Kolkata: The Victoria Memorial Hall (VMH) is hosting an exhibition to commemorate the centenary of one of the worst atrocities in the global history of the British empire, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, which eventually proved to be a tipping point in the history of the nationalist movement in India. The multimedia installation with sound, light, audio and video recordings and archival documents titled Ways of Remembering Jallianwala Bagh and Rabindranath Tagores Response will be inaugurated on Monday and will be on display in the Portrait and Entrance Galleries of the VMH till April 19. "This exhibition seeks to recreate the horror of the incident as well as the poignancy and creativity of its remembrances over a century ago, through poetry, music, prose and several other genres," said Jayanta Sengupta, curator and secretary of Victoria Memorial Hall. Rabindranath Tagores response along with the engagements that the Jallianwala Bagh massacre was debated in the British Parliament have been depicted through the exhibition. In 1920, Tagore had gone to London and spoke with poets, politicians and people from all backgrounds in his efforts to mobilise British public opinion so that justice could be sought for this extreme act of violence in the British Parliament. "People are aware that Tagore had renounced his Knighthood in protest against the massacre. This exhibition will enable people to get a sense of the anguish that went through Tagores mind and how he reacted after the incident," said Sarmistha Dutta-Gupta, writer and independent researcher who has conceptualised and curated the entire exhibition. Another major attraction of the exhibition will be oral history recordings of some families of Amritsar which were affected by the massacre. They have shared their experience of what they had heard from their elder generation about the incident. "We have also tried to provide a glimpse of the Bengal - Punjab connection during that period through the response of the Bengal press to the massacre," said Dutta Gupta, adding that the main aim behind the exhibition is to ensure that facts are not repeated but significant episodes in this connection that are unknown to the people can be disseminated. The artistic direction of the exhibition has been done by Sanchayan Ghosh of Kala Bhavan, Shantiniketan. Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar, will inaugurate the exhibition in presence of Gurbux Singh – former Indian hockey captain and Arjuna awardee. A folio with reproductions of watercolour paintings of three Sikh Gurus – Guru Nanak, Guru Teg Bahadur, and Guru Gobind Singh – from the VMH collection will also be unveiled on the occasion.

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