Exactly 105 years ago, on April 13, 1919, Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer ordered his troops to open fire on a large gathering of people in Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar. While the British official report stated that 379 people were killed in the incident, some estimates put the death toll in the thousands.
According to many historians, this was a turning point in Indians’ relationship with their British colonisers, and thus a pivotal moment in the course of India’s struggle for independence. Here is how.
The massacre
After the passage of the draconian Rowlatt Act in March 1919, Punjab (like the rest of India) was on the boil. Protests spread across the province, and Michael O’Dwyer, then the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab, feared a large-scale resurrection — just like in 1857.
On April 10, the police fired at a crowd of protestors in Amritsar, killing several, and triggering riots. British people, both men and women, living in the city were attacked, as mobs went out of control. O’Dwyer’s fears were further flamed.
As historian Kim Wagner explained: “The spectre of 1857 turned riots into rebellion and nationalist agitation into anti-British conspiracies, where local unrest could easily assume the proportion of major political crises.” (Amritsar 1919, 2019).
It is in this context that Reginald Dyer ordered the firing in Jallianwala Bagh on April 13, where thousands had gathered for the annual Baisakhi fair. The ghastly massacre, described by many like shooting a fish in a barrel, was “both retributive and pre-emptive: Dyer took revenge for the attacks on Europeans… but he also acted to prevent a much bigger outbreak that he believed to be imminent.” (Wagner).
The British response
The immediate reaction of the British administration in Punjab was to condone Dyer’s actions, and double down on its repression. Viceroy Chelmsford imposed martial law in the province, and thousands were detained. Hundreds were also killed (an exact number is hard to find).
But as details of the sheer brutality of the massacre emerged, and the law-and-order situation in India took a further turn for the worse, critical voices emerged within the British government. Winston Churchillat the time Britain’s Secretary of State, gave a thundering speech in the Parliament, calling Dyer’s actions “monstrous”, following which, on July 8, British MPs voted 247 to 37 to condemn Dyer. Dyer would eventually be removed from his command in 1920.
Nonetheless, for many Britons in India, and back at home, he was still a hero who saved British rule in India. Even those who criticised Dyer singled him out as “a bad apple”. “Churchill’s much-quoted disavowal was not an acknowledgement of the violence of empire. It was… a staunch attempt to reassert the moral legitimacy of the British Empire in the aftermath of the Amritsar Massacre,” Wagner wrote. (Amritsar 1919).
A turning point for Indians
For Indians, however, things would never be the same. When details of the massacre began appearing newspapers in May, the whole country was shocked. Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, a global personality, returned his knighthood in protest. Addressing Viceroy 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.”
“The brutality at Jallianwala Bagh stunned the entire nation. The response would come, not immediately, but a little later,” Bipan Chandra and Others wrote. (India’s Struggle for Independence, 1987).
Within months Mahatma Gandhi launched the Non-Cooperation – Khilafat Movement — the first pan-India movement for India’s independence. He wrote in an editorial published in October that year: “No government deserves respect which holds cheap the liberty of its subjects.” (“A Punjab Victim”, Young India1919).
Many historians believe that this was, effectively, the final nail in the coffin for the moral legitimacy of the British empire in India. Even the most moderate of Indian nationalists effectively lost faith in the Empire after learning about the massacre. Rabindranath Tagore,
“The Amritsar Massacre revealed the inner workings, and imagined vulnerability, of British colonial rule in India,” Wagner wrote. “Colonial violence ultimately undermined colonial rule by alienating the local population and turning its victims into martyrs of nationalist movements,” Wagner wrote.
