April
13, 2019, marked the 100 years of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre— one of the haunting
memories of India’s Freedom struggle days. The history behind the Jallianwala
Bagh massacre, its repercussion and untold chronicles of the hundreds of people
have been brought together in Delhi for all to witness, to pay homage to the
martyrs and understand what role did this day played in the freedom movement.
Titled “Jallianwala Bagh Centenary Commemoration Exhibition (1919-2019)”— an
extensive show of archival reports, newspapers, installations, audio resources,
and photographs detailing the aftermath of the brutal event. It has been put on
display by The Arts and Cultural Heritage Trust (TAACHT) at the Indira Gandhi
National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) from April 13th to April 28, 2019. IGNCA
has been organizing Baisakhi Cultural Annual Fair but this year they choose to
remember the hundreds of people killed when British soldiers opened fire
without warning, while they were attending a peaceful meeting, and also
celebrating the festival of Baisakhi at the Jallianwala Bagh on 13th April
1919.
The show at the IGNCA opened on Saturday 13th April with a ceremony of music, poems and a moment of silence at 5 pm for the lives lost and
destroyed on that fateful day. Installations there recreated the entire horror
of April 13, 1919, through an aesthetic representation of what Jallianwala Bagh
looked like—with strewn bodies, turbans, bangles and ‘dupattas’ all around on
the fateful day, which went on to fuel national consciousness, paving way for
India’s freedom later. The well, whipping post, jail, and a ban on cycle are some
of the artifacts that reflect the pain and excruciating experiences of those
killed on the day of Baisakhi and the events that followed. A web— a symbolic
representation of the helplessness of peaceful protestors who were trapped at
the site— and recreated audiovisuals against a backdrop of a bullet-ridden wall
of the Jallianwala Bagh are bound to leave one with somber thoughts.
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