The Waking Of A Nation Cast/ Actors: Ranjit Singh, Nikita Dutta, Sahil Mehta, Man Singh Karamati, Bhawsheel Singh Sahni, Ananyabrata Chakravorty, Raj Jadon, Taaruk Raina, Dev Raaz, Carl Wharton, Alex Reece, Paul McEwan, Jamie Alter, Meenakshi Chugh, Richard Bhakti Klein & Ed Robinson
The Waking Of A Nation Director: Ram Madhvani
The Waking Of A Nation Release Date: March 07, 2025
The Waking Of A Nation Available On: Sony LIV
The Waking Of A Nation Released/ Available In Languages: Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam & English
The Waking Of A Nation Number Of Episodes: 6
The Waking Of A Nation Episode Duration: 50 minutes (Approx Each Episode)
The Waking Of A Nation Critic Review:
It was a blood splattered Baisakhi on April 13, 1919. When a jashan (celebration) turned into a janazaa (funeral) for the hundreds gunned down at Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar.
General Dyer went down in history as the butcher. He was the cruel perpetrator, also the puppet.
But mastermind, ringmaster and puppeteer Lieutenant-General Michael O’Dwyer was never formally indicted. (Udham Singh did shoot him dead more than 20 years later.)
Is it time for an unwritten chapter to be brought to the fore?
Director Ram Madhvani who had shown glimpses of how well he can segue imagination into history when he made the short film This Bloody Line (on how Sir Cyril Radcliffe cut off bits of India on the west and on the east), goes down the same path, same era.This time to recreate the Amritsar of 1919.
Using a courtroom where the Hunter Commission is in session and plenty of flashbacks, Madhvani and co-writers Shatrujeet Nath and Shantganu Srivastava investigate the conspiracy that led to the massacre on Baisakhi day, revisit white skin supremacy as it whips the brown skin into submission, and the loathing behind the cruelty of the British towards the “filthy natives” who know no culture, who can’t ever govern themselves.
To keep their idea of order in place, Lieutenant-General O’Dwyer and his masters in London had to ensure that a mutiny like 1857 never occurred again to threaten their rule. A baby elephant, conditioned to believe that it can’t break free even when it’s grown up, stays rather obviously in the backdrop. “The rope of ignorance,” must never be cut, Indians must never wake up to reality.
Madhvani uses black and white and then bleak colours to tell the story of three friends. Almost like Amar Akbar Anthony. Teen yaar whose dosti must remain barkarar, frequent shots of a photograph of the trio serve as a reminder that friendships are rendered asunder when a bloody plot is put into action.
Kantilal Sahni (Taaruk Raina), the London-trained lawyer, more British than the whites. Allah Baksh (Sahil Mehta), the editor-in-chief of the fearless newspaper ‘Inquilaab’, who smells foul play and cautions Kanti. In fact, he won’t use the pen Kanti has brought back from London for him, praying on Ram Navmi that his friend finds his tongue someday. Hari Singh Aulakh (Bhawsheel Singh Sahni) and wife Poonam (Nikita Dutta), caught between the two friends who’re drawing apart.
When Kantilal is appointed on the Hunter Commission that’s set up to enquire into the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, there’s celebration in the neighbourhood.
“The Commission is an eyewash,” foretells Allah Baksh, sceptical of British intent.
Spread over six leisurely told episodes that go back and forth, Madhvani brings much of pre-Independence India to the fore: the Indians who fawned, bowed and boot-licked the Brits. Kantilal exemplified it when he added “indefinitely” to the detention of Indians that the pernicious Rowlatt Act brought into effect, leading to protests and the Baisakhi bloodshed. The ones who resisted the Brits, fought and paid a price. The Indians who advocated peace even as they protested. Madhvani keeps underlining Hindu-Muslim amity, drinking each other’s jhoota pani as a symbol of brotherhood.
On parallel lines, the conspiracy that was hatched and slowly executed.
The cruelty unleashed. A scene where Kanti’s dad’s dignity is compromised as a Brit shows him the right way of eating with a fork and knife. Makes you want to discard cutlery and use your hands. Discard the suit, wear a dhoti.
Kanti does wake up. He does find his tongue.
Ultimately, Madhvani also tells another truth: that the Brits were not beyond throwing their own under the bus too. Anything to keep their own nose clean, their image untainted as the beacon of human rights and global peace.
But it is not an easy watch. It is also a dizzy watch as Madhvani goes into flashbacks so often that sometimes, like the sequence where Kanti is offered a job in London, you can’t instantly tell whether it’s Hunter Commission time or a harkback to an old incident.
The rather tiresome directorial tool of BG songs playing on to prolong sequences or to turn them into tearjerkers is also overdone. There’s even a drunken scene with a monologue that Poonam conveniently overhears. More tears. And Poonam’s pregnant too. Some more tears. It was, undoubtedly, one of the cruellest chapters of history. But Madhvani’s tendency to overdo prevails.
However, after the Commission initially waves away Kantilal’s arguments as intelligent conjecture, the final synopsis where the lawyer gives bullet points to sum up the conspiracy, is spot on and dramatic. A native did play them after all.
The Waking Of A Nation – Watch Or Not?: It’s a tough watch, So take it easy, one episode at a time.
The Waking Of A Nation Review Score Rating: 3 out of 5 (i.e. 3/5)
The Waking Of A Nation Official Trailer:
The Waking Of A Nation Official Trailer (Credits: Sony LIV)
Also Read: Dabba Cartel Review: Godmother’s Gang
