Jallianwala Bagh, 1919

by Kishwar Desai

  Meanwhile, on 13 April, after unleashing this holocaust, Dyer had returned to his camp by 6 p.m. He then marched through the city again at 10 p.m. ‘to make sure that his order as to the inhabitants not being out after 20 hours (13th) was obeyed; he found the city absolutely quiet and not a soul to be seen.’ 11 The sound of marching boots and the pickets still in place all over the city would have ensured that people stayed indoors. The irony was that in many homes only the women and girl children would have been at home, or the elderly. How could they have stepped out to rescue their husbands, brothers or sons in the middle of the night?

  What could have been more cruel than this? To force people to stay at home while their loved ones lay dying a few streets away? Many men and women, nonetheless, defied the law and crept down with lanterns, hunting among the bodies, as people lay screaming in pain, waiting for death to arrive.

  Few would have slept that night. There was no electricity and no water—the drains were full of blood as were the streets. The cries of the dying rent the air. Dyer may not have seen a ‘soul’ on the street but the city was awake and in agony.

  According to the ‘War Diary’ that was maintained at the time by Captain Briggs for his General, permission was granted on 14 April for the inhabitants to bury or burn their dead.12 Unlike 11 April, there was no large gathering of people. Those who were fortunate enough to have found the bodies of their family members in the mangled heaps would have wanted to hold the funerals quickly, as the bodies would have rotted through the night (April is a warm month); and as already noted, the vultures were circling.

  ‘It does not appear that any steps were taken by the Punjab Government for a long time to ascertain the real facts about so serious an occurrence and to find the correct number of casualties. Sir Michael O’Dwyer when asked about it, says in his evidence that, on the 15th April he had an interview of about a quarter of an hour with General Dyer and that afterwards the Punjab Government were awaiting General Dyer’s report.

  ‘As Dyer was moving about in Punjab, and later sent off to the Afghan war, he did not make his report till the end of August, 1919, and that was made in response to a communication from the Adjutant General dated the 19th July, 1919, evidently asking for a special report. The Punjab Government do not appear to have taken any steps till the end of June to ascertain the casualties’.13 Mr Thompson, the Chief Secretary, said that it was at the end of July that ‘we told the Deputy Commissioner to make inquiries’.14

  Notices were issued to the public on 8 August to give information regarding ‘those who had met their death at Jallianwala Bagh’. This was four months after the massacre.

  On the other hand, the action taken by Dyer was approved of, not just by the army, but by the civil authorities as well. Despite the magnitude of what had happened, no one dwelt upon it. Irving left the report entirely to Dyer and, till the Hunter Committee was set up, no one was the wiser. It would have been fairly easy to do this as the Secretary of State for India, Montagu, was based in London. Viceroy Chelmsford was in Simla and Lieutenant Governor O’Dwyer was in Lahore. The latter made little effort to find out any more than he had been told about the events at Amritsar, as he would reveal during his cross-examination at the Hunter Committee hearings.

  Basically, there was relief in the British camp, as it was believed that after this incident, not a single European would be harmed, and any talk of a mutiny in the armed forces (of which there was very little evidence so far) had also been averted.

  However, Kitchin remained worried about the loyalty of the Indian troops. Just as he had (wrongly) anticipated fighting in the streets of Amritsar on 11 and 12 April, Kitchin seemed to imagine enemies of the Empire everywhere. He had already stated in a message, at 11 a.m. on 11 April, while he was in Amritsar: ‘Troops arrived from Jullundur 5 a.m. (100 British, 200 Indian). The latter are somewhat under suspicion and have been split up into smaller parties.’15

  Was this suspicion of the Indian troops just fear or based on facts? It appears to be the former, since there is no evidence, even in this difficult time, of a mutiny in the army.

  By splitting them into smaller groups, it may have been easier to spot sedition, but by forcing them into increasingly repressive behaviour against their own countrymen and women, the British were knowingly brutalising them—and unknowingly alienating them.

  This was another aspect of the divide and rule policy clearly discernible at Amritsar. The policies were meant not just to create rifts between the different communities but to deepen the divide between civilians on the one hand and the army and the police on the other. There would be even more reason now to fear that the disgruntled elements in the army, or the soldiers returning from World War I, might be aroused to strike. While the British were approving of Dyer’s actions, they continued to be nervous—which is why there was no option but to seek a further continuation of martial law.

  Thus, while there were no actual signs of a mutiny, there was continuing unease in the enforcement agencies over recent happenings, despite their hope that the Jallianwala Bagh massacre would end any further rebellion.

  The ban on news continued—but the official information was certainly being carried through those telegraph lines, which were still functioning, or through word of mouth. The news about the massacre would have spread rapidly in the local areas, but it only reached Lahore close to midnight, and O’Dwyer learnt of it in the early hours of 14 April. Why did it take so long? And why did the aeroplanes assiduously hovering over Amritsar and reporting on everything, suddenly vanish from the skies? It appeared almost as if, having started the cruel game, O’Dwyer did not want to know about the results till it was all, very firmly, over.

  Even though there was physical movement between Amritsar and Lahore by road, and the army was in control, the communication on the night of 13 April about the events of the day reached Lahore via a ‘mutilated message’ to the Deputy Inspector General of the CID at about 11 or 11.15 p.m. Mr Thompson, the Chief Secretary, received a peculiarly worded message on the telephone.

  11.30 pm. Chief Secretary reports code message received from the Deputy Commissioner, Amritsar, much mutilated. But sense seems to be that seven arrests were made today and a prohibited meeting dispersed at which 200 were killed. Communicated to Colonel Casson who had no report from the General Officer Commanding Amritsar. But said there were rumours in Cantonments that there had been heavy casualties in Amritsar today.16

  Typically, the General Officer Commanding Amritsar, Dyer, had not given a report as yet. The emphasis in the coded message was on the arrests and dispersal of the meeting, instead of the large number killed. The latter information was dismissed as ‘rumours’. The message could have certainly contained more detail.

  Because in reality, Irving (who sent the message to Thompson) had accompanied Dyer on his late night walk through Amritsar to check if the curfew orders were being obeyed.17 Even if they avoided going near Jallianwala Bagh, it would have been impossible not to hear the cries of pain, and see the streets lined with blood and bodies. The selective use of information meant that Irving, who was still technically in charge (martial law would not be officially imposed through an order till 15 April), could downplay the heavy casualties.

  However, he did state in a separate report to O’Dwyer dated 14 April at 1 a.m. that ‘I much regret that I was not present (at Jallianwala Bagh) but when out previously with the military the greatest forbearance had been shown in making people disperse. I had absolutely no idea of the action taken.’

  Irving’s note to O’Dwyer arrived with Wathen, the principal of the Khalsa College, who was very disturbed by the events. He obviously expected that there would be a terrible backlash and so he had driven down to Lahore, clutching a loaded revolver all the way.

  O’Dwyer was asleep, having just come down from Simla. He was woken up by Wathen, who handed him the very brief report from Irving and gave him his own account as well, stating (mistakenly) that British troops had been used
at Jallianwala Bagh. He also said that men had been ‘shot down like rabbits as they ran’. Thompson and Kitchin were roused and came in, still in their pyjamas. At around 4 a.m, O’Dwyer asked for further details from Dyer’s superior, General Beynon. The latter had still not heard from Dyer. All they knew was that around 200 had died in Amritsar and that the firing went on for 10 minutes. Beynon would send an aeroplane the next morning to learn more. Wathen added to the confusion by saying that the region of Manjha was up in arms.18

  O’Dwyer approved of the action even though he knew that Dyer had fired ‘without warning’.19 He also took refuge in the fact that the army was in charge. He later said, ‘I approved of General Dyer’s action in dispersing by force the rebellious gathering and thus preventing further rebellious acts. It was not for me to say he had gone too far when I was told by his superior officer that he fully approved General Dyer’s action. Speaking perhaps with a more intimate knowledge of the then situation than anyone else, I have no hesitation in saying that General Dyer’s action that day was the decisive factor in crushing the rebellion, the seriousness of which is only now being generally realised.’20

  ‘Crushing the rebellion’—even if the rebellion was non-existent—was evidently very important to the Punjab regime, especially O’Dwyer. The fact that the dead and injured belonged to an unarmed group of peaceful protestors was consistently ignored.

  But how many had been crushed?

  The numbers of the dead kept changing. It all depended on whose word the government or the people were prepared to believe.

  On 10 September, almost five months later, in a discussion at the Imperial Legislative Council, the number of those dead was given as 301. On 12 September, Pandit Malaviya said it was 1,000.

  According to a list compiled by the government along with the Allahabad Seva Samiti, 379 were killed, out of which 87 were unknown, perhaps villagers who had come to Amritsar for the fair.21 However, while giving his evidence before the Hunter Committee, J.P. Thompson admitted that while the government had stated that 291 had been killed, the original estimate by the Seva Samiti was almost 531.

  At this point, Major General Sir George Barrow interrupted Thompson’s cross-examination by Setalvad. He said, ‘I know how many shots were fired. If every bullet hit someone, the figure given by Mr Thompson will be about accurate according to experience. One in five would get killed.’22 If 1,650 bullets were fired, as claimed by Dyer, the dead would have numbered a little over 300.

  Later reports would show that the dead numbered many times more than the official figure of 379 and the numbers of those wounded, though said to be three times more than the dead, were actually much higher.23 It wasn’t just bullet wounds that killed people—many died when they were crushed in the stampede or when they fell into the well—and the wounds were not caused only by bullets. For the young children who could not escape in time, even a fracture or a small wound would have been fatal as they bled through the night.

  It was evident that the Punjab government was doing its best to make the numbers appear as low as possible, and they could offer ignorance as an excuse. It is undoubtedly strange that when every act of rebellion was noted meticulously in the minute-to-minute War Diaries, there was silence over these hundreds of deaths, until August, which is when they began to take stock of how many had died or were wounded.

  The government had also bought into Dyer’s view that the assembled crowd was guilty of breaking his prohibitory order. They were all criminals and had to be shown extreme disregard, and no sympathy at all.

  Dyer said, in a submitted statement to the General Staff, 16th (Indian) Division, dated Dalhousie, 25 August 1919: ‘I had the choice of carrying out a very distasteful and horrible duty or of neglecting to do my duty, of suppressing disorder or of becoming responsible for all future bloodshed.’24

  He was asked by Setalvad whether it was because the crowd was attending a meeting prohibited by Dyer that gave the drastic measure a punitive effect.

  He answered: ‘I want to punish the naughty boy; it would be difficult to say what would be the effect of punishment on a boy who is not naughty.’ He admitted that it had a better effect when the meeting was prohibited rather than not.25

  When further pressed about how he could hold all those people at the Bagh responsible for the disorders (the riots which took place following the arrests of Gandhi, Kitchlew and Satya Pal), he said: ‘They were there to show their sympathy with the people who committed murder and rebellion, and their hostility to the Government which was repressing it.’ He inferred all of this because they had gathered at Jallianwala Bagh after ‘what had happened in Amritsar for three days, and taking that the prohibition (order had been) issued in the morning.’

  On 15 April, martial law was formally declared in Amritsar and other places in Punjab. The punishments subsequently meted out under martial law were harsh and whimsical. No distinction was made between the guilty and the innocent. All of Amritsar, particularly, was guilty since they had protested against the arrest of their leaders and because five Europeans had been killed in the ensuing melee.

  Once again, the attempt was to denigrate and enmesh the population of Punjab in a web of fear so they would never rebel again. It was hoped, through the severe humiliations inflicted on them, that their spirit would be broken.

  The Jallianwala Bagh massacre was hailed as high strategy and Brigadier General Reginald Dyer, who showed little empathy for the victims, was feted for having averted another 1857-type mutiny. The press reports, which were to come out much later—and very few reported the conditions that prevailed in Punjab in April, May and June—revealed only how a rebellion had been halted.

  From then on, an atmosphere of fear prevailed. Even those who were severely wounded would not come forward for treatment because they feared reprisals. This fact came out during the recording of witnesses in 1919 by the Congress Sub-Committee and in 1921 (not that it made any difference to admirers of Dyer) when compensation was offered to those who were wounded and others who had lost family members at Jallianwala Bagh.

  For instance, Hakim Singh, a clerk at the Khalsa College, was wounded in the left leg and the knee bone of his right leg was dislocated. He finally came forward for a very paltry compensation in 1921. Being an employee of the college, he did not reveal for two years that he had been at Jallianwala Bagh. It is possible that Wathen, the principal, may have known about his injury and advised him to stay quiet, rather than face arrest.

  Similarly, Hans Raj, son of Kapur Singh from Amritsar, did not give his name for compensation, even though he was wounded at Jallianwala Bagh on the upper part of his right thigh.26

  Mohan Lal, son of Bhagat Ram, from tahsil Tarn Taran, also received two bullets in his left leg. He too did not reveal his presence at the Bagh, until two years later.

  Very few of the victims received any professional medical care. For instance, Mohammed Din, son of Fazl Din, a weaver from Amritsar, was shot thrice—in the right thigh, in the left arm, and on the right side of the abdomen. He remained ill for one and half years, after which he died at home.

  While fear of punishment kept many of the wounded at home, no one from the administration reached out to them, either. Unless it was to arrest them or force them to confess to a larger conspiracy.

  It was not until November 1919 that news of the shocking events of 13 April began to be known in greater detail as the public hearings of the Hunter Committee started and the Congress Sub-Committee also began recording evidence. But the reporting in the British media and some of the English language press in India remained largely in favour of Dyer. So, it was not till 1920, when the British Parliament was forced to take cognisance of the brutal killings, that the truth was finally known to the world. Even then, much of it remained concealed as some of the evidence was thought to be too volatile to be revealed at the time.

  It was clear by then that the massacre was far worse than originally claimed and it was felt that there would be a demoralisi
ng effect on the army if the fear of an impending ‘mutiny’ was made public. The third reason for concealment was, of course, the possible impact of full disclosure on the national movement in India. The sheer horror of what had happened would encourage the anti-British forces to come together and so it was important to keep the details hidden as far as possible.

  There was a constant effort by the Punjab government to link the happenings of Amritsar to a larger conspiracy but ultimately, none could be proven. The massacre was nothing more than an attempt to enslave people under martial law and to rip away their dignity. It was done to ensure that they ‘respected’ the British and reinforce the belief that they were themselves an inferior race. They should be so punished that never again would they dare to organise a revolt or kill a white European.

  * * *

  1. Parliamentary Report, p. 114.

  2. INC Report, Volume II, Lahore, pp. 116–17.

  3. INC Report, Volume II, pp. 99–100.

  4. Raja Ram, The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre: A Premeditated Plan (Chandigarh: Punjab University, 2002), p. 88.

  5. K.D. Malaviya, Open Rebellion in the Punjab: With Special Reference to Amritsar (Allahabad: Abhyudaya Press, 1919), pp. 3–4.

  6. Nigel Collett, ‘The Jallianwala Bagh Revisited II’, United Service Institution of India, no. 565. Accessed at http://usiofindia.org/Article/?pub=Journal&pubno=565&ano=430.

  7. INC Report, Volume II, Evidence, pp. 38–9.

  8. INC Report, Volume II, Evidence, pp. 38–9.

  9. INC Report, Volume II (Lahore, 1920), pp. 42–5.