This is a special blog . I have been translating, Ghadar Ke Phool, a wonderful collection of real tales about the 1857 Mutiny in Awadh, as recounted to the eminent Hindi writer Amritlal Nagar by scores of ordinary villagers . These are stories handed down by families mostly in secret ( for fear of British reprisals) and form some of the most rare eyewitness accounts of that great public uprising . I had requested the writer's son Dr Sharad Nagar ( currently battling cancer) to send me his own memories of how his father had painstakingly gathered these stories . This forms a preface to the soon to be published translation of Ghadar Ke Phool under the title Gathering The Ashes .
Since Sharad ji is in the hospital, readers may like to forward their reactions to the publishers:
karthika@HarperCollins-india.com , to be forwarded to his daughter Dr Richa Nagar who is attending on her father.
A Son Remembers -11
Stories about Ghadar , the
great Indian uprising of 1857 , had obsessed my father ever since he was a
child . He used to tell us how when he was staying with his grandfather at
Allahabad , each night they would hear the howling of jackals coming from the
park opposite their house . Matadin , their old family retainer , told him that
this area used to be a thriving bazaar where after the Ghadar the British
butchered many . After the massacre the whole area was razed and bulldozed and
the howls we heard , came not from
jackals but the unhappy souls of those that had lived here once upon a
time . My father’s grandmother also told him many stories about those disturbed
times . In my father grandmother had discovered an avid listener of her stories such as how her own grand father had
left home after a tiff with his wife during the Ghadar , and then her grand
mother’s father had rushed out to search for his missing son in law . Another
source of Ghadar tales Father said , was an old watchman known as Thakur whose
body trembled as he recounted hair raising stories , and his face would grow
red .
In 1944 , while Father was at
Bombay , his friend and admirer the Marathi writer Sham Rao nilkanth Oak
presented him with a copy of Maaja Pravas by Vishnu Bhatt Godshe Varsaikar ,
a travelogue by a Marathi Brahmin who
had witness to the Ghadar during a visit up north in 1857 . Father was
enchanted by the book and wrote to his closest friend , the Hindi writer , Dr
Ramvilas Sharma that he had to translate it into Hindi so friends like Dr
Sharma could also read the rare memoirs of an ordinary traveler . He shared the
completed manuscript of the Hindi translation with Dr Ramvilas Sharma who was
equally enchanted with the first ever record of the great historic even by a
simple Marathi beggar . It was published by the great art historian Rai Krishna
Das’s publishing house as Mera Pravas , in 1949 , then re printed in 1963 from
Lucknow under the title ‘Aankhon Dekha Ghadar’ and finally a third edition was
published by Rajpal and Sons of New Delhi .
By January of 1957 Father had
begun planning a trilogy on the Ghadar .
As the idea grew , Father realized
that he had to do some field work and gather fresh and original material directly
from the source : the villages of Awadh where most of the battles had been
fought in 1857. He was , he wrote to Dr Ramvilas Sharma , getting more and more
obsessed with the idea of traveling to
as many villages of Awadh as he could , to tap the public memory and gather
whatever stories , ballads and memories about the Ghadar that had survived . To
him it would be like gathering the ashes after a loved one’s cremation , he
said .
When he once discussed this
with his friend , Bhagwati Sharan Singh
the Director for Information and Publicity for the government of UP , he was
enchanted . He urged my father to leave without losing time and promised to
provide him with the basic minimum : a jeep for traveling , a district level
official to take him around . In return he made Father promise that he would
hand him a complete manuscript based on his field notes by September . Those
could be published as a handbook during the Centenary year of the Ghadar . For
his efforts , Father was told , he would receive a total amount of a thousand rupees
as advance royalty . Father immediately came home and told Ba , my mother , of
this proposal . Ba was happy at the thought of my father’s story gathering efforts
being facilitated by a government grant that would go on to produce an
additional handbook . What also pleased her was the thought that the thousand
rupees Father would get as advance royalty , would considerably ease the
financial pressures our joint family had been undergoing ever since Father
resigned from government service . Father told Ba that his travels would be
rushed and involve at least three major forays to various places . She should
pack his bags accordingly . Ba had knitted a beautiful Jute bag for father’s
travel things when he had traveled down south to Chennai in 1946 . The bag was
taken out and found large enough for three to four changes of father’s clothes
, his books and last but not the least , his precious box for Paan ( rolled
betel leaves ) . On 4th June 1957 , Father left for the first lap of
his travels , to Barabanki .
Father carried no tape
recorder or camera that could have facilitated his gathering of the material . We
simply could not afford them and The Department of Information and Publicity
did not consider providing him with any of these either . My father’s childhood
friend Gyan Chandra Jain , who was then working for a Hindi daily Dainik
Navjivan , presented him with a precious sheaf of foolscap paper and a few
small note books for taking notes during his travels . To this cahe , Father
added a few pencils , a pencil sharpener , a pen and a couple more school
notebooks . His arsenal thus completed , Father left home to tour and survey
the villages of Awadh . He was dressed as usual , in a simple pair of cotton
Kurta Pyjama and a pair of slippers .
Father’s three day trip to
Barabanki ended on 7th June . During this period he visited the
villages of Dariyabad , Bhayara , Jehangirabad , Kursi and Mahadeva .
Thereafter on 8th and 9th June , Father toured the
districts of Sultanpur and Faizabad .
The second lap began on June
15th and lasted for three days . During this period he toured the
districts of Bahraich and Gonda . Then from 26th to 28th
june Father toured the district of Sitapur .
After visiting six districts
Father returned home to Lucknow and began working
on the chapters using his handwritten notes for reference . He was very excited
about the material he had gathered , in particular the role played by the weakest part of the Indian society ,
its women . He was fascinated by the great organizational capabilities that a
purdah bound Begum Hazrat Mahal had shown as a leader of the rebel forces . In
a letter to his dearest friend , the great scholar Dr Ramvilas Sharma , Father
wrote :
“…I wish to understand the
society which was the crucible for the Ghadar , in particular the biggest
social problem that stared it in face : the caste system and casteism . Even at
a time when the Ghadar is challenging the system , I find the castes becoming
more powerful , more rigid , in particular where the marriage system is
concerned . The caste system’s intricacies make it almost impossible to trace
its simple and basic contours . It feels as though we are looking at the
country through a moving body of water …
Brother ! queens like Lakshmi
Bai of Jhansi and Begum Hazrat Mahal of Lucknow , along with the courtesans of Kanpur , ordinary housewives in Awadh ,
Bundelkhand and Jagdishpur , could not have taken to streets under ordinary
circumstances . Who knows what prolonged oppressions they were out to avenge .
The Ghadar gave them an opportunity and almost overnight ,
turned them into aggressive
Durgas lusting for battle …”
***
Many years later Once while
straightening my father’s papers at home , I came across some field notes for
Ghadar Ke Phool , scribbled on a sheaf of foolscap paper and a school note book
. Where is the completed manuscript ? I wanted to know . Father said that he
did not have either the time or the money to have his manuscript typewritten .
And producing another handwritten copy for
his own records would have been both tedious and time consuming . Since
the State Department of Information and
Publicity was keen to publish the book during the Centenary year of the Ghadar , he decided to keep forwarding the
handwritten chapters one by one to the
publishers to facilitate printing within the given time span . What corrections
he had to make , could be made on the proofs rushed to him by the publishers .
There was thus no complete manuscript available .
The notes taken down hastily
in pencil by Father while he heard the tellers recount the stories , are near
illegible by now . I once asked Father why he had scribbled them in pencil ,
Father said that he liked to watch and record the faces and gestures of the
story tellers as they spoke . He had therefore perfected the art of writing
without looking down at the note pads as he jotted his notes . In his
experience , a pencil ran on its own ,
unlike a fountain pen that could suddenly run out of ink and was therefore
preferable . Each time he returned , he
would sit down immediately to make out a , “fair copy” in ink using those
hastily penciled notes which was then rushed to the publishers . I must mention
here that Father wrote a beautiful discursive hand and even if he wrote on a
plain piece of paper , his lines ran without dipping down or coursing upwards .
This fact must have made his proof
readers happy .
On July 11th ,
Father left Lucknow
again and headed for the district of Rae Bareilly . He was thereafter planning
to tour the districts of Unnao and Hardoi . But unusually heavy monsoon rains
put paid to his plans . He was quite put out and always regretted his inability
to have toured these two areas .
Meanwhile the Department of
Information and Publicity that had facilitated the travels for Father , were
getting restless and wanted Father to complete and hand them the manuscript for
publication as soon as possible . Father sat down to write the remaining
chapters on 21st July 1957 and managed to complete the job within a
month , on September 16th . He dedicated this book to the young
martyr the Raja of Chahlari , Balbhadra Singh and six hundred Hindus and
Muslims who had laid their lives down to liberate their motherland from foreign
occupation .
29. 9. 12 Dr
Sharad Nagar
A Son Remembers -11
Stories about Ghadar , the
great Indian uprising of 1857 , had obsessed my father ever since he was a
child . He used to tell us how when he was staying with his grandfather at
Allahabad , each night they would hear the howling of jackals coming from the
park opposite their house . Matadin , their old family retainer , told him that
this area used to be a thriving bazaar where after the Ghadar the British
butchered many . After the massacre the whole area was razed and bulldozed and
the howls we heard , came not from
jackals but the unhappy souls of those that had lived here once upon a
time . My father’s grandmother also told him many stories about those disturbed
times . In my father grandmother had discovered an avid listener of her stories such as how her own grand father had
left home after a tiff with his wife during the Ghadar , and then her grand
mother’s father had rushed out to search for his missing son in law . Another
source of Ghadar tales Father said , was an old watchman known as Thakur whose
body trembled as he recounted hair raising stories , and his face would grow
red .
In 1944 , while Father was at
Bombay , his friend and admirer the Marathi writer Sham Rao nilkanth Oak
presented him with a copy of Maaja Pravas by Vishnu Bhatt Godshe Varsaikar ,
a travelogue by a Marathi Brahmin who
had witness to the Ghadar during a visit up north in 1857 . Father was
enchanted by the book and wrote to his closest friend , the Hindi writer , Dr
Ramvilas Sharma that he had to translate it into Hindi so friends like Dr
Sharma could also read the rare memoirs of an ordinary traveler . He shared the
completed manuscript of the Hindi translation with Dr Ramvilas Sharma who was
equally enchanted with the first ever record of the great historic even by a
simple Marathi beggar . It was published by the great art historian Rai Krishna
Das’s publishing house as Mera Pravas , in 1949 , then re printed in 1963 from
Lucknow under the title ‘Aankhon Dekha Ghadar’ and finally a third edition was
published by Rajpal and Sons of New Delhi .
By January of 1957 Father had
begun planning a trilogy on the Ghadar .
As the idea grew , Father realized
that he had to do some field work and gather fresh and original material directly
from the source : the villages of Awadh where most of the battles had been
fought in 1857. He was , he wrote to Dr Ramvilas Sharma , getting more and more
obsessed with the idea of traveling to
as many villages of Awadh as he could , to tap the public memory and gather
whatever stories , ballads and memories about the Ghadar that had survived . To
him it would be like gathering the ashes after a loved one’s cremation , he
said .
When he once discussed this
with his friend , Bhagwati Sharan Singh
the Director for Information and Publicity for the government of UP , he was
enchanted . He urged my father to leave without losing time and promised to
provide him with the basic minimum : a jeep for traveling , a district level
official to take him around . In return he made Father promise that he would
hand him a complete manuscript based on his field notes by September . Those
could be published as a handbook during the Centenary year of the Ghadar . For
his efforts , Father was told , he would receive a total amount of a thousand rupees
as advance royalty . Father immediately came home and told Ba , my mother , of
this proposal . Ba was happy at the thought of my father’s story gathering efforts
being facilitated by a government grant that would go on to produce an
additional handbook . What also pleased her was the thought that the thousand
rupees Father would get as advance royalty , would considerably ease the
financial pressures our joint family had been undergoing ever since Father
resigned from government service . Father told Ba that his travels would be
rushed and involve at least three major forays to various places . She should
pack his bags accordingly . Ba had knitted a beautiful Jute bag for father’s
travel things when he had traveled down south to Chennai in 1946 . The bag was
taken out and found large enough for three to four changes of father’s clothes
, his books and last but not the least , his precious box for Paan ( rolled
betel leaves ) . On 4th June 1957 , Father left for the first lap of
his travels , to Barabanki .
Father carried no tape
recorder or camera that could have facilitated his gathering of the material . We
simply could not afford them and The Department of Information and Publicity
did not consider providing him with any of these either . My father’s childhood
friend Gyan Chandra Jain , who was then working for a Hindi daily Dainik
Navjivan , presented him with a precious sheaf of foolscap paper and a few
small note books for taking notes during his travels . To this cahe , Father
added a few pencils , a pencil sharpener , a pen and a couple more school
notebooks . His arsenal thus completed , Father left home to tour and survey
the villages of Awadh . He was dressed as usual , in a simple pair of cotton
Kurta Pyjama and a pair of slippers .
Father’s three day trip to
Barabanki ended on 7th June . During this period he visited the
villages of Dariyabad , Bhayara , Jehangirabad , Kursi and Mahadeva .
Thereafter on 8th and 9th June , Father toured the
districts of Sultanpur and Faizabad .
The second lap began on June
15th and lasted for three days . During this period he toured the
districts of Bahraich and Gonda . Then from 26th to 28th
june Father toured the district of Sitapur .
After visiting six districts
Father returned home to Lucknow and began working
on the chapters using his handwritten notes for reference . He was very excited
about the material he had gathered , in particular the role played by the weakest part of the Indian society ,
its women . He was fascinated by the great organizational capabilities that a
purdah bound Begum Hazrat Mahal had shown as a leader of the rebel forces . In
a letter to his dearest friend , the great scholar Dr Ramvilas Sharma , Father
wrote :
“…I wish to understand the
society which was the crucible for the Ghadar , in particular the biggest
social problem that stared it in face : the caste system and casteism . Even at
a time when the Ghadar is challenging the system , I find the castes becoming
more powerful , more rigid , in particular where the marriage system is
concerned . The caste system’s intricacies make it almost impossible to trace
its simple and basic contours . It feels as though we are looking at the
country through a moving body of water …
Brother ! queens like Lakshmi
Bai of Jhansi and Begum Hazrat Mahal of Lucknow , along with the courtesans of Kanpur , ordinary housewives in Awadh ,
Bundelkhand and Jagdishpur , could not have taken to streets under ordinary
circumstances . Who knows what prolonged oppressions they were out to avenge .
The Ghadar gave them an opportunity and almost overnight ,
turned them into aggressive
Durgas lusting for battle …”
***
Many years later Once while
straightening my father’s papers at home , I came across some field notes for
Ghadar Ke Phool , scribbled on a sheaf of foolscap paper and a school note book
. Where is the completed manuscript ? I wanted to know . Father said that he
did not have either the time or the money to have his manuscript typewritten .
And producing another handwritten copy for
his own records would have been both tedious and time consuming . Since
the State Department of Information and
Publicity was keen to publish the book during the Centenary year of the Ghadar , he decided to keep forwarding the
handwritten chapters one by one to the
publishers to facilitate printing within the given time span . What corrections
he had to make , could be made on the proofs rushed to him by the publishers .
There was thus no complete manuscript available .
The notes taken down hastily
in pencil by Father while he heard the tellers recount the stories , are near
illegible by now . I once asked Father why he had scribbled them in pencil ,
Father said that he liked to watch and record the faces and gestures of the
story tellers as they spoke . He had therefore perfected the art of writing
without looking down at the note pads as he jotted his notes . In his
experience , a pencil ran on its own ,
unlike a fountain pen that could suddenly run out of ink and was therefore
preferable . Each time he returned , he
would sit down immediately to make out a , “fair copy” in ink using those
hastily penciled notes which was then rushed to the publishers . I must mention
here that Father wrote a beautiful discursive hand and even if he wrote on a
plain piece of paper , his lines ran without dipping down or coursing upwards .
This fact must have made his proof
readers happy .
On July 11th ,
Father left Lucknow
again and headed for the district of Rae Bareilly . He was thereafter planning
to tour the districts of Unnao and Hardoi . But unusually heavy monsoon rains
put paid to his plans . He was quite put out and always regretted his inability
to have toured these two areas .
Meanwhile the Department of
Information and Publicity that had facilitated the travels for Father , were
getting restless and wanted Father to complete and hand them the manuscript for
publication as soon as possible . Father sat down to write the remaining
chapters on 21st July 1957 and managed to complete the job within a
month , on September 16th . He dedicated this book to the young
martyr the Raja of Chahlari , Balbhadra Singh and six hundred Hindus and
Muslims who had laid their lives down to liberate their motherland from foreign
occupation .
29. 9. 12 Dr
Sharad Nagar
In April 1956 my father resigned his job with the All India
Radio . He had been somewhat uneasy with the ever increasing pressures of
being a salaried servant of the government
. But with the source of a regular income gone , going got tough for him and
his family once again . His latest novel that came out in November got very
good reviews . Boosted up by this by the end of the year he had made up his
mind to work on a novel based on the events of the uprising in India
of the 19th century .
Actually the Ghadar had
fascinated him ever since he was a child .
