The Case that Shook the Empire

Title: The Case that Shook the Empire – One Man’s Fight for the Truth About the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre

Author: Raghu Palat, Pushpa Palat

Publisher: Bloomsbury, 2019 (First)

ISBN: 9789389000276

Pages: 187

 

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre was a turning point in Indian colonial history. Till that time, Britain ruled without much hindrance over the Indian people with largescale local support or indifference. The entire government machinery – except at the higher levels – was manned by Indians. The police was almost entirely Indian. To add legitimacy to their rule, the British had genuine admirers in India who credited them with having united India politically, introducing a common administrative language and generally believed to rule in a benign way. It was this favourable perception that prompted tens of thousands of Indians to enlist in the army and fight for Britain in the World War I. This was the reason why even Gandhi came out to support the war effort and campaigned from village to village imploring people to join the British Indian army. However, when the war ended, the people who anticipated concessions from a grateful empire found themselves saddled with draconian measures such as the Rowlatt Act which curtailed the meagre civic freedoms they were enjoying. This is a poorly explained chapter in the freedom struggle. Why the British government, which was buoyed up by wholehearted public support for the war effort turned hostile and employed repressive measures against its Indian subjects? What had changed in the latter half of the war to bring about this transformation? It’s a task for historians to bring out definitive answers to these two questions. Suppression of dissent, especially in Punjab, escalated daily and culminated in Jallianwala Bagh when a British contingent led by Brigadier General Reginald Dyer sprayed bullets on an unarmed crowd of people gathered to protest against the government in a peaceful manner. The death toll is still not definitively concluded. Hundreds were killed and a huge public outcry ensued. Sir C. Sankaran Nair, who was an eminent jurist and a member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council resigned in protest. Michael O’Dwyer, the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab sued against Nair in England for libel on a remark made by him in a book on the aftereffects of the Punjab unrest. Nair valiantly fought even though the judge and jury were arrayed against him. He eventually lost, but the incident attracted much public attention and the atrocities in Punjab got wide publicity. This book is the story of the case written by Nair’s great-grandson Raghu Palat and his wife Pushpa Palat.

 

The official Indian reckoning of the freedom struggle was for a long time confined only to the actions of the Indian National Congress. Brave countrymen who sacrificed their lives and families for the nation were edged out to make way for timid leaders who happened to be in the right party at the right time. Sir Chettur Sankaran Nair’s contributions to the national movement is overshadowed and sidelined by animosity against his criticism of Gandhi’s civil disobedience movement. Sankaran Nair was one of the greatest Indians of the modern era. He was a lawyer, member of the legislative council of Madras, president of the Indian National Congress, advocate general of Madras, judge of the High Court of Madras and a member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council. This position was second only to that of the Viceroy in colonial hierarchy. He was part of the ruling establishment but was bold enough to talk straight to the face of top British officials which sometimes appeared rude. At a dinner meeting held by O’Dwyer, his dog approached Nair docilely for a little petting but he drove the animal away. Seeing this, Lady O’Dwyer remarked that even though Indians professed kindness to all animals, they didn’t love the dogs half as much as the English did. Nair angrily retorted that it was because the English were nearer to the dogs in their evolution, while Indians moved further away in their 5000-year old history. Imagine this dialogue taking place between the guest and his hostess! In his personal life too, Nair was a stern man. He loved children dearly but did not interact with them. He was always aloof, reserved and unemotional. His relationship with his only son was also distant.

 

The book scenically portrays the carnage occurred at Jallianwala Bagh on April 13, 1919 and the events which preceded and followed this horrible crime. The army platoon led by Dyer discharged 1650 rounds of bullets on unarmed people out of sheer colonial fury to avenge the physical assault on Europeans in the city a few days ago. Dyer casually estimated the death toll at 200-300, but the actual tally was many times higher. There was no warning to disperse and the troops were ordered to shoot into the crowd. Dyer checked his fire and directed it upon places where the crowd was the thickest. He later admitted that he had made up his mind to punish the Indians for disobedience at having assembled there. When a few soldiers initially shot in the air, an annoyed Dyer yelled at them to fire low to ensure maximum casualties. Those who tried to scale the perimeter wall to escape the carnage were methodically shot down. Three months later, 120 bodies were taken out of a well in the compound. After the firing, he left the place leaving the wounded to die of the sustained injuries and unattended by anybody. Dyer also tried inhuman and deeply humiliating punishments on the local population. Marcella Sherwood, a Christian missionary, was assaulted at Kucha Kurrichchan earlier, and Dyer ordered that every Indian man using the street must crawl across its length on his hands and knees. This order was enforced for seven days. He even justified the order in a discourse filled with unbridled contempt for Indians thus: “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 goddess and therefore they have to crawl in front of her too”. 

 

Nair resigned in protest against the massacre from the executive council of Viceroy Lord Chelmsford. Relations with this haughty official were never relaxed anyway. The viceroy formally asked Nair whether he had any suggestions as to his replacement. Nair stunned him by suggesting the name of the viceroy’s liveried chamber attendant who was standing nearby as that man would truthfully carry out his orders to the letter. In London, Nair was coopted to the Secretary of State’s Council for India. It was in this period that he wrote ‘Gandhi and Anarchy’, setting out the physical state of India. He criticized Punjab’s Lt. Governor Michael O’Dwyer for inept handling of the volatile situation. He had access to several government documents which depicted the true actions of O’Dwyer, who took offense at this perceived slight and sued Nair for libel. 

 

Nair didn’t believe in Gandhi’s extraordinary policies in fomenting public unrest as a form of political struggle. This book gives a brief glance of the points of dispute. As part of the 1919 constitutional reforms, the possibility of a round-table conference in 1921 arose. Gandhi nipped this opening in the bud by raising impossible preconditions. His first priority was the reinstatement of the Ottoman caliph as he was the spiritual leader of Muslims all over the world. He also demanded that the French should leave Syria and wanted the British to vacate Egypt. Nair thought Gandhi to be impractical. Being a man of law, he did not agree with civil disobedience movement. He believed that it would lead to disorder, chaos, riots and bloodshed. Nair was eventually proved right many times on each of the points.

 

As is expected, several chapters in the book are reserved for the legal fight between O’Dwyer and Nair. In his book, Nair accused the former of complicity in the highhanded action. O’Dwyer sued for libel in the Court of the King’s Bench in London knowing that an English court would side with him. A large section of the English public still believed that Dyer’s inhuman action had saved the empire from collapse. Zamindars of Punjab appeared in the court on the side of O’Dwyer irrespective of religious lines. Nair’s witnesses were mostly Indian and they had their sworn testimonies recorded on paper and sent to England. These were then read in open court. Obviously, this arrangement was sure to benefit O’Dwyer. In addition to all this, judge McCardie openly sided with the plaintiff throughout the trial. Instead of finding whether Nair’s words were libelous to O’Dwyer, the judge wanted to establish whether Dyer was justified under the circumstances he found himself in on that fateful day. This was designed to elicit concurrence from an all-white jury. Summing up the arguments, the judge suggested the lines in which the jury should arrive at a consensus. Surprisingly, they returned with a hung verdict. At this point, the proceedings should’ve been declared a mis-trial and repeated. But McCardie opted for a majority decision which went in favour of O’Dwyer 11-1. Even though Nair lost the case and had to pay compensation, all information regarding the atrocities had come out in the press during the trial and O’Dwyer was completely dishonoured. Nair lost all confidence in British justice and declined to appeal. However, this episode boosted the morale of the national movement by uniting and firmly linking the intelligentsia with it.

 

The book is pleasant to read but much depth should not be expected. Even though Raghu Palat is the great-grandson of Sankaran Nair, there is practically no personal touch to the narrative. This is in sharp contrast to one of the other books by the same authors titled ‘Destiny’s Child’ reviewed earlier here. The authors shed some light on Nair’s opposition to Gandhi’s disobedience movement which is normally not mentioned in mainstream books on the subject. This was because he was a man of law and didn’t want to see anarchy encouraged as an ideal. But the reason given for his animosity to non-violence is quite strange by enlightened standards. Palat states that, ‘being a Nair, he could not accept a fight through non-violence’ (p.107). This refers to the Nair caste’s traditional occupation as soldiers – mostly mercenary in nature. But in the early twentieth century, Nair soldiery was a thing of the past often remembered as a nostalgic thought than any serious avenue for employment. Besides, many of the leaders who organized the movement in Kerala belonged to the Nair caste.

 

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star