Khooni Vaisakhi: A Poem from the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre 1919

Nanak Singh

Translated from Punjabi by Navdeep Suri

The author Nanak Singh witnessed the Jallianwala Bagh massacre first-hand, at the age of 22. After the British troops opened fire, he lost consciousness and his body was piled up among the vast number of corpses. He eventually wrote a lengthy poem titled “Khooni Vaisakhi,” a condemnation of the British empire that chronicles the lead-up to the massacre and life after it. The text was banned after it was published, in May 1920, and this book presents it in a translation, by his grandson Navdeep Suri, alongside essays by the latter.

Harper Collins, 152 pages, Rs 499