JALLIANWALLA MASSACRE AT AMRITSAR
In this chapter we shall relate briefly the story of what occurred in
Punjab during the troubled days of 1919. These incidents, popularly
known as “the Punjab wrongs,” led to far-reaching consequences in the
relationship between England and India, and knowledge of them is very
necessary for a proper understanding of what has happened in India
since. We shall begin with the beginning of the World War and follow
the various incidents in the sequence of their occurrence.
It is a matter of common knowledge now that the people of India
supported the British Empire throughout the period of the war in a very
liberal and enthusiastic manner. “India’s contributions to the war both
in its quota of man-force and money were far beyond the capacity of its
poor inhabitants.” Leaders of all states of opinion joined hands to
assist the Empire in its time of need. It has been stated before that
Gandhi overworked in the capacity as an honorary recruiting officer
until he contracted dysentery, which at one time threatened to prove
fatal.
India was “bled white” in order to win the war. But for her support in
men and money England would have suffered greatly in prestige. Except
for Indian troops the German advance to Paris in the fall of 1914 might
not have been checked. The official publication, “India’s Contribution
to the Great War,” describes the work of the Indian troops thus:
“The Indian Corps reached France in the nick of time and helped
to stem the great German thrust towards Ypres and the Channel
Ports during the Autumn of 1914. These were the only trained
reinforcements immediately available in any part of the British
Empire and right worthily they played their part.
“In Egypt and Palestine, in Mesopotamia, Persia, East and West
Africa and in subsidiary theatres they shared with their British
and Dominion comrades the attainment of final victory.”[34]
While the issue of the war still seemed doubtful, the British
Parliament, in order to induce the people of India to still greater
efforts in their support of the Empire, held out definite promises of
self-government to India after the war as a reward for their loyalty.
Mr. Montague, His Majesty’s Secretary of State for India, made the
following announcement on August 20, 1917:
“The policy of His Majesty’s Government with which the Government
of India are in complete accord, is that of the increasing
association of Indians in every branch of the administration and
the gradual development of self-governing institutions with a view
to the progressive realisation of responsible government in India
as an integral part of the British Empire. They have decided that
substantial steps in this direction should be taken as soon as
possible, ...”
The text of the above announcement was widely published in the
entire press of India. Then followed the famous message of President
Woodrow Wilson to the Congress with its definite pledge of
“self-determination” to subordinate nations. This helped to brighten
still more India’s hopes for home-rule.
Naturally, after the Armistice was signed, the people of India expected
the fulfilment of the war promises. “But the British Government,
anticipating that soon after the war ended there would be a loud clamor
in the country for home-rule, gave instead of self-government the
Rowlatt Act, which was designed to stifle the nationalistic spirit in
its infancy.” The act gave unlimited power to the police to prohibit
public assemblies, to order indiscriminate searches of private homes,
to make arrests without notification, and so forth. “Its main purpose
was in such a manner to strengthen the authority of the police and
to enable them to root out of the country every form of liberal and
independent thought.” The plans of the British Bureaucracy were,
however, defeated in their entirety, because the passage of the act did
not go through the Legislative Assembly as smoothly as was expected.
The whole country cried out in one voice against the Rowlatt Act, but
it was passed by the British Government of India in the teeth of the
_unanimous_ opposition of _all_ elected as well as government appointed
Indian members of the Legislative Council.
This was once again followed by mass meetings and parades in protest,
petitions to the British Parliament, delegations to the Viceroy, and a
nation-wide demonstration against the Rowlatt Act. But the Government
altogether ignored the sentiments of the country in this matter, an
attitude which in turn helped to inflame the masses still more.
Gandhi considered the existence of the act on the statute books of
India a national humiliation, and in protest he ordered the people of
India to observe April 6, 1919, as a day of fast and national _hartal_.
_Hartal_ is the sign of deep mourning, during which the whole business
of the country is stopped and the people wander about the streets in
grief and lamentation. It was observed in ancient times only at the
death of popular kings or on the occasion of some other very serious
national calamity.
The response to Gandhi’s appeal for the _hartal_ was very general. It
was surprising how quickly the sentiment of national consciousness had
spread throughout the country. Overnight Gandhi’s name was on the lips
of everybody, and even the most ignorant countrywomen were talking
about the Rowlatt Act. I remember that on the afternoon of April the
6th, while I was walking toward the site of the mass meeting in my
town, the like of which were being held all over India, and at which
resolutions of protest against the Rowlatt Act were passed, I saw a
girl of six nearly collapse on the street. After I had picked her up,
and she had rested from the heat of the sun, I asked her who she was
and where she was going. The little girl replied: “I am the daughter of
_Bharat Mata_ (Mother India) and I am going to the funeral of Daulat
(Rowlatt). Mahatma Dandhi (Gandhi) has called me.”
The day passed quite peacefully except for slight disturbances in a few
places. But the excitement throughout the country, particularly in the
Punjab, was very great. The situation was so tense that Gandhi sent
his strong admonitions of non-violence to his people in a continual
stream. The activity at Amritsar started when, on the morning of April
10th the English Commissioner invited Dr. Kitchlew and Dr. Satyapal,
the two popular young leaders of the city, to his residence and ordered
their deportation to some unknown place. When it became known that
their leaders had been treacherously removed the citizens went on a
sudden _hartal_, and a huge mob began to gather in front of the main
city gate. The mob soon organized itself into a procession, which
started to move toward the District Commissioner’s residence to request
the restoration of Doctors Kitchlew and Satyapal. While crossing the
railroad bridge, the procession was met by armed police who soon
caused six casualties among the peaceful, unarmed mob. The mob soon
turned back and fell upon the city in a wild fury. It divided itself
into different groups and expended its rage by setting fire to the
city hall, two English banks, and a local Christian church. Two bank
managers, the only Englishmen present in town on that day, were cruelly
murdered. An English nurse who happened to be passing through a narrow
street was also assaulted by the mob, but was soon rescued by the
citizens and carried to a place of safety. Later on, this benevolent
Christian lady greatly endeared herself to the people of Amritsar by
refusing to accept any other indemnity for the assault than the price
of her wrist watch which was lost in the scramble.
Immediately after the news of Amritsar reached the other towns in the
province, similar outbreaks of popular frenzy occurred in many places,
with this difference however, that at no other place besides Amritsar
were English residents injured. There were casualties on the side of
the mob everywhere, but none on the side of the English. On April 11th
the authority of the civil government was withdrawn, and martial law
was declared in most sections of the province of Punjab.
Thus did the trouble begin that resulted in the massacre of Amritsar.
On that fatal day, April 13th, a mass meeting had been announced to
take place in Jallianwalla Bagh, an open enclosure in the heart of the
city of Amritsar. As it happened, April 13th was also the Baisakhi day,
which is observed all over India as a day of national festival. Large
crowds of country people had gathered into the city on that account.
On the morning of the 13th, General Dyer, the commanding officer
of the city, issued from the headquarters an order prohibiting the
Jallianwalla Bagh meeting, and notices to that effect were posted in
several places in the city. It should be mentioned here that unlike the
towns of America, there were in Amritsar at the time no universally
read daily papers which could convey the Commanding Officer’s order
all around in the short interval between its issue and the time of the
meeting. Under these circumstances General Dyer’s prohibitory order
could reach only a small fraction of the people in the city.
Now let us come to the scene of the meeting. People began to assemble
in Jallianwalla Bagh at 3 o’clock. There were old men, women who
carried babies in their arms, and children who held toys in their
hands. They were all dressed in their holiday gala-dresses. “While
a few had come there to attend the meeting knowingly, the majority
had just followed the crowd and drifted in the Bagh out of simple
curiosity.” Whatever may have been its nature otherwise, it is
certain that the crowd at the Jallianwalla was not composed of bloody
revolutionists. Not one of them carried even a walking stick. They had
assembled there in the open inclosure peacefully to listen to speeches
and perhaps at the end to pass a few resolutions. At four o’clock the
meeting was called to order, and the speeches began. No more than forty
minutes of this peaceful gathering, and the audience were listening
in an attentive and orderly manner to the speaker who stood on a
raised platform in the center, when General Dyer walked in with his
band of thirty soldiers and suddenly opened fire on the crowd without
giving them any warning or chance to disperse. There was a sudden wild
skirmish in the inclosure. People began to run toward all sides to save
their lives; those who fell down were run over by the rest and crushed
under their weight. Others who attempted to escape by leaping over the
low wall on the east end were shot dead by the fire from the general’s
squad. As the crowd centered near the only escape from the unfinished
low wall, the general directed his shots there. He aimed where the
crowd was the thickest, and inside of the fifteen minutes during which
his ammunition lasted he had killed at least eight hundred men, women,
and children and wounded many times that number.
It was already late afternoon when General Dyer, his ammunition having
run out, departed to his headquarters without providing any kind of
succor or medical aid to the wounded who lay bleeding and helpless at
the scene of slaughter. Before the people of the neighborhood recovered
from their consternation, it had already begun to get dark. As one
of the rules of martial law strictly forbade walking in the streets
of Amritsar after dark, it was impossible for any person or group of
persons to bring organized relief to the wounded at Jallianwalla. The
horrible agonies of those that lay in the Bagh disabled and deserted
were heard with grim patience all through the night by the faithful
wife Rattan Devi, when she sat there “in the midst of that ghastly
human carnival” holding in her lap the dead body of her beloved
husband. She had run to the scene after the shooting in a mad search
for her husband. After she had looked underneath a dozen heaps of dead
bodies and stumbled over many others, her eyes were drawn to the spot
where her husband’s dead body lay flat on the ground. Rattan Devi’s
husband was already dead and beyond human aid. The devoted wife could
not restore the dead man to life, but how could she afford to leave his
lifeless body in the stark neighborhood over night? She was too weak to
carry it home all by herself and there was no aid available. So she sat
there through the night holding a dead man in her lap.
The horrors of that night of suffering were related by Rattan Devi in
her evidence before the Indian National Congress sub-committee, in
which she described “the fearful agony of dying human beings, who kept
crying for drinks of water all through the night.” No friendly aid came
to these departing souls in their last hours of deep distress. Afraid
of General Dyer’s deadly vengeance their fellowmen had stayed away,
while dogs from the neighboring streets wandered freely inside the Bagh
to feast on the bleeding human bodies.
At the following session of the Indian National Congress which was held
at Amritsar, I myself saw at its exhibition twenty pairs of little
shoes, belonging to babies from a few months to a year old. These had
been picked up in the Jallianwalla Bagh by various persons after the
shooting, and they belonged to twenty innocent babies in their mothers’
laps who had been completely obliterated in the mad scramble that had
accompanied the shooting. All that was left of these children was those
tiny shoes. May God bless the souls of the dear little ones and many
others who fell victims to the haughty general’s bloody mood on the
thirteenth of April, 1919, at Jallianwalla Bagh.
Later, when General Dyer was cross-examined before Lord Hunter’s
Committee, which was appointed by the British Parliament to report on
Punjab disturbances, he testified to the following:
1. That there was no provocation on the part of the people of Amritsar
for the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre either on the day of the shooting
or immediately before it. He had the situation well in hand and the
atmosphere was quite calm and peaceful.
2. That his order prohibiting the meeting was issued the morning before
the meeting and reached only a fraction of the people in Amritsar on
that festival day of the thirteenth.
3. That when he arrived on the scene of the meeting with his squad, he
found the people listening to the speaker in a calm manner and there
was no show of resistance offered to him. On the other hand, on seeing
him enter the premises, the audience began to run off in all directions.
4. That he opened fire at the assembled meeting without giving the
people any warning or chance to disperse, and he continued firing while
his ammunition lasted--all the time directing his shots at places where
the crowd was the thickest.
5. That he had brought a machine gun with him, which he had to leave
outside because the lane was too narrow for it to enter. And he
admitted that the casualties would have been much greater if he had
been able to use the machine gun.
6. That his reason for the massacre at the Jallianwalla was to teach
the people a lesson, and he did not stop shooting after the crowd had
begun to disperse because he was afraid they would laugh at him. The
general wanted to show the people the might of the British rule.
7. That he did not think to or care to provide succor to the wounded at
Jallianwalla. It was not a part of his business.
Reproduced below is a part of General Dyer’s testimony before Lord
Hunter’s committee:
“Q. When you got into the Bagh what did you do? A. I opened fire.
Q. At once? A. Immediately. I had thought about the matter and don’t
imagine it took me more than thirty seconds to make up my mind as to
what my duty was.
Q. How many people were in the crowd? A. I then estimated them roughly
at 5,000. I heard afterwards there were many more.
Q. On the assumption that there was that risk of people being in the
crowd who were not aware of the proclamation, did it not occur to you
that it was a proper measure to ask the crowd to disperse before you
took that step of actually firing? A. No, at the time I did not. I
merely felt that my orders had not been obeyed, that martial law was
flouted, and that it was my duty to immediately disperse by rifle fire.
Q. When you left Rambagh [his headquarters] did it occur to you that
you might have to fire? A. Yes, I had considered the nature of the duty
that I might have to face.
Q. Did the crowd at once start to disperse as soon as you fired? A.
Immediately.
Q. Did you continue firing? A. Yes.
Q. What reason had you to suppose that if you had ordered the assembly
to leave the Bagh, they would not have done so without the necessity
of your firing and continuing firing for any length of time? A. Yes, I
think it quite possible that I could have dispersed them perhaps even
without firing.
Q. Why did you not have recourse to that? A. They would have all come
back and laughed at me, and I should have made what I considered a fool
of myself.
Q. And on counting the ammunition it was found that 1,650 rounds of
ammunition had been fired? A. Quite right.
Q. Supposing the passage was sufficient to allow the armoured cars to
go in, would you have opened fire with the machine guns? A. I think,
probably, yes.
Q. In that case the casualties would have been very much higher? A. Yes.
Q. I take it that your idea in taking that action was to strike terror?
A. Call it what you like. I was going to punish them. My idea from the
military point of view was to make a wide impression.”
During the course of its history mankind has witnessed many massacres
of a bloody and ruthless nature, but in every case before a massacre
occurred, there was a provocation of some kind. Jallianwalla Bagh
stands out unique in this respect--that it was an unprovoked,
premeditated and pre-arranged, coldblooded massacre of at least eight
hundred innocent men, women, and children, who were assembled in a
peaceful meeting on the day of their national festival, with no thought
of evil in their minds nor any desire to offer resistance of any sort
or kind to anybody.
The most interesting part of the story is that what had happened at
Jallianwalla Bagh on the thirteenth of April was considered so trivial
and unimportant a matter that it took four months for the news to reach
official London. After the report of Lord Hunter’s committee had been
published, and all the horrible details of the massacre were fully
disclosed, General Dyer was retired from the military service on full
pension. But on his return to England he was handed a purse of ten
thousand pounds sterling, which amount had been raised by voluntary
subscription by the English people to recompense the general for his
heroic work at Jallianwalla Bagh. Such was the reaction of the English
nation to the massacre.
Gandhi’s interpretation of General Dyer’s “heroism” is, however,
different. He writes:
“He [General Dyer] has called an unarmed crowd of men and
children--mostly holiday-makers--‘a rebel army.’ He believes
himself to be the saviour of Punjab in that he was able to
shoot down like rabbits men who were penned in an enclosure.
Such a man is unworthy of being considered a soldier. There was
no bravery in his action. He ran no risk. He shot without the
slightest opposition and without warning. This is not an ‘error of
judgment’. It is a paralysis of it in the face of fancied danger.
It is proof of criminal incapacity and heartlessness.”
The reader will be in a position now to understand the meaning of
Mahatma Gandhi’s letter to the Viceroy of India, dated August 1,
1920, and quoted on page 114 in which Gandhi gave his reasons for his
decision not to coöperate with the British Government of India. It
may be recalled that one of Mahatma Gandhi’s reasons was the “callous
disregard of the feelings of Indians” betrayed by the House of Lords.
It must be remembered here also that the massacre of Jallianwalla
occurred on April 13, 1919, and it was exactly a year and three months
later that Mahatma Gandhi made his decision to boycott the British
Government. During this interval he had persistently hoped for a change
in the British attitude.
The massacre at Jallianwalla was only one part of the awful Punjab
story. What occurred at Amritsar and other towns in the province during
the martial days of 1919 was even more shameful and unworthy, “on
account of the outrage of human dignity it involved.” The issuing of
crawling orders and the throwing of bombs from aeroplanes over peaceful
towns constituted in part the doings of the military and police during
the unfortunate days of martial law. Nor was that all. Mrs. Sarojini
Naidu, the first woman president of India, said while speaking on the
“Punjab wrongs” before a large London audience (Kingsway Hall, June 3,
1919):
“My sisters were flogged, they were stripped naked; they were
outraged.”
The ingenuity of the English officials during the martial law period in
inventing fancy punishments showed itself conspicuously in the town of
Kasur where, according to the findings of the Congress sub-committee,
“1. School boys and men were whipped, ‘with no particular object,’ and
there was no question of any martial law offense. Prostitutes were
invited to witness the ceremony.
2. People were made to mark time and climb ladders.
3. Religious mendicants were washed with lime.
4. Those who failed to salute Europeans were made to rub their roses on
the ground.
6. Public gallows were erected which were later abandoned. In all,
eighteen persons were hanged in the Punjab during the martial law
regime, many of whom were totally innocent.”
We shall give below the evidence of Gurdevi, the widow of Mangal Jat,
before the Congress sub-committee on what had occured at Manianwalla:
“One day, during the Martial Law period, Mr. Bosworth Smith
gathered together all the males of over eight years at the
Dacca Dalia Bungalow, which is some miles from our village, in
connection with the investigations that were going on. Whilst the
men were at the Bungalow, he rode to our village, taking back with
him all the women who met him on the way carrying food for their
men at the Bungalow. Reaching the village, he went around the
lanes and ordered all women to come out of their houses, himself
forcing them out with sticks. He made us all stand near the
village Daira. The women folded their hands before him. He beat
some with his stick and spat at them and used the foulest and most
unmentionable language. He hit me twice and spat in my face....
“He repeatedly called us she-asses, bitches, flies and swines and
said: ‘You were in the same beds with your husbands; why did you
not prevent them from going out to do mischief? Now your skirts
will be looked by the Police Constables’. He gave me a kick also
and ordered us to undergo the torture of holding our ears by pass
our arms round the legs, whilst being bent double.
“This treatment was meted out to us in the absence of our men who
were at the Bungalow.”
Cowardice, thy name is Bosworth Smith! Moral degradation in a human
being could not go any lower than this. Search the entire history
of mankind, and you will fail to find the equal of this act in its
ferocity and barbarism. How curious! The world believes still that
England’s mission in India is that of civilizing a backward people.
The Jallianwalla massacre and other “Punjab wrongs” gave a great
impetus to the nationalist movement in India. What the Indian National
Congress had failed to accomplish in its steady work of thirty-two
years, the Punjab persecutions and humiliations did in the course of
a few months. It has helped to arouse in the minds of the people of
India a powerful national consciousness. It has been truly said that
the blood of the martyrs at Jallianwalla Bagh has made the heart of all
India to bleed.
Those who ask the question, “Why does India revolt?” may find a part of
their answer in the word “Jallianwalla Bagh.”
FOOTNOTE:
[34] Page 221. Quoted from Lajpat Rai’s _Unhappy India_.