1919 British Army massacre of Indian protesters
The Jallianwala Bagh massacre, also known as the Amritsar massacre, took place on 13 April 1919. A large crowd had gathered at the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, Punjab, British India, during the annual Baisakhi fair to protest against the Rowlatt Act and the arrest of pro-Indian independence activists Saifuddin Kitchlew and Satyapal. In response to the public gathering, the temporary brigadier general R. E. H. Dyer surrounded the people with his Gurkha and Sikh infantry regiments of the British Indian Army. The Jallianwala Bagh could only be exited on one side, as its other three sides were enclosed by buildings. After blocking the exit with his troops, Dyer ordered them to shoot at the crowd, continuing to fire even as the protestors tried to flee. The troops kept on firing until their ammunition was low and they were ordered to stop. Estimates of those killed vary from 379 to 1,500 or more people; over 1,200 others were injured, of whom 192 sustained serious injuries. Britain has never formally apologised for the massacre but expressed "deep regret" in 2019.
The massacre caused a re-evaluation by the Imperial British military of its role when confronted with civilians to use "minimal force whenever possible" (although the British Army was not directly involved in the massacre; the British Indian Army was a separate organisation). However, in the light of later British military actions during the Mau Mau rebellion in the Kenya Colony, historian Huw Bennett has pointed out that this new policy was not always followed. The army was retrained with less violent tactics for crowd control.
The level of casual brutality and the lack of any accountability stunned the entire nation, resulting in a wrenching loss of faith of the general Indian public in the intentions of the United Kingdom. The attack was condemned by the Secretary of State for War, Winston Churchill, as "unutterably monstrous", and in the UK House of Commons debate on 8 July 1920 Members of Parliament voted 247 to 37 against Dyer. The ineffective inquiry, together with the initial accolades for Dyer, fuelled great widespread anger against the British among the Indian populace, leading to the non-cooperation movement of 1920–22. Some historians consider the episode a decisive step towards the end of British rule in India.
Background.
Defence of India Act.
During World War I, British India contributed to the British war effort by providing men and resources. Millions of Indian soldiers and labourers served in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, while both the Indian administration and the princes sent large supplies of food, money, and ammunition. Bengal and Punjab remained sources of anti-colonial activities. Revolutionary attacks in Bengal, associated increasingly with disturbances in Punjab, were enough to nearly paralyse the regional administration. Of these, a pan-Indian mutiny in the British Indian Army planned for February 1915 was the most prominent amongst a number of plots formulated between 1914 and 1917 by Indian nationalists in India, the United States and Germany.
The planned February mutiny was ultimately thwarted when British intelligence infiltrated the Ghadar Movement, arresting key figures. Mutinies in smaller units and garrisons within India were also crushed. In the context of the British war effort and the threat from the separatist movement in India, the Defence of India Act 1915 was passed, limiting civil and political liberties. Michael O'Dwyer, then the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab, was one of the strongest proponents of the act, in no small part due to the Ghadarite threat in the province.
The Rowlatt Act.
The costs of the protracted war in money and manpower were great. High casualty rates in the war, increasing inflation after the end, compounded by heavy taxation, the deadly 1918 flu pandemic, and the disruption of trade during the war escalated human suffering in India. The pre-war Indian nationalist sentiment was revived as moderate and extremist groups of the Indian National Congress ended their differences to unify. In 1916, the Congress was successful in establishing the Lucknow Pact, a temporary alliance with the All-India Muslim League. British political concessions and Whitehall's India Policy after World War I began to change, with the passage of Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms, which initiated the first round of political reform in the Indian subcontinent in 1917. However, this was deemed insufficient in reforms by the Indian political movement. Mahatma Gandhi, recently returned to India, began emerging as an increasingly charismatic leader under whose leadership civil disobedience movements grew rapidly as an expression of political unrest.
The recently crushed Ghadar conspiracy, the presence of Raja Mahendra Pratap's Kabul mission in Afghanistan (with possible links to Bolshevik Russia), and a still-active revolutionary movement especially in Punjab and Bengal (as well as worsening civil unrest throughout India) led to the appointment of a sedition committee in 1918 chaired by Sidney Rowlatt, an Anglo-Egyptian judge. It was tasked to evaluate German and Bolshevik links to the militant movement in India, especially in Punjab and Bengal. On the recommendations of the committee, the Rowlatt Act, an extension of the Defence of India Act 1915 to limit civil liberties, was enacted.
The passage of the Rowlatt Act in 1919 caused large-scale political unrest throughout India. Ominously, in 1919, the Third Anglo-Afghan War began in the wake of Amir Habibullah's assassination and the institution of Amanullah Khan in his place. As a reaction to the Rowlatt Act, Muhammad Ali Jinnah resigned from his Bombay seat, writing in a letter to the Viceroy, "I, therefore, as a protest against the passing of the Bill and the manner in which it was passed tender my resignation ... a Government that passes or sanctions such a law in times of peace forfeits its claim to be called a civilised government". Gandhi's call for protest against the Rowlatt Act achieved an unprecedented response of furious unrest and protests.
Before the massacre.
Especially in Punjab, the situation 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 Bazaar was estimated to be around 20,000". Many officers in the Indian army believed revolt was possible, and they prepared for the worst. The British Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab, Michael O'Dwyer, is said to have believed that these were the early and ill-concealed signs of a conspiracy for a coordinated revolt planned 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, and other events at about the same time, have been described by some historians as the result of a concerted plan by the Punjab administration to suppress such a conspiracy. James Houssemayne Du Boulay is said to have posited a direct causal relationship between the fear of a Ghadarite uprising in the midst of an increasingly tense situation in Punjab, and the British response that ended in the massacre.
On 10 April 1919, there was a protest at the residence of Miles Irving, the Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar. The demonstration was to demand the release of two popular leaders of the Indian Independence Movement, Satyapal and Saifuddin Kitchlew, who had been arrested by the government and moved to a secret location. Both were proponents of the Satyagraha movement led by Gandhi. A military picket shot at the crowd, killing several protesters and setting off a series of violent events. Riotous crowds carried out arson attacks on British banks, killed several British people and assaulted two British women.
On 11 April, Marcella Sherwood, an elderly English missionary, fearing for the safety of the approximately 600 Indian children under her care, was on her way to shut the schools and send the children home. While travelling through a narrow street called the Kucha Kurrichhan, she was caught by a mob who violently attacked her. She was rescued by some local Indians, including the father of one of her pupils, who hid her from the mob and then smuggled her to the safety of Gobindgarh Fort. After visiting Sherwood on 19 April, the local commander of Indian Army forces, Brigadier General Dyer, enraged at the assault, issued an order requiring every Indian man using that street to crawl its length on his hands and knees as a punishment. Dyer later explained to a British inspector: "Some Indians crawl face downwards in front of their gods. I wanted them to know that a British woman is as sacred as a Hindu god and therefore they have to crawl in front of her, too." He also authorised the indiscriminate public whipping of locals who came within lathi length of a police officer. Marcella Sherwood later defended Dyer, describing him as "the saviour of the Punjab".
For the next two days, the city of Amritsar was quiet, but violence continued in other parts of Punjab. Railway lines were cut, telegraph posts destroyed, government buildings burnt, and three Europeans murdered. By 13 April, the British government had decided to put most of Punjab under martial law. The legislation restricted a number of civil liberties, including freedom of assembly; gatherings of more than four people were banned.
On the evening of 12 April, the leaders of the "hartal" in Amritsar held a meeting at the Hindu College–Dhab Khatikan. At the meeting, Hans Raj, an aide to Kitchlew, announced a public protest meeting would be held at 16:30 the following day in the Jallianwala Bagh, to be organised by Muhammad Bashir and chaired by a senior and respected Congress Party leader, Lal Kanhyalal Bhatia. A series of resolutions protesting against the Rowlatt Act, the recent actions of the British authorities and the detention of Satyapal and Kitchlew was drawn up and approved, after which the meeting adjourned.
The massacre.
On Sunday, 13 April 1919, Dyer, convinced a major insurrection could take place, banned all meetings. This notice was not widely disseminated, and many villagers gathered in the Bagh to celebrate the Baisakhi festival and to peacefully protest against the arrest and deportation of two national leaders, Satyapal and Saifuddin Kitchlew.
At 09:00 on the morning of 13 April 1919, the traditional festival of Baisakhi, Dyer proceeded through Amritsar with several city officials, announcing the implementation of a pass system to enter or leave the city, 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 many either paid it no heed or learned of it only later. Meanwhile, local police had received intelligence of the planned meeting in the Jallianwala Bagh through word of mouth and plainclothes detectives in the crowds. Dyer was informed of the meeting at 12:40 and returned to his base at around 13:30 to decide how to handle it.
By mid-afternoon, thousands of Indians had gathered in the Jallianwala Bagh (garden) near the Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar. Many who were present had been worshipping earlier at the Golden Temple and were merely passing through the Bagh on their way home. The Bagh was (and remains today) an open area of , roughly in size, and surrounded on all sides by walls roughly in height. Balconies of houses three to four stories tall overlooked the Bagh, and five narrow entrances opened onto it, several with lockable gates. Although it was planted with crops during the rainy season, for much of the rest of the year it served as a local meeting place and recreation area. In the centre of the Bagh was a "samadhi" (cremation site) and a large well partly filled with water which measured about in diameter.
Apart from the pilgrims passing through, Amritsar had filled up over the preceding days with farmers, traders, and merchants who were attending the annual Baisakhi horse and cattle fair. Because the city police closed the fair at 14:00 that afternoon, many of those who had been attending it drifted into the Jallianwala Bagh, further increasing the number of people who happened to be there when the massacre began.
Dyer arranged for an aeroplane to overfly the Bagh and estimate the size of the crowd, which he reported was about 6,000; however, the Hunter Commission estimates that a crowd of between 10,000 and 20,000 had assembled by the time Dyer arrived. Dyer