On 13 April 2026, the 106th anniversary of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, a set of voices that colonial rule once tried to erase is finally being heard again — not through official records, but through the words of those who lived through its aftermath.
These are not the voices of well-known leaders or writers, but are more immediate and personal accounts written by ordinary Indians who documented what they saw, felt and endured in the days following the tragedy.
A historian’s 30-year search
For decades, these writings remained buried in archives, labelled “dangerous” and kept out of public memory — until historian and archivist Rajwanti Mann took on the mammoth task few historians attempt, spending nearly three decades tracing fragments across colonial records to bring back the voices that had been erased.
Released in November 2025, her book, Jallianwala Bagh ki Karahein (Cries of Jallianwala Bagh), is not a conventional retelling of the event. Instead, it pieces together a scattered archive of banned Hindi literature including poems, plays, pamphlets, and songs, written in the immediate aftermath of the massacre in Amritsar.
The writings, preserved in the India Office Records in London, offer firsthand perspectives of ordinary people who witnessed the events of April 13, 1919. Photograph: (Amazon online retail store)
A former Deputy Director of the Haryana Archives and now a Senior Academic Fellow at the Indian Council for Historical Research, Rajwanti Mann did not begin her mission with a fixed idea, but with a question.
The verse that started it all
While working through archival material, she came across a brief, confiscated verse invoking sacrifice and resistance. It had been labelled “seditious” by the British administration, and even reciting it in public had invited punishment. The intensity of that reaction stayed with her.
“If a few lines could provoke such fear,” she wondered, “what else had been written and removed?”
That question led her into a long, meticulous search across archives in India and the UK. Much of the banned literature, she discovered, had been seized during colonial rule and sent to the India Office Records in London in the 1920s. Categorised under restricted collections, these documents remained inaccessible for years, even after India’s Independence, and were only opened to researchers in the 1980s.
By then, much of this writing had faded from public consciousness.
Recovering banned writings
Piece by piece, Mann began tracing and recovering these works, many of which had never been republished. Her book brings together nine chapters of such material, revealing a wide range of voices and forms — from poems and dohas to plays and lyrical compositions. These were not polished literary texts, but urgent expressions shaped by a need to document and respond.
Among the recovered voices is the testimony of Ratan Devi, who described spending the night inside Jallianwala Bagh. Photograph: (Shutterstock)
One of the most striking threads within this collection is the account of Ratan Devi, a woman who remained inside Jallianwala Bagh through the night following the firing, unable to leave due to the curfew. Her testimony reflects the confusion, grief, and resilience of those who were left to navigate the aftermath on their own.
Other works in the collection reveal how widely these writings circulated at the time. Slim booklets and pamphlets, often printed in small towns like Hathras, Lahore, and Kashi, were produced quickly and distributed with urgency. Their goal was not permanence, but reach, to ensure that people knew what had happened even as authorities attempted to control the narrative.
And control it they did.
The colonial state granted itself sweeping powers to seize what it deemed “seditious” material. Printing presses were monitored, publications confiscated, and publishers penalised. Yet, despite these risks, individuals continued to write and publish, often under their own names.
History beyond the state
For Mann, this was one of the most striking aspects of her research — the courage embedded in these acts of expression.
The memorial’s redesign includes a flame-shaped structure symbolising remembrance of the lives lost in 1919. Photograph: (BBC News)
Beyond the writings themselves, her work also sheds light on how information was managed at the time. British newspapers, she found, largely relied on official dispatches, which meant that early reporting did not fully reflect the scale or impact of what had taken place. In contrast, these banned writings captured a more immediate and emotionally grounded understanding of events.
The rediscovery of Jallianwala Bagh ki Karahein offers a different way of engaging with history, one that centres lived experience over official narrative. It reminds us that what is preserved is often shaped by power, but what is recovered can reshape that understanding.
The “Martyrs’ Well” inside the site became a place of refuge during the firing and is now a key point of remembrance. Photograph: (BBC News)
More than a century later, these writings return not just as historical documents, but as voices that were once interrupted.
And in bringing them back into public view, Rajwanti Mann has ensured that their story and the memory they carry, is no longer confined to the margins of history.
The book ‘Jalianwala Bagh Ki Karahein: Pratibandhit Hindi Sahitya’ is available on Amazon.
