Jallianwala Bagh massacre

The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre (Hindi: Jallianwala Ba Hatyk),

alternatively known as the Amritsar Massacre, was named after the Jallianwala Bagh (Garden) in the
northern Indian city of Amritsar where, on April 13, 1919, 90 British Indian Army soldiers under the
command of Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer opened fire on an unarmed gathering of men, women and
children. The firing lasted for 10 to 15 minutes, until the soldiers ran out of ammunition.
[1]
Official British
Raj sources placed the fatalities at 379, and with 1100 wounded.
[2]
Civil Surgeon Dr. Smith indicated that
there were 1,526 casualties.
[3]

Prelude to the massacre
The events that followed the passage of the Rowlatt Act in 1919 were also influenced by the events linked to
the Ghadar conspiracy. At the time, British Indian Army troops were returning from the battlefields of
Europe and Mesopotamia to an economic depression in India.
[16][17]
The attempts at mutiny in 1915 and the
Lahore conspiracy trials were still in public attention. News of young Mohajirs who fought on behalf of the
Turkish Caliphate and later fought in the ranks of the Red Army during the Russian Civil War was also
beginning to reach India. The Russian Revolution had also cast its long shadow into India.
[18]
It was at this
time that Mahatma Gandhi, until then relatively unknown on the Indian political scene, began emerging as a
mass leader.
Ominously, in 1919, the third Anglo-Afghan war began in the wake of Amir Habibullah Khan's assassination
and institution of Amanullah Khan in a system blatantly influenced by the Kabul mission. In addition, in
India, Gandhi's call for protest against the Rowlatt act achieved an unprecedented response of furious unrest
and protests. The situation especially in Punjab was deteriorating rapidly, with disruptions of rail, telegraph
and communication systems. The movement was at its peak before the end of the first week of April, with
some recording that "practically the whole of Lahore was on the streets, the immense crowd that passed
through Anarkali was estimated to be around 20,000."
[17]

In Amritsar, over 5,000 people gathered at Jallianwala Bagh. This situation deteriorated perceptibly over the
next few days. Michael O'Dwyer is said to have been of the firm belief that these were the early and ill-
concealed signs of a conspiracy for a coordinated uprising around May, on the lines of the 1857 revolt, at a
time when British troops would have withdrawn to the hills for the summer. The Amritsar massacre, as well
as responses preceding and succeeding it, contrary to being an isolated incident, was the end result of a
concerted plan of response from the Punjab administration to suppress such a conspiracy.
[19]
James
Houssemayne Du Boulay is said to have ascribed a direct relationship between the fear of a Ghadarite
uprising in the midst of an increasingly tensed situation in Punjab, and the British response that ended in the
massacre.
[20]

On April 10, 1919, a protest was held at the residence of the Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar, a city in
Punjab, a large province in the northwestern part of the then unpartitioned India. The demonstration was
held to demand the release of two popular leaders of the Indian Independence Movement, Satya Pal and
Saifuddin Kitchlew, who had been earlier arrested by the government and removed to a secret location. Both
were proponents of the Satyagraha movement led by Mahatma Gandhi. The crowd was fired on by a military
picket, killing several protesters. The firing set off a chain of violence. Later in the day, several banks and
other government buildings, including the Town Hall and the railway station were attacked and set on fire.
The violence continued to escalate, culminating in the deaths of at least 5 Europeans, including government
employees and civilians. There was retaliatory firing on the crowd from the military several times during the
day, and between 8 and 20 people were killed.
For the next two days, the city of Amritsar was quiet, but violence continued in other parts of the Punjab.
Railway lines were cut, telegraph posts destroyed, government buildings burnt, and three Europeans were
killed. By April 13, the British government had decided to place most of the Punjab under martial law. The
legislation placed restrictions on a number of civil liberties, including freedom of assembly, banning
gatherings of more than four people.
[21]

The massacre
On April 13, thousands of people gathered in the Jallianwala Bagh (garden) near the Golden Temple in
Amritsar, on Baisakhi,
An hour after the meeting began as scheduled at 4:30 p.m., Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer marched a
group of 90 British Indian Army soldiers, carrying machine guns. The vehicles were stationed outside the
main gate being unable to enter the Bagh through the narrow entrance.
The Jallianwala Bagh was bounded on all sides by houses and buildings and had few narrow entrances, most
of which were kept permanently locked. The main entrance was relatively wider, but was guarded by the
troops backed by the armoured vehicles. General Dyer ordered troops to open fire without warning or any
order to disperse, and to direct fire towards the densest sections of the crowd. He continued the firing,
approximately 1400 rounds in all, until ammunition was exhausted.
Apart from the many deaths directly from the firing, a number of deaths were caused by stampedes at the
narrow gates as also people who sought shelter from the firing by jumping into the solitary well inside the
compound. A plaque in the monument at the site, set up after independence, says that 120 bodies were
plucked out of the well.
As a result of the firing, hundreds of people were killed and thousands were injured. The wounded could not
be moved from where they had fallen, as a curfew had been declared - many more died during the night.
Despite the government's best efforts to suppress information of the massacre, news spread elsewhere in
India and widespread outrage ensued.
Back in his headquarters, General Dyer reported to his superiors that he had been "confronted by a
revolutionary army".
In a telegram sent to Dyer, British Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab, Sir Michael O'Dwyer wrote: "Your action
is correct. Lieutenant Governor approves."
[22]

O'Dwyer requested that martial law be imposed upon Amritsar and other areas; this was granted by the
Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, after the massacre.
Dyer was called to appear before the Hunter Commission, a commission of inquiry into the massacre that was
ordered to convene by Secretary of State for India Edwin Montagu, in late 1919. Dyer admitted before the
commission that he came to know about the meeting at the Jallianwala Bagh at 12:40 hours that day but took
no steps to prevent it. He stated that he had gone to the Bagh with the deliberate intention of opening fire if
he found a crowd assembled there.
"I think it quite possible that I could have dispersed the crowd without firing but they would have come
back again and laughed, and I would have made, what I consider, a fool of myself." Dyer's response
to the Hunter Commission Enquiry.
[1][23]

Dyer said he would have used his machine guns if he could have got them into the enclosure, but these were
mounted on armoured cars. He said he did not stop firing when the crowd began to disperse because he
thought it was his duty to keep firing until the crowd dispersed, and that a little firing would do no good. In
fact he continued the firing till he ran out of ammunition.
[24]

He confessed that he did not take any steps to tend to the wounded after the firing. "Certainly not. I t was not
my job. Hospitals were open and they could have gone there," was his response.
[1]

The Hunter Commission's lenience towards the action failed to satisfy public opinion in India - it provided
official figures of 379 killed (337 men, 41 boys and a six-week-old baby) and 200 injured. It had expected
evidence for casualties to be provided by the public from August to November - however, people did not come
forward, afraid of being branded rebels.
[25]
Since these figures were clearly flawed considering the size of the
crowd (5,000-10,000), close firing-range, number of rounds fired and period of firing, the Indian National
Congress instituted a separate inquiry of its own, coming to conclusions that differed considerably from the
Government's. The casualty figure quoted by the INC was more than 1,500, with roughly 1,000 killed.
[26]

Demonstration at Gujranwala
Two days later on 15 April, demonstrations took place in Gujranwala protesting the killings at Amritsar.
Police and aircraft were used against the demonstrators, leading to 12 deaths and 27 injuries. The Officer
Commanding the Royal Air Force in India, Brigadier General N D K MacEwen later stated that:
"I think we can fairly claim to have been of great use in the late riots, particularly at Gujranwala, where
the crowd when looking at its nastiest was absolutely dispersed by a machine using bombs and Lewis
guns."
[27]

Reaction
In the storm of outrage that followed the release of the Hunter Report in 1920, Dyer was placed on the
inactive list and his rank reverted to Colonel since he was no longer in command of a Brigade. The then
Commander-in-Chief stated that Dyer would no longer be offered employment in India. Dyer was also in
very poor health, and so he was sent home to England on a hospital ship.
Some senior British officers applauded his suppression of "another Indian Mutiny". The House of Lords
passed a measure commending him. The House of Commons, however, censured him; in the debate, Winston
Churchill claimed: "The incident in Jallian Wala Bagh was an extraordinary event, a monstrous event, an
event which stands in singular and sinister isolation". Dyer's action was condemned worldwide. He was
officially censured by the British Government and resigned in 1920.
However, many Britons in India and Britain, as well as the British press, defended Dyer as the man who had
saved British pride and honour, some labelling him the "Saviour of the Punjab". A British newspaper, The
Morning Post started a sympathy fund for Dyer and received over 30,000. An American woman donated 100
pounds, adding "I fear for the British women there now that Dyer has been dismissed."
[28]
Dyer was
presented with a memorial book inscribed with the names of well-wishers. Jawaharlal Nehru, in his
autobiography, claimed that he overheard, from his curtained sleeping booth on a night train from Amritsar
to Delhi, a military officer in loud voice to another "pointing out how he had the whole town at his mercy and
he had felt like reducing the rebellious city to a heap of ashes, but he took pity on it and refrained." It turned
out to be Dyer on his way to Delhi after the Hunter Committee meeting. In Delhi, Dyer descended from the
train in pyjamas with bright pink stripes and a dressing gown.
[29]
Nehru also remarked he heard soldiers
discussing how the actions taken were a good thing because they would "teach the bloody browns a lesson."
In India, the massacre evoked feelings of deep anguish and anger. It catalysed the freedom movement in the
Punjab against British rule and paved the way for Mahatma Gandhi's Non-Cooperation Movement against
the British in 1920. It was also motivation for a number of other revolutionaries, including Bhagat Singh. The
Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore returned his knighthood to the King-Emperor in protest. S. Srinivasa
Iyengar resigned as Advocate-General of Madras Presidency and returned his Order of the Indian Empire.
The massacre ultimately became an important catalyst of the Indian independence movement.