April 1919 who were very determined to put an end to the British rule. There was no great conspiracy of a big rebellion, as was naively believed by the British. However, on that fateful April 13, the day of Baisakhi, their lives changed, fundamentally and irreversibly. The novel describes their stories and the way their lives changed.

Of course their lives were not the only things that changed. So much more did: politics in Punjab, the character of Indian nationalism, the basis of the British rule, the relationship between the rulers and the ruled, and much more. Jallianwala Bagh was truly a moment of a big paradigm shift in Indian politics. The lives of the ordinary people of Amritsar, narrated so admirably in the novel, mirror the life of the Indian nation.

Yet another important feature of the novel is that it has brought together the various events — both before and after Jallianwala Bagh — into a connected chain. Through the experiences of Sucha Singh, the novel has highlighted the significance of the Ghadar movement, one of the most under-studied episodes of the nationalist struggle. The Ghadar movement was a great endeavour — a conspiracy hatched thousands of miles away in USA — to overthrow the British rule in India, at the beginning of the First World War. However, the British came to know about it and succeeded in suppressing it. The Ghadar transformed the image of Punjab from a colonial heartland to a land of anti-imperialism. It also cast its shadow on the subsequent politics in Punjab, leading to Jallianwala Bagh.

The novel has also connected Jallianwala Bagh to the Akali movement, fought in order to liberate the gurdwaras of Punjab from the control of the corrupt mahants. And, of course, one tiny but extremely significant thread of Jallianwala Bagh continues till June 1940, when Udham Singh, nursing the fire of vengeance in his bosom for 20 years, travelled to England and shot Michael O’Dwyer, the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab at the time of the massacre. The story narrated in ‘Crimson Spring’ thus acquires a great sweep and pungency.

It is a historically accurate novel which has told the big story of Jallianwala Bagh through the experiences of the common people of Amritsar, caught in the whirlwind of the great brutality perpetrated by the British.

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