The Waking of a Nation review: An insightful exploration of a conspiracy that lacks the fervour to deliver a riveting tale!

This reawakening of a chapter likely written in the margins of history and overlooked by many serves as a powerful call to revisit and examine the past with greater depth and understanding.

It’s fascinating how our understanding of history evolves. When we’re young, we memorize dates for exams, thinking of them as cold, hard facts. But as we grow older, we begin to realize that these dates aren’t just numbers—they represent people and their emotions, enduring something so traumatic that it shaped our world. We take this version of history as the ultimate truth, only to later realize that history is often written by those in power. That’s why now, more than ever, it’s crucial to look back at the shadows, at the hidden and erased pages of history before we end up repeating the same mistakes. In that context, Ram Madhvani’s The Waking of a Nation serves as a necessary wake-up call!

The show is a fictional account of facts framed as a courtroom drama that unfolds like an investigative thriller. It centers around Kanti Lal Sharma (Taaruk Raina), a British-educated lawyer who returns to India and takes on the task of unraveling the events leading up to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, as the Hunter Commission hearings take place. While most are familiar with the carefully planned tragic events of April 13, 1919, when General Reginald Dyer ordered his troops to fire on unarmed civilians, fewer know the full story of what led to the massacre or its far-reaching aftermath. The series delves into the sinister motivations behind the tragedy, particularly the Rowlatt Act, which allowed the British to arrest and detain Indians without trial. Through this lens, it explores how a single spark can turn peaceful protests into violent uprisings, and how even a small push can lead a disciplined British general to unleash such devastating violence against his own citizens.

The narrative places us right in the lives of ordinary people who were a part of the crowd for freedom fighter stories but never voiced their own. These are a bunch of Gandhi followers who sought freedom while living in harmony with their communities. It all unfolds through four central characters: Kanti, a brown-skinned Hindu striving for equality in British society; Allahbaksh (Sahil Mehta), an idealistic journalist who despises the British; Hari Aullak (Bhawsheel Singh Sahni), a war veteran who lost an arm in a war forced upon the Indians; and his wife Poonam (Nikita Dutta), a kind-hearted but pragmatic woman who navigates the complex dynamics between the three friends. Each character represents an ideology of the time, with Kanti and Allahbaksh embodying opposing views, one blindly believing in the system, the other consumed by hatred against the system while Hari and Poonam provide the neutral balance; they're more involved in the everyday tussle than the war of ideologies.

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The courtroom investigation that threads together in six episodes highlights how conspiracies often work, revealing how seemingly random events were carefully orchestrated to create the conditions for the massacre. The show emphasizes the idea that the insecure British planned to curate and use this tragedy as a way to reassert their control over a population that was beginning to slip from their grasp. However, this series falls prey to overselling its points in its depiction, focusing too heavily on characters’ reactions or reiterating some points at every turn leaving no space to breathe or form your own opinion. Which is why the facts, while accurate, overpower and feel like dry, disconnected statements rather than a part of a gripping fictional narrative.

This flaw of hyping up stuff extends to the emotional and personal storylines as well that are weak in substance. Hence, when an emotional Kanti, whose long sided blinds have been shed, reads out the names of massacre victims giving voice to the faceless or the brutalities suffered by the Indians at the hands of the British, it doesn’t land as powerfully as it should. The dialogue-heavy approach struggles to balance drama, something that masters like Aaron Sorkin handle with precision, where rapid-fire exchanges propel the narrative and hit with impact. This sharp, clever writing is what the series seems to yearn for. While Shantanu Srivastava and Shatrujeet Nath's writing shows potential, the episodes feel overstuffed with philosophical musings. Kabir’s couplets, and heavy-handed metaphors like “circus ringmasters” and “bullets from a gun,” try too hard to deliver the message.

While I appreciate the casting choices of familiar yet not immediately recognizable faces like Taaruk Raina, Nikita Dutta, Sahil Mehta, and Bhawsheel Singh Sahni, the depth of their characters and the chemistry between them fall short, leaving the performances wanting more. That said, the series does stand firm in its political commentary. Each episode begins with a quote on colonialism, and the show opens and closes with the statement: “Independence from Britain is celebrated somewhere in the world once every 7 days,” emphasizing the global trauma caused by British colonial rule. But while the British are held accountable, the series avoids reducing them or anyone else to a biased outlook of outright villains.

Created and directed by Ram Madhvani, The Waking of a Nation may not be the most intellectually or politically stimulating and nuanced series that follows a familiar underdog narrative to uncover the truth. Despite its overly dramatized retelling of historical events, it reveals the British conspiracy under the guise of bringing order to a chaotic and unruly India, succeeding in delivering its message of inherent racism. But largely it works as a reminder for today’s audience, often impatient with deeper reflection, that what appears to be a solution in present day may be judged differently by history. And on that front, in an era of second-screen viewing, a show that prompts you to “Google” strike a balance between entertainment and engagement across multiple screens.

The Waking of a Nation is currently streaming on SonyLIV!  

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