by Kim Wagner
This was a powerful statement, but failed to make much of an impact and in the imperial metropole it went practically unheeded at the time.26 It was only later, with the benefit of hindsight, that Tagore was proven to have been rather more prescient in his denouncement than most Indian nationalists. Although the fighting in Afghanistan had subsided, the war was still ongoing and, as long as martial law remained in operation, Amritsar and the rest of Punjab remained suspended in isolation.
Despite the black-out, however, it was gradually becoming clear that the sheer scale of the massacre on 13 April had been far greater than the information released by the authorities indicated. The missionary C.F. Andrews, who had tried to visit Amritsar during martial law, described the increasing suspicion:
Those whom I met from the Punjab who knew the facts, told me clearly that the incident at the Bagh had been far more serious than the report of it in the papers would lead one to suppose. It was not at all difficult, especially for a military man to reckon up, from the number of shots fired, what the casualties were likely to have been. Two such military officers told me independently, at different times, that the casualties were probably over a thousand. But in the official reports, in order to avoid excitement, the true facts were kept carefully concealed. Indeed, the general impression among Indians was, that independent persons were prevented from coming into the Punjab from outside because it was not desirable that the whole truth should be revealed.27
When martial law was finally lifted on 9 June, after much bureaucratic wrangling between Simla, London and Lahore, Indian politicians, journalists and lawyers immediately travelled to Punjab. The hundreds of people who had been imprisoned during the preceding months without proper legal representation were now provided with support, and relief work begun in places severely affected by the unrest.28 Most importantly, Indian nationalists began their own inquiry in which Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, Swami Shraddhanand, and Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal’s father, who were prominent Congress leaders, all played a central role.
It was only through these local efforts that the details and sheer scale of the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh were gradually exposed. Both Jawaharlal Nehru and C.F. Andrews took part in the unofficial investigation and during the course of the summer and early fall of 1919 they assisted in collecting evidence and interviewed more than 150 eyewitnesses in Amritsar alone.29 Since the local authorities had never sought to establish the basic circums-tances surrounding the events of 13 April, it did not take long for disturbing news to emerge. When Motilal Nehru and Malaviya visited Jallianwala Bagh in late June, the former claimed that there were still ‘corpses to be seen floating in the well in a decomposed state.’30 Just five days later, the police dredged the well in the presence of ten witnesses but found nothing more than some clothes and an earthen pot submerged in the stagnant water.31 Whatever it was that Nehru had seen, his account nevertheless provided the impetus for what was to become a persistent myth: namely, that more than one hundred bodies had been recovered from the well. It should be noted that Nehru never mentioned seeing more than one or two corpses, which corresponded with the statements of eyewitnesses who were present in the Bagh during the shooting.32
The most damning claim, however, was made by Malaviya. According to him, as many as a thousand people had been killed at Jallianwala Bagh, of whom supposedly forty-two were boys, including a seven-month-old baby.33 When called upon by the Punjab Government to address these reports, Irving’s feeble response was to cite the local Health Officer’s returns at Amritsar, which listed just two hundred deaths from gunshot-wounds, and included only five boys between the age of five and fifteen.34 Worse was to come, however, and when Gandhi appealed for funds for the relatives of the victims, in the Amrita Bazar Patrika paper on 7 August, he asserted that ‘not less than fifteen hundred persons must have been killed’.35 Apart from Jawaharlal Nehru and Andrews, the Indian charitable organisation the Sewa Samiti was also collecting information, and one of its members, V.N. Tiwari, described the extent of their work:
The method pursued by our volunteers has been to go from house to house in the City of Amritsar, ascertaining the names not only of the killed, but also of the wounded. I further arranged to send out volunteers to visit every single village in the districts of Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Sialkot and Lahore so that we might give relief to their dependents in case of want. We are also advertising in the Urdu and Gurmukhi papers of the Punjab, asking people to communicate to the office the names and addresses of the killed and the wounded. We have so far finished the district of Amritsar only, and I am awaiting the reports of our volunteers who are touring in the remaining three districts.36
The morning after the massacre, the Sewa Samiti had, in fact, organised the cremation of the bodies of some forty-four villagers, whose relatives could not be traced and who remained unidentified as a result.37 Social relief work and the unofficial investigation of the events of 13 April thus became part of the same effort.
Although the authorities in Punjab were no longer able to suppress the flow of information, they kept a close watch on the movements and correspondence of those involved in the unofficial investigation. One CID report described the Congress leaders’ visit to the site of the massacre:
Pandits Malaviya and Nehru accompanied by others visited the Jallianwala Bagh again [. . .] and took photos of the holes caused by the bullets in the walls of the houses surrounding the Bagh. The people are still coming to them in great numbers, and tell all sorts of exaggerated stories, which are generally accepted as true.38
The perfunctory efforts of the local authorities to establish even the most basic facts surrounding the events of 13 April, were put to shame by the independent inquiries. Irving had no recourse but to try and discredit the work of the Congressmen:
I wish to remark that Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya’s inquiry was of a monstrously ex-parte nature. While he took the statements of the relations of the killed and those convicted and received the visits of persons connected with those killed or arrested he made no attempt to obtain an opinion from citizens of influence and weight.39
The irony was that the British themselves never interviewed any of the survivors or relations of the victims, and instead relied exclusively on the usual, and deeply flawed, channels of information: the local police and loyal ‘citizens of influence and weight’. Even Thompson had to admit that ‘we are not in a position to say for certain how many people were killed in the Jallianwala Bagh’.40
The stories published in the vernacular press were by now becoming a source of embarrassment to the Government and Chelmsford informed the Punjab authorities that something had to be done: ‘In the opinion of the Government of India it is time that the wild statements current as to the number of fatal casualties on that occasion should be refuted.’ It had been almost four months since the massacre, but it was only at this point that the authorities finally made a comprehensive attempt to ascertain the numbers of killed. On 9 August, the Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar, F.H. Puckle, issued a proclamation for people to submit the names of dead relatives killed at Jallianwala Bagh: ‘The notice was distributed all over the district – 2,000 copies in all. I told the Municipal Committee and members of the Bar and caused Tahsildars to make it known that no action would be taken against any one as the result of any information obtained in answer to this proclamation. There was a certain amount of suspicion at first.’41 The residents of Amritsar were extremely wary of any official business that touched upon the events of April, and even Jawaharlal Nehru, who spent much of his time interviewing people in the neighbourhood of Jallianwala Bagh, found residents unwilling to talk to strangers: ‘People very reticent would not give us any information at first.’42 Andrews similarly noted how difficult it would be to establish numbers with any certainty:
Very many of the Amritsar people, on account of the excessive fear of the police, have been unwilling to come forward even before the Sewa Samiti, with the names of the dead and the wounded [.
. .] Villagers had crowded into Amritsar on Baisakhi Day, and many of them were in the Bagh. It is impossible to trace all their dead and wounded.43
Three weeks after the proclamation had first been made, on 3 September, Puckle nevertheless submitted his report, claiming that ‘the final figure is 291’, which corresponded roughly with the upper limit of Dyer’s estimate.44 This number included 2 women and 5 boys under 15, and the breakdown, according to colonial classification, was 186 Hindus, 39 Muslims, 22 Jat Sikh, with 44 (15 per cent) unknown.45 About two-thirds of the 291 identified victims were residents of Amritsar, while the rest were either villagers from surrounding districts or simply remained unidentified. The numbers of wounded were never considered and Jawaharlal Nehru, for one, was not impressed: ‘Why was it that the strong and efficient Punjab Government refrained from taking any action for so long and then suddenly woke up? Was it because the presence of [Malaviya] ruffled the calm waters of officialdom and forced them to action? Or was it because of the coming enquiry?’46
During the meetings of the Imperial Legislative Council in mid-September, the events at Amritsar became the source of heated debate as an Indemnity Bill was pushed through by the British Government. The bill essentially protected officers and other Government servants from legal proceedings as a result of actions taken during martial law. These meetings crucially provided Indian members, including Malaviya, the opportunity to challenge the official narrative concerning Dyer’s actions at Jallianwala Bagh while also putting a number of questions before the Government.47 These questions touched on the very heart of the events of 13 April, including the size and composition of the gathering in the Bagh, the lack of warning, the length of the firing, the lack of care for the wounded, and the numbers of casualties. The British Government, however, completely dismissed the criticism and instead doubled down to provide a staunch defence of Dyer. The most senior military official present, Lieutenant-General Sir Havelock Hudson, for instance, invoked the time-honoured Punjab tradition with its emphasis on discretionary powers:
There are those who will admit that a measure of force may have been necessary, but who cannot agree with the extent of the force employed. How can they be in a better position to judge of that than the officer on the spot? It must be remembered that when a rebellion has been started against the Government, it is tantamount to a declaration of war. War cannot be conducted in accordance with standards of humanity to which we are accustomed in peace.48
When Malaviya read out the latest information obtained by the Sewa Samiti, namely that the names of 530 killed and 190 wounded had been traced, Thompson’s contemptuous response was simply to question the veracity of these figures: ‘I still claim, my Lord, that any deaths which were reported, which are considerably in excess of the number which we admit, namely 291, must be received with grave suspicion. I did not claim, and I do not claim now, that we know or ever shall know, the exact number of persons who were killed.’49 That was the final word on the matter as far as the Government was concerned and the Indemnity Bill was ultimately passed. For Malaviya and other Indian nationalists, this only reinforced the impression that the forthcoming official inquiry would prove to be little more than a whitewash.
Jawaharlal Nehru was particularly scathing in his critique of Thompson after the Legislative Council Debate:
Does Mr. Thompson know how many hundreds of bullets were fired at the Jallianwala Bagh? If not, let him inquire. Does he know how many persons one regulation bullet will pierce if fired at short range into a dense crowd? If not, let him seek the information from a military friend. And when Mr. Thompson has added to the stock of his knowledge, he will perhaps realise that the casualty figures given by the Sewa Samiti are nearer the mark than the official figure. He may be painfully surprised to learn that even the Sewa Samiti figures are far from complete and are being added to as fresh information comes in.50
As it turned out, Puckle’s figure of 291 had to be adjusted by Deputy Commissioner F.H. Burton when he received the latest lists from the Sewa Samiti in October.51 The list contained 482 names from which Burton subtracted 15 whose names were shown twice, 13 who were found to be still living, 31 who could not be traced, and 44 unidentified villagers.52 While Burton himself believed the actual number of killed was approximately 415, the inability to ascertain the identity of so many of the victims meant that the final and officially accepted figure was 379.53 The wounded were estimated to be three times the number of those killed, approximately 1,200, yet crucially none of these figures became public knowledge till the following year.54 The only surviving copy of the list of identified victims contains just 376 names, of whom 102 can be identified as Sikh, 217 as Hindu, and 57 as Muslim.55 Most of the Hindus and Muslims were local to Amritsar, while most of the villagers from outside the city were Sikhs who had evidently visited for the Baisakhi fair. There were just two women listed, namely Bibi Har Kaur and Masammat Bisso, which reflected the fact that women rarely joined such large gatherings. Of the overwhelmingly male list, fifteen were fifteen years or younger, while thirty-two were fifty or over, and the youngest was eight while the oldest was eighty years old.56 Combined with the sparse data from other supplementary records, this list provided the most comprehensive reflection of the composition of the crowd on 13 April.
While the exact number of people who were killed at Jallianwala Bagh on 13 April would never be known, the figure of 379 (or 376) was certainly too low and reflected only those victims whose identity was confirmed. Even Thompson admitted there was a margin of error and Burton, who knew the available data better than most, conceded that the total number might be higher, ‘about 415 possibly’.57 It is, however, notable that the assessment of the Sewa Samiti, following extensive enquiries in both Amritsar and the surrounding districts, never exceeded 530, of whom 482 were identified by name. None of the much bigger estimates, British or Indian, offered in the weeks and months following the massacre, were based on little more than rough guesswork. The figures of 1,042 and 1,800, suggested by Gerard and Lieutenant-Colonel Smith respectively, thus appear simply to have been rough extrapolations from the number of rounds fired – 1,650 – which was the only known quantity at the time. The same applies to the claim of 1,500 dead made by Gandhi.
The estimates of the survivors and eyewitnesses to the massacre also differed widely. Dyer, who had no reason to underestimate the size of the crowd, believed it consisted of just 5,000–6,000 people, while Hans Raj claimed as many as 25,000–30,000 had been present.58 Khushal Singh, who helped Hans Raj prepare the meeting, claimed that 15,000–20,000 people were present in the Bagh at the time the shooting took place and that afterwards ‘there must have been at least 2,000 killed or wounded all over the garden’.59 Another local resident, who entered the Bagh after Dyer and the soldiers had left, stated that ‘there were about 800 or 1000 wounded and dead lying near the walls of the Bagh, besides others who ran away wounded and died either in their own houses or in the surrounding lanes’.60
It was nevertheless the account of Girdhari Lal that came to have the biggest impact, as he was one of the main interlocutors of Jawaharlal Nehru and the unofficial inquiry. Girdhari Lal, who witnessed the massacre from a nearby rooftop, suggested that there had been 12,000–15,000 people gathered at Jallianwala Bagh and that ‘there must have been over one thousand dead bodies in the garden’.61 The unofficial inquiry thus concluded that, referring to the findings of the Sewa Samiti, 500 dead represented a minimum, but that Girdhari Lal’s estimate of 1,000 was ‘by no means an exaggerated calculation’.62 In the final analysis, however, neither the collection of names nor the testimonies from survivors were ever going to ascertain with any exactitude what the actual scale of the massacre was. On 13 April, eyewitnesses had no way of distinguishing between the dead and the wounded, as darkness was falling, or to accurately assess the piles of corpses that filled the Bagh. These accounts can at best be regarded as indicatory. Considering the flawed nature of the information available, a plausible est
imate would thus be that the crowd at Jallianwala Bagh consisted of between 15,000 and 20,000 people, and that somewhere between 500 and 600 were killed, with the number of wounded amounting to roughly three times that.
Numbers alone, however, could never adequately reflect the horrific nature of the event, nor of the suffering of the victims and those left behind. There were families who would never know what happened to their relatives who went to Amritsar for Baisakhi, and hundreds who survived but were maimed for life.63 While the butcher’s bill was thus to some extent measurable, the trauma was not. This was also something that C.F. Andrews struggled with:
I could not sleep or eat or even speak to anyone after what I saw. I wanted to go apart, and be alone [. . .] It was a massacre, a butchery . . . I feel that if only I could take each single Englishman and show him out of my eyes what I have seen, he would feel the same as I . . .64
What it was that Andrews wanted others to see nevertheless remained unclear. While he personally interviewed many survivors, and probably met people with scars or amputated limbs, he never actually witnessed the massacre or any other violence. What Andrews had seen was the Jallianwala Bagh, which, by the time that the unofficial inquiry got under way, was literally just an empty space. The only remaining trace of the massacre was what Motilal Nehru described as a ‘gruesome sight . . . walls pierced with bullets’.65 Jawaharlal Nehru’s short-hand notes from his visit to the site of the massacre on 31 August similarly revealed the significance accorded to the bullet-holes: