I gladly publish Mr. Pennington's letter with its enclosure just as I
have received them. Evidently Mr. Pennington is not a regular reader of
'Young India,' or he would have noticed that no one has condemned mob
outrages more than I have. He seems to think that the article he has
objected to was the only thing I have ever written on General Dyer. He
does not seem to know that I have endeavoured with the utmost
impartiality to examine the Jallianwala massacre. And he can see any day
all the proof adduced by my fellow-commissioners and myself in support
of our findings on the massacre. The ordinary readers of 'Young India'
knew all the facts and therefore it was unnecessary for me to support my
assertion otherwise. But unfortunately Mr. Pennington represents the
typical Englishman. He does not want to be unjust, nevertheless he is
rarely just in his appreciation of world events because he has no time
to study them except cursorily and that through a press whose business
is to air only party views. The average Englishman therefore except in
parochial matters is perhaps the least informed though he claims to be
well-informed about every variety of interest. Mr. Pennington's
ignorance is thus typical of the others and affords the best reason for
securing control of our own affairs in our own hands. Ability will come
with use and not by waiting to be trained by those whose natural
interest is to prolong the period of tutelage as much as possible.
But to return to Mr. Pennington's letter he complains that there has
been no 'proper trial of any one.' The fault is not ours. India has
consistently and insistently demanded a trial of all the officers
concerned in the crimes against the Punjab.
He next objects to be 'violence' of my language. If truth is violent, I
plead guilty to the charge of violence of language. But I could not,
without doing violence to truth, refrain from using the language, I
have, regarding General Dyer's action. It has been proved out of his own
mouth or hostile witnesses:
(1) That the crowd was unarmed.
(2) That it contained children.
(3) That the 13th was the day of Vaisakhi fair.
(4) That thousands had come to the fair.
(5) That there was no rebellion.
(6) That during the intervening two days before the 'massacre' there was
peace in Amritsar.
(7) That the proclamation of the meeting was made the same day as
General Dyer's proclamation.
(8) That General Dyer's proclamation prohibited not meetings but
processions or gatherings of four men on the streets and not in private
or public places.
(9) That General Dyer ran no risk whether outside or inside the city.
(10) That he admitted himself that many in the crowd did not know
anything of his proclamation.
(11) That he fired without warning the crowd and even after it had
begun to disperse. He fired on the backs of the people who were
in flight.
(12) That the men were practically penned in an enclosure.
In the face of these admitted facts I do call the deed a 'massacre.' The
action amounted not to 'an error of judgment' but its 'paralysis in the
face of fancied danger.'
I am sorry to have to say that Mr. Pennington's notes, which too the
reader will find published elsewhere, betray as much ignorance as
his letter.
Whatever was adopted on paper in the days of Canning was certainly not
translated into action in its full sense. 'Promises made to the ear were
broken to the hope,' was said by a reactionary Viceroy. Military
expenditure has grown enormously since the days of Canning.
The demonstration in favour of General Dyer is practically a myth.
No trace was found of the so-called Danda Fauj dignified by the name of
bludgeon-army by Mr. Pennington. There was no rebel army in Amritsar.
The crown that committed the horrible murders and incendiarism contained
no one community exclusively. The sheet was found posted only in Lahore
and not in Amritsar. Mr. Pennington should moreover have known by this
time that the meeting held on the 13th was held, among other things, for
the purpose of condemning mob excesses. This was brought out at the
Amritsar trial. Those who surrounded him could not stop General Dyer. He
says he made up his mind to shoot in a moment. He consulted nobody. When
the correspondent says that the troops would have objected to being
concerned in 'what might in that case be not unfairly called a
'massacre,' he writes as if he had never lived in India. I wish the
Indian troops had the moral courage to refuse to shoot innocent, unarmed
men in full flight. But the Indian troops have been brought in too
slavish an atmosphere to dare do any such correct act.
I hope Mr. Pennington will not accuse me again of making unverified
assertions because I have not quoted from the books. The evidence is
there for him to use. I can only assure him that the assertions are
based on positive proofs mostly obtained from official sources.
Mr. Pennington wants me to publish an exact account of what happened on
the 10th April. He can find it in the reports, and if he will patiently
go through them he will discover that Sir Michael O'Dwyer and his
officials goaded the people into frenzied fury--a fury which nobody, as
I have already said, has condemned more than I have. The account of the
following days is summed up in one word, _viz._ 'peace' on the part of
the crowd disturbed by indiscriminate arrests, the massacre and the
series of official crimes that followed.
I am prepared to give Mr. Pennington credit for seeking after the truth.
But he has gone about it in the wrong manner. I suggest his reading the
evidence before the Hunter Committee and the Congress Committee. He need
not read the reports. But the evidence will convince him that I have
understated the case against General Dyer.
When however I read his description of himself as "for 12 years Chief
Magistrate of Districts in the South of India before reform, by
assassination and otherwise, became so fashionable." I despair of his
being able to find the truth. An angry or a biased man renders himself
incapable of finding it. And Mr. Pennington is evidently both angry and
biased. What does he mean by saying, "before reform by assassination and
otherwise became so fashionable?" It ill becomes him to talk of
assassination when the school of assassination seems happily to have
become extinct. Englishmen will never see the truth so long as they
permit their vision to be blinded by arrogant assumption of superiority
or ignorant assumptions of infallibility.