The Baisakhi Massacre: Revisiting Jallianwala Bagh

“The enormity of the measures taken by the Government in the Punjab…considering that such treatment has been meted out to a population, disarmed and resourceless, by a power which has the most terribly efficient organization for destruction of human lives, we must strongly assert that it can claim no political expediency, far less moral justification…The time has come when badges of honour make our shame glaring in the incongruous context of humiliation, and I for my part 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.

These are the reasons which have painfully compelled me to ask Your Excellency, with due deference and regret, to relieve me of my title of Knighthood…”

—Rabindranath Tagore, 31^st May 1919.

Tagore’s decision to renounce the Highest Honour of the British Empire came in the wake of the ghastly Amritsar massacre on 13^th April 1919 and was representative of the mood of the nation. It was an unusually hot Baisakhi(Punjabi New Year) day when a considerable number of people had congregated in Jallianwala Bagh, a gardennear the Golden Temple, marked by a narrow entry/exit lane to express bonhomie. The crowd consisted of men, women and children alike who were unaware of the government’s restriction on movement and assemblage through a proclamation issued on 12^th of April. Thus when after 5pm, Gen. Reginald Dyer arrived with 90 soldiers and two armoured cars which couldn’t enter due to the narrow entrance and fired 1650 rounds on unarmed civilians, the Bagh at Amritsar turned into a Valley of Death. Within 10 minutes around 379 were killed and over 1500 people wounded. This was however a conservative approximation.Later scholarship quoted the death toll to be much higher as hundreds injured themselves while trying to escape the gunshots and succumbed to their injuries, unattended.While the brutality is beyond question, itneeds contextualization in contemporary history a reading of which might lead one to argue that the rampage was a direct outcome of a colonial mindset coloured by fear and insecurity and also by an intention to punish.

Punjab had been under the direct administrative care of Sir Michael(Micky) Francis O’Dwyer, an Irishman and an ICS who had been the Lt. Governor of Punjab since 1912 and was convinced that though Britain should provide Indian people with security, governance needs to be firmly in colonial hands and Indian democratic aspirations should be crushed rigorously.Instances to curb and control the ‘native’ populace presented themselves to O’Dwyer in 1919 that turned out to be a watershed year for India as it stoked her latent Swadeshi aspirations thus preparing her for a definitive severance with the metropolis in another two decades.The import of the Amritsar massacre and its political logistics can however hardly be understood without reference to the Defense of India Act(1915)and the Rowlatt Act(1919).The outbreak of the First World War led the colonial government to implement the “Defense of India Act”as a Wartime legislation thus arming the government with unilateral powers of preventive detention that implied arresting and interning people without warrant or trial and the power to restrict speech, writing and movement of the Indians. While most Indians had supported colonial War efforts hoping that some form of self-government would be granted, the enactment of the Defense of India Act and eventually the infamous Rowlatt Act convinced the Indians of the need to assert and protest for their cause. The Anarchical and Revolutionary Act of 1919 popularly known as the Rowlatt Act was perceived by the Indians as a draconian measure to muzzle their voice, independence and democratic fervor by extending the Wartime exigencies in peace times. This Black Act put the nation-in-making on tenterhooks and Gandhi called for a hartal on 6^th of April as a mark of protest. While anti-Rowlatt agitations engulfed India, in Bengal and Punjab the fervor was most passionate. On 9^th of April 1919 on the occasion of Ram Navami, an ambience of communal friendship and harmony reigned supreme in Amritsar as the Hindu and Muslim population of the city came together to participate and the government perceived this as a show of unity, orchestrated through the efforts of the regional and national Congress as part of Gandhi’s Satyagraha. The local organizers of this peaceful congregation— Dr. Saifuddin Kitchlew, an Indian barrister and nationalist leader and Dr. Satyapal, a medical practitioner of repute in erstwhile Lahore were immediately arrested and secretly deported to Dharamsala. This measure proved counterproductive as instead of dousing the anti-government agitations, it added fuel. When Gandhi on his way to Punjab was arrested midway and made to return on 10^th of April, there ensued an open face-off between the colonial forces in Amritsar and the civilians. As people stoned the troops (reminiscent of similar episodes in today’s Kashmir) the latter retaliated and fired thus killing twenty people. Amritsar rose up in flames—a riot broke out, a handful of Europeans were killed with no parallel data on loss of Indian lives and a particular Mrs. Sherwood of the City Mission School was a victim of mob fury. As mayhem reigned, to retrieve colonial control Brigadier General Reginald Edward Harry Dyer or ‘Rex’ Dyer, the commander of the Jullunder Brigade of the Indian army was invited to the city. Born in India and schooled in Ireland, Dyer and O’Dwyer shared an Irish connect and a conviction that Punjab needed to be taught a lesson.

While implementation of the two Acts did provide the immediate raison d’être, this falls short of explaining Reginald Dyer’s murderous act of which till his last breath, he was unapologetic.He maintained the same disposition and defended his decision to fire on grounds of ‘illegal’ assemblage of people—a tool that he used to make summary arrests, detainments and even hanging, and also his controversial ‘crawling order’ whereby Indians were forced to crawl on all four past the spot where the British lady had been attacked.On his return to England on ‘sick leave’ and even after his eventual dismissal from the British army, Dyer was remorseless as he was confident that he had done the ‘right’ thing. Monolithic efforts to villanize him would lead us further from the ‘actual’ causes of his deep conviction or that of Micky O’Dwyer of the need to suppress any civilian uprising in this colony. Such aggression undoubtedly sprang from insecurity. Preeti Nijhar in her various expositions on crime and criminality in colonial India has argued how the colonizers actually revealed their mindset, their insecurities through the way they wished to circumscribe Indian identities and I argue that O’Dwyer and Dyer’s policies and decisions need to be contextualized within this particular analytical frame. The Mutiny or the First War of Independence of 1857 despite being put down shook the legitimacy of colonial rule and they could, no more rely on the imperial machinery of the East Indian Company. This prompted a takeover by the Raj in 1859. Scholars are unanimous that the shadow of 1857 loomed large over British psyche even in the early half of the twentieth century and subconsciously informed their decision-making.The Anti-Rowlatt agitation and the skirmishes on 10^th of April argueably created a déjà vu…. they anticipated a civil uprising on the lines of Meerut of 10^thMay 1857 and fear and insecurity made them retort in the most barbaric manner possible.

Long after the last bullet was fired, the echoes of the massacre continued to haunt public and personal lives of generations of Indians and in Punjab, it was second only perhaps to the trauma of Partition and 1984. It garnered a deep sense of betrayal and angst among the Punjabis who around 1918constituted around three-fourth of the British Indian Army and they failed to come to terms with the onslaught. Successive generations of poets, novelists and playwrights channelized their grief and protests throughcreations in Urdu, Hindi,Punjabi and English. Saadat Hasan Manto’s “1919 Ka Ek Din”( A Day in 1919), Abdullah Hussein’s novel “Udaas Naslein”, Krishan Chander’s “Amritsar Azadi Se Pahle, Amritsar Azadi Ke Baād” where he depicted the courage of a few Sikh women who defied Dyer’s humiliating ‘crawling’ instruction and became martyrs or Bhisham Sahni’s play “Rang De Basanti Chola” along with poignant jewels in  Gurmukhi like Sikke da Daag( The Bullet Marks)by Sohan Singh Misha, Raliya Khoon Hindu Musalman Ethe(The Blood of Hindu and Muslim) by Babu Firoz Din Sharaf etc are a few that brought the times and the pain alive.

As the dastardly incident created a deep disconnect with the ruling regime, it gave rise to a quiet conviction that freedom can only be wrested through radical means. Punjab nationalism came of age post the Baisakhi Massacre as the momentous rise of Bhagat Singh and Chandra Sekhar Azad in the 1930s and Udham Singh’s assassination of Michael O’ Dwyer in the 1940s in London signaled adefinite preference of revolutionary terrorism over other modes of struggle.Seen against the modern context, the indigenous reaction against the Amritsar massacre remainscritically relevant for its syncretic tone. Udham Singh’s refusal to give his original name when arrested and his insistence to be known as Ram Mohammad Singh Azad in colonial criminal records speaks volumes of the profound impact of Jallianwala Bagh that united all irrespective of religion or creed.

Somdatta Chakraborty

Senior Adjunct Researcher

16/4/2019

References:                                                                                          

1. Grace, A. Pierce. 2010. “The Amritsar Massacre, 1919: The Irish Connection”. History Ireland, Vo. 18. No, 4.
2. Nijhar, Preeti. 2009. Law and Imperialism: Criminality and Constitution in Colonial India and Victorian England. Pickering and Chatto/Routledge, New York.
3. Tuteja, K.L. 1997. “Jallianwala Bagh: A critical Juncture in the Indian National Movement”. Social Scientist, Vol. 25, NO. 1/2