JALLIANWALA BAGH MASSACRE

Jallianwala Bagh  is a public garden in Amritsar in the Punjab state of India, and houses a memorial of national importance, established in 1951 by the Government of India, to commemorate the massacre of peaceful celebrators including unarmed women and children by British occupying forces, on the occasion of the Punjabi New Year on April 13, 1919 in the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre.

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre, also known as the Amritsar massacre, took place on 13 April 1919 when a crowd of non-violent protesters, along with Baisakhi pilgrims, who had gathered in Jallianwala Bagh Amritsar, were fired upon by troops of the British Army under the command of Colonel Reginald Dyer. The civilians had assembled to participate in the annual Baisakhi celebrations, a religious and cultural festival for Punjabi people.

At 9:00 in the morning of 13 April, the traditional festival of Baisakhi, Colonel Reginald Dyer, the acting military commander for Amritsar and its environs, proceeded through the city with several city officials, announcing the implementation of a pass system to enter or leave Amritsar, a curfew beginning at 20:00 that night and a ban on all processions and public meetings of four or more persons. 

The proclamation was read and explained in English, Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi, but few paid it any heed or appear to have learned of it later. Meanwhile, the local CID had received intelligence of the planned meeting in the Jallianwala Bagh through word of mouth and plainclothes detectives in the crowds. At 12:40, Dyer was informed of the meeting and returned to his base at around 13:30 to decide how to handle it.

By mid-afternoon, thousands of Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus gathered in the Jallianwal Bagh  (garden) near the Harmindar Sahib in Amritsar. Many who were present had earlier worshipped at the Golden Temple, and were passing through the Bagh on their way home. 

The Bagh was (and is) a large, open area of six to seven acres, roughly 200 yards by 200 yards in size, and surrounded by walls roughly 10 feet in height. Balconies of houses three to four stories tall overlooked the Bagh, and five narrow entrances opened onto it, several with locked gates. During the rainy season, it was planted with crops, but served as a local meeting-area and playground for much of the year. In the center of the Bagh was a samadhi (cremation site) and a large well partly filled with water and about 20 feet in diameter.

Narrow Lane used to enter the bagh 

Apart from pilgrims, Amritsar had filled up over the preceding days with farmers, traders and merchants attending the annual Baisakhi horse and cattle fair. The city police closed the fair at 14:00 that afternoon, resulting in a large number of people drifting into the Jallianwala Bagh. It was estimated that about 20,000 to 25,000 people had gathered in the Bagh by the time of the meeting. Dyer sent an aeroplane to overfly the Bagh and estimate the size of the crowd.

 By this time, both Colonel Dyer and Deputy Commissioner Irving, the senior civil authority for Amritsar, were well aware of the meeting, but took no actions to prevent it or send police to peacefully disperse the crowds. This would later be a serious criticism levelled at both Dyer and Irving.

General Dyer

An hour after the meeting began as scheduled at 16:30, Colonel Dyer arrived at the Bagh with a group of ninety soldiers. Fifty of them were armed with 303 Action Bolt bolt-action rifles, forty with khukris..He had also brought two armored cars armed with machine guns, however, the vehicles were left outside, as they were unable to enter the Bagh through the narrow entrances. The Jallianwala Bagh was surrounded on all sides by houses and buildings and had few narrow entrances. Most of them were kept permanently locked. The main entrance was relatively wide, but was guarded heavily by the troops backed by the armoured vehicles.

One of the original images of Jallianwala Bagh Massacre

Dyer—without warning the crowd to disperse—blocked the main exits. He 'explained' later that this act "was not to disperse the meeting but to punish the Indians for disobedience." Dyer ordered his troops to begin shooting toward the densest sections of the crowd. Firing continued for approximately ten minutes. Cease-fire was ordered only when ammunition supplies were almost exhausted, after approximately 1,650 rounds were spent.

Many people died in stampedes at the narrow gates or by jumping into the solitary well on the compound to escape the shooting. A plaque, placed at the site after independence states that 120 bodies were removed from the well. The wounded could not be moved from where they had fallen, as a curfew was declared, and many more died during the night.

The number of deaths caused by the shooting is disputed. While the 'official' figure given by the British inquiry into the massacre is 379 deaths, the method used by the inquiry was corrupt. In July 1919, three months after the massacre, officials were tasked with finding who had been killed by inviting inhabitants of the city to volunteer information about those who had died.This information was incomplete due to fear that those who participated would be identified as having been present at the meeting, and some of the dead may not have had close relations in the area. When interviewed by the members of the committee, a senior civil servant in Punjab admitted that the actual figure could be higher.

Since the official figures were obviously flawed regarding the size of the crowd (15,000–20,000), the number of rounds fired and the period of shooting, the Indian National Congress instituted a separate inquiry of its own, with conclusions that differed considerably from the British Government's so-called inquiry. The casualty number quoted by the Congress was more than 1,500, with approximately 1,000 being killed.The British Government tried to suppress information of the massacre, but news spread in India and widespread outrage ensued, details of the massacre did not become known in Britain until December 1919.

Colonel Dyer reported to his superiors that he had been "confronted by a revolutionary army", to which Major General William Beynon replied: "Your action correct and Lieutenant Governor approves." O'Dwyer requested that martial law should be imposed upon Amritsar and other areas, and this was granted by Viceroy Lord Chelmsford.

Both Secretary of Sate of War  and former Prime Minister H.H. Asquith however, openly condemned the attack. Churchill referring to it as "monstrous", while Asquith called it "one of the worst outrages in the whole of our history". Winston Churchill, in the House of Commons debate of 8 July 1920, said, "The crowd was unarmed, except with bludgeons. It was not attacking anybody or anything… When fire had been opened upon it to disperse it, it tried to run away. Pinned up in a narrow place considerably smaller than Trafalgar Square, with hardly any exits, and packed together so that one bullet would drive through three or four bodies, the people ran madly this way and the other. When the fire was directed upon the centre, they ran to the sides. The fire was then directed to the sides. Many threw themselves down on the ground, the fire was then directed down on the ground. This was continued to 8 to 10 minutes, and it stopped only when the ammunition had reached the point of exhaustion." After Churchill's speech in the House of Commons debate, MP's voted 247 to 37 against Dyer and in support of the Government. Cloake reports that despite the official rebuke, many stupid Britons "thought him a hero for saving the rule of British law in India."

Bullet Shots at the wall of Jallianwala Bagh

Rabindranath Tagore received the news of the massacre by 22 May 1919. He tried to arrange a protest meeting in Calcutta and finally decided to renounce his British knighthood as "a symbolic act of protest". In the repudiation letter, dated 30 May 1919 and addressed to the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford he wrote "I ... wish to stand, shorn, of all special distinctions, by the side of those of my countrymen who, for their so called insignificance, are liable to suffer degradation not fit for human beings."

Original Copy of Rabindranath Tagore's Letter to Lord Chelmsford 

Gupta describes the letter written by Tagore as "historic". He writes that Tagore "renounced his knighthood in protest against the inhuman cruelty of the British Government to the people of Punjab", and he quotes Tagore's letter to the Viceroy ".

On 13 March 1940, at Caxton Hall in London, Udham Singh, an Indian independence activist from Sunam who had witnessed the events in Amritsar and was himself wounded, shot and killed Michael O'Dwyer, the British Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab at the time of the massacre, who had approved Dyer's action and was believed to be the main planner. Dyer himself had died in 1927.

Some, such as the nationalist newspaper Amrita Bazar Patrika, also made positive statements. The common people and revolutionaries glorified the action of Udham Singh. Much of the press worldwide recalled the story of Jallianwala Bagh and alleged Michael O'Dwyer to have been responsible for the massacre. Singh was termed a "fighter for freedom" and his action was referred to in The Times newspaper as "an expression of the pent-up fury of the down-trodden Indian People".

 In Fascist countries, the incident was used for anti-British propaganda: Bergeret, published in large scale from Rome at that time, while commenting upon the Caxton Hall assassination, ascribed the greatest significance to the circumstance and praised the action of Udham Singh as courageous.

At a public meeting in Kanpur, a spokesman had stated that "at last an insult and humiliation of the nation had been avenged". Similar sentiments were expressed in numerous other places across the country. Fortnightly reports of the political situation in Bihar mentioned: "It is true that we had no love lost for Sir Michael. The indignities he heaped upon our countrymen in Punjab have not been forgotten." In its 18 March 1940 issue Amrita Bazar Patrika wrote: "O'Dwyer's name is connected with Punjab incidents which India will never forget." The New Statesman observed: "British conservativism has not discovered how to deal with Ireland after two centuries of rule. Similar comment may be made on British rule in India. Will the historians of the future have to record that it was not the Nazis but the British ruling class which destroyed the British Empire?" 

Singh had told the court at his trial:

'I did it because I had a grudge against him. He deserved it. He was the real culprit. He wanted to crush the spirit of my people, so I have crushed him. For full 21 years, I have been trying to wreak vengeance. I am happy that I have done the job. I am not scared of death. I am dying for my country. I have seen my people starving in India under the British rule. I have protested against this, it was my duty. What a greater honour could be bestowed on me than death for the sake of my motherland?'

Singh was hanged for the murder on 31 July 1940. In 1952, Nehru (by then Prime Minister) honoured Udham Singh with the following statement, which appeared in the daily Partap:

'I salute Shaheed-i-Azam Udham Singh with reverence who had kissed the noose so that we may be free.'

Soon after this recognition by the Prime Minister, Udham Singh received the title of Shaheed, a name given to someone who has attained martyrdom or done something heroic on behalf of their country or religion.

The Jallianwala Bagh Memorial