Jallianwala Bagh, 1919

Title: Jallianwala Bagh, 1919 – The Real Story

Author: Kishwar Desai

Publisher: Context, 2018 (First)

ISBN: 9789387578746

Pages: 245

The First World War was a watershed moment in Indian history. The country wholeheartedly donated to the coffers of its imperial British masters in terms of money, material and manpower. A large number of Indian soldiers who had fought for the British had come back victorious only to find shockingly repressive measures at home. The homilies on liberty and fraternity so liberally sung by the Allied leaders found no application in India. Widespread unrest was growing up everywhere and revolutionary movements like the Ghadr party thrived. Then the government introduced a draconian law called the Rowlatt Act to muzzle dissent. Alarmed at the enormity of discretionary powers it conferred on the Executive, Indian society erupted in protest. Gandhi was looking for an opportunity to make a grand entry into Indian politics ever since his return from legal practice in South Africa. He advocated passive resistance or Satyagraha through non-violent means to take on the British. In fact, he franchised Satyagraha to local leaders who were capable of organizing the populace. Charades of non-violence were discarded almost in no time and many parts of the country were engulfed in deadly violence in which shops were forcefully closed, passengers made to alight from vehicles and walk the rest of their way as part of enforcing the total shutdown called hartal. The violence peaked in Punjab, which was a state treated as special by the British as it had contributed sixty per cent of the total Indian troops even though it possessed only 7.5 per cent of the population. Amritsar city was especially afflicted with violence. On 13 April 1919, Brigadier General Reginald Dyer led a troop of soldiers to Jallianwala Bagh where about 5000 people were peacefully assembled, though in violation of martial law regulations. He opened fire on the crowd without warning and stopped only after ten dreadful minutes, after exhausting 1650 rounds of ammunition. Official records state that 379 people lost their lives, but the actual figures are much higher. This book attempts to describe that fearful moment in the story of the struggle for Indian independence. Kishwar Desai is an author, columnist and the Chair of the trust that set up the Partition Museum at Amritsar. Before becoming a writer, she worked as a television anchor and producer for over twenty years.

Gandhi led the anti-Rowlatt Act agitation at the national level. He was not a member of the Congress and the party was not really involved in the agitation though individual members like Saifuddin Kitchlew and Satyapal organized rallies. The lack of an organizational set up greatly contributed to the confusion and the disastrous turn of events. It was only once the details of the massacre and other atrocities began to be known that Congress took part in the investigations. The Satyagraha turned violent when Gandhi was arrested at Delhi and prevented from entering Punjab. European civilians were specifically targeted in Amritsar and Ahmedabad that included women too, killing five in the former and one in the latter. Christian missions were also attacked. Ex-soldiers took part in the violence and they might have joined in the disruption of railway network and cutting of telegraph lines which were strategies used to break the communication systems of the enemy during the war. With the arrest and deportation of Kitchlew and Satyapal, the protest further intensified in Amritsar in which ten people were killed in police firing on 10 April 1919.

Brigadier General Reginald Dyer, who took charge as the military chief, replacing the more pacific MacDonald was in fact born and brought up in Shimla. He was fluent in Hindustani. Desai alleges that Dyer turned up at Amritsar on his own volition. On 10 April 1919, five Europeans were lynched by the mob and British institutions torched. Dyer was provoked at the disregard and mockery exhibited by the people who even spat on the ground in contempt of the soldiers. He wanted to punish the people for these slights and to set an example by which Indians would be morally pinned down. On 12 April, a meeting of the protestors decided to continue the civil shutdown demanding the release of Kitchlew and Satyapal. It also decided to convene a gathering at Jallianwala Bagh under the chair of Lala Kanhya Lal, a 75-year old pleader. The author goes on to suggest that Dyer persuaded a governmentspy to fix the time and venue so that he can inflict maximum intensity punishment since the Bagh is known to have only a single point for entry and exit.

What was on the agenda of the ill-fated meeting in the Bagh that was convened in violation of clear injunctions banning any public gathering of more than four persons? This was held to reassure the families of those arrested that they had the support of the inhabitants of Amritsar and that the anti-Rowlatt Act agitation would continue. On hindsight, it appears that the risk was not worth the benefits, but of course, the organizers had no means to guess the outcome beforehand as Dyer was so unpredictable. The authorities did not take any step to stop the meeting or to physically obstruct the paths. Hundreds of uniformed force was nearby, but no notices were served. A crier had proclaimed the notice of ban on meeting earlier, but it was not done in the Bagh area. Many people took their children to the meeting place as it was not thought to be of any danger and the day being the occasion of Baisakhi festival. Dyer’s massacre of the innocent people, including children, has no parallel in civilized history. For Dyer, it was not a murderous attack on defenceless people as he assumed that all the assembled was guilty of assault on the whites and it was a state of war.

If the shooting was brutal enough, its aftermath was even more horrific. After his action in the Bagh, Dyer and his team left the site, leaving the dead and wounded on the ground. Curfew was in place, so people could not move in the streets. The massacre occurred at around 4.30 pm, but some relief came only between 6 and 8 pm, when shooting orders were temporarily relaxed. Many of the wounded were left to cry in pain the whole night and several people simply bled to death. Relatives who came late to the maidan had to stay with the corpses the entire night, steeling their mind to remain deaf to the pitiful entreaties of the dying. Most of the survivors wanted to keep their presence in the Bagh a secret. Even if badly injured or mentally stressed, they didn’t go to hospitals fearing reprisals. This influenced the official death count to tilt to the lower side, which obviously didn’t include hundreds of unreported deaths. The tally of fatalities was taken only in August, four months later, and it was not until November 1919 that news of the shocking event came to be widely known as the public hearing of the Hunter Committee and Congress sub-committee started taking evidence. The organizers and the Congress party simply left the protestors to their fate. Motilal Nehru, who was in the Congress committee, wrote to his son Jawaharlal at the end of June 1919 – two months after the incident – that ‘he had seen badly decomposed bodies floating in the Jallianwala Bagh well’ (p.90). This shows that the organizers had not even bothered to properly dispose of the dead bodies even after martial law was revoked. The humiliating decrees passed by the military administrators were carefully selected to treat Indians in the most undignified manner. Crawling order was enforced in a street where a British woman missionary was assaulted. Lawyers who have been in the forefront of the Satyagraha were appointed as ‘special constables’ to maintain peace and order. Their duties involved lifting of chairs and tables and saluting the British officials irrespective of their rank.

The book presents some glimpses of shocking Indian apathy to the massacre and its perpetrators. Dyer had taken along only Indian troops, 25 Gurkhas and 25 Balochis, as he wanted to keep the blame away from British soldiers. Expecting a hand-to-hand combat if the crowd rushed at them, another 40 Gurkhas were armed only with khukris. In spite of his carnage, Dyer got himself declared as an ‘honorary Sikh’ soon after at the Golden Temple and Captain Doveton who shot a number of people in Kasur had verses composed in his favour by a Muslim poet (p.180). The author wisely does not elaborate on these, but leaves it with that single comment. It was a time of Hindu-Muslim unity since the Muslims were angry at the ill-treatment of the Sultan of Turkey, who was also the Caliph of Islam, at the hands of the British. Their bone of contention with the colonial power was due to this Turkish issue. The so-called ‘unity’ included hollow ceremonies such as drinking from the same water pot and entry into each other’s places of worship. It lasted only a few months. This book plays down the violence the protestors freely indulged in. The Hunter Committee notes that ‘low-class people, sweepers and skin-dyers etc’ were in the forefront of the processions, but Desai deems this to be showing ‘how deeply anti-Rowlatt Act agitation was taken up by the people’ (p.176).

The aftereffects of Jallianwala Bagh were anti-climactic. Gandhi did not pursue Satyagraha in Punjab and it simply fizzled out. Hunter Committee just censured Dyer, but this forced his promotion as head of a division to be revoked next year. He resigned in protest, but a large sum was collected in England through subscriptions for his benefit. Rowlatt Acts were never implemented. Accepting the reports of the Repressive Laws Committee, the act was repealed in 1922.

No large-scale view of India in the immediate aftermath of the First World War is given in the book. The narrative begins only on 10 April 1919, three days before the massacre, and the reasons which forced the government to bring in Rowlatt Act are not elucidated. Desai has extensively used Indian sources in the forceful arguments and presents a thoroughly one-sided version of events. Some of the blanket accusations are not substantiated with facts. She dispels some popular myths about the incident. There were few outsiders attending the meeting on account of the restrictions in place on movement. People did not jump into the well, but accidentally fell into it as it did not have a rim in those days. And, there were no women victims involved. There are no index and bibliography. Interested readers can take down the book titles referred in the foot notes.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star