Apart from other punishments that were meted out in Punjab, gallows were set up in public spaces, as close to the scenes of ‘mob outrage’ as possible. At Kasur, they were erected but apparently never used. A large public cage was also set up near the railway station, which could accommodate around 150 persons. The entire male population of the town was paraded for identification.115
Capital punishment was also meted out in Punjab. Eighteen people were hanged due to the unrest in the province. Pandit Motilal Nehru had to intervene and write to the Secretary of State to get hundreds of sentences commuted. The INC Report states: ‘We much suspect that many of those who were hanged and over whose heads the death sentences are still hanging, were or are totally innocent.’
This sentiment was not shared by the British civilian officers, who were busy supporting martial law. Officers like Bosworth Smith at the sub-division of Sheikhupura felt that martial law was not only essential but desirable. In total, he would have tried 477 persons between 6 May and 20 May and the accused usually pleaded guilty, with very few exceptions. ‘This was peculiar to Mr Bosworth Smith’s Court. He seemed to exercise a subtle influence over the persons brought before him, which produced wholesale admissions of guilt. Convictions, it is alleged were based on the evidence of three or four railway officials.’116 Like Johnson, he managed to get the maximum number of convictions in a few short weeks.
Most of the army and civilian officers who imposed martial law in Punjab confessed to being sceptical about the loyalty of Indians. Bosworth Smith even said, ‘There is no place where disloyalty is so deep as in Delhi, Lahore and Amritsar.’ He suggested this, in particular, about the legal profession. As we know, lawyers were at the forefront of the anti-Rowlatt Act agitation everywhere and Gandhi himself, of course, was a lawyer.
In reality, many Indians in the official machinery, in the army and the Civil Service, remained loyal to the British, and even among the lawyers, many tried very hard to keep the agitation peaceful.
Having made this ‘sweeping statement’, Bosworth Smith could provide no proof of it. In the cross-examination by Setalvad, he was questioned about his statement of ‘disloyalty’:
Q: Have you any personal experience of Delhi?
A: I spent some months there.
Q: Had you ever been officially connected with that place?
A: No.
Q: On what material did you base your statement?
A: It was a confidential report to the Government.
Q: But when you make a confidential report surely any opinion you may express therein must be based on some material?
A: I had my own opinion.
Q: You don’t arrive at opinions without material. What is the material on which you based your opinion?
A: I prefer not to say.
Q: Why don’t you care to enlighten the Committee in the matter? Is it against public interest or were you ordered by the government not to say? Why are you so unwilling?
A: I don’t care to say.
Q: I want to have your position clear. You don’t want to answer the question?
A: I have already said I don’t think it is desirable.
Q: Is it against public interest?
A: I don’t wish to answer this.
Q: May I know your reason?
A: I don’t wish to give it to you.
Q: You don’t wish to answer the question and you don’t wish to give your reasons?
A: Yes.
Q: You think this is the way in which to come here to assist the committee?
Silence.
Q: Does the same thing apply to your assertion regarding Lahore and Amritsar?
A: The same.117
Given that there was a pre-existing bias and prejudice against the residents of Punjab, it is hardly surprising that sadistic methods were used to deal with the anti-Rowlatt Act Movement. While the satyagraha had spread to other places such as Delhi, Mumbai and Ahmedabad, ‘fancy punishments’ which converted Indians into ‘slaves’ were not used there. This was O’Dwyer’s special parting gift to Punjab, along with the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
* * *
1. INC Report, p. 59, statement 1.
2. INC Report, p. 59, statement 1.
3. Parliamentary Report, pp. 32–3.
4. INC Report, p. 59.
5. Helen Fein, Imperial Crime and Punishment: The Massacre at Jallianwala Bagh and British Judgement, 1919–1920 (Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii, 1977), p. 40.
6. Fein, Imperial Crime, p. 41.
7. INC Report, p. 110.
8. INC Report, p. 110.
9. INC Report, p. 63.
10. Nick Lloyd, The Amritsar Massacre (London: I.B. Tauris Co. Ltd., 2011), p. 76.
11. INC Report, p. 61.
12. INC Report, p. 64, statements 115, 117, 118.
13. INC Report, p. 62, statement 104.
14. INC Report, p. 62, statement 114.
15. INC Report, p. 62, statement 114.
16. INC Report, p. 62, statement 102.
17. INC Report, p. 62, statement 105.
18. K.D. Malaviya, Open Rebellion in the Punjab: With Special Reference to Amritsar (Allahabad: Abhyudaya Press, 1919), p. 38.
19. Vinay Lal, ‘The Incident of the Crawling Lane: Women In the Punjab Disturbances of 1919’, Genders, no. 16. Accessed at http://southasia.ucla.edu/incident-crawling-lane/.
20. INC Report, Evidence, p. 179.
21. INC Report, Evidence, p. 179; Sarojini Naidu, Words of Freedom: Ideas of a Nation. Speech in London, 3 June 1920. Accessed online.
22. Lal, ‘Incident of the Crawling Lane’.
23. Lloyd, The Amritsar Massacre, p. 135.
24. Lloyd, The Amritsar Massacre, p. 135.
25. Lloyd, The Amritsar Massacre, p. 137.
26. V.N. Datta, New Light On the Punjab Disturbances in 1919 (Simla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1975), p. 137; Shireen Ilahi, Imperial Violence and the Path to Independence (I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2016), p. 66.
27. Datta, New Light, p. 137; Ilahi, Imperial Violence, p. 66.
28. INC Report, Evidence, pp. 42–5.
29. Fein, Imperial Crime, p. 38.
30. INC Report, Evidence, p. 153.
31. INC Report, pp. 66–7, statement 5.
32. INC Report, pp. 66–7, statement 5.
33. INC Report, p. 69, statement 16.
34. INC Report, p. 68, statement 14.
35. INC Report, p. 67, statement 13.
36. INC Report, p. 71, statements 2, 6, 134, 138–40.
37. INC Report, p. 71, statements 2, 6, 134, 138–40.
38. INC Report, p. 72, statement 88.
39. INC Report, p. 69, statement 21.
40. INC Report, p. 69, statement 21.
41. Notice from the Motilal Nehru papers at the Nehru Memorial Library, Delhi.
42. Motilal Nehru papers at NMML.
43. Motilal Nehru Papers at NMML.
44. Evidence, Amritsar, p. 139.
45. INC Report, p. 64.
46. INC Report, p. 64, statement 29.
47. INC Report, pp. 64–5, statement 91.
48. Sir Michael O’Dwyer, India As I Knew It (London: Constable and Company, 1925), p. 204.
49. INC Report, p. 75.
50. INC Report, p. 76.
51. Hunter Committee Report, p. 55.
52. INC Report, p. 2.
53. INC Report, p. 76.
54. INC Report, pp. 76–7.
55. Hunter Committee Report, p. 58.
56. Hunter Committee Report, pp. 58–9.
57. Hunter Committee Report, p. 59.
58. Hunter Committee Report, p. 60.
59. Hunter Committee Report, pp. 60–1.
60. Hunter Committee Report, pp. 60–1.
61. INC Report, p. 79.
62. Hunter Committee Report, p. 62.
63. Hunter Committee Report, p. 62.
64. Hunter Committee Report, p. 168.
65. Parliamentary Report,
p. 102.
66. Benjamin Guy Horniman, Amritsar and Our Duty To India (London: T. Fisher Unwin Ltd., 1920), p. 133.
67. Horniman, Amritsar and Our Duty, p. 133.
68. Hunter Committee Report, p. 198.
69. Hunter Committee Report, p. 198.
70. Horniman, Amritsar and Our Duty, p. 134.
71. Hunter Committee Report, p. 199.
72. Hunter Committee Report, p. 199.
73. Hunter Committee Report, p. 200.
74. Hunter Committee Report, p. 201.
75. INC Report, p. 90.
76. Hunter Committee Report, p. 202.
77. Horniman, Amritsar and Our Duty, p. 155.
78. Horniman, Amritsar and Our Duty, p. 138.
79. An official report, quoted in Horniman, Amritsar and Our Duty, p. 188–9.
80. INC Report, p. 81.
81. INC Report, p. 82.
82. INC Report, p. 83.
83. Hunter Committee Report, p. 69.
84. INC Report, p. 105.
85. INC Report, p. 105.
86. Hunter Committee Report, p. 70.
87. Hunter Committee Report, p. 71.
88. Hunter Committee Report, p. 71.
89. Hunter Committee Report, pp. 72–3.
90. Hunter Committee Report, p. 225.
91. Hunter Committee Report, p. 73.
92. Hunter Committee Report, p. 73.
93. INC Report, p. 107.
94. Parliamentary Report, p. 46.
95. Parliamentary Report, p. 46.
96. Hunter Committee Report, p. 79.
97. INC Report, p. 107.
98. INC Report, p. 106.
99. INC Report, p. 388, statement 282.
100. INC Report, p. 110; Motilal Nehru papers at NMML.
101. INC Report, p. 111, statement 304.
102. Hunter Committee Report, p. 63.
103. Hunter Committee Report, p. 66.
104. INC Report, p. 98.
105. Hunter Committee Report, p. 231.
106. Hunter Committee Report, p. 231.
107. Hunter Committee Minority Report, p. 231.
108. INC Report, pp. 99–100.
109. INC Report, p. 103.
110. INC Report, p. 103.
111. INC Report, p. 100.
112. INC Report, p. 100.
113. INC Report, p. 100.
114. INC Report, p. 101.
115. Horniman, Amritsar and Our Duty, p. 155.
116. Horniman, Amritsar and Our Duty, p. 158.
117. Hunter Committee Report, quoted in Horniman, Amritsar and Our Duty, p. 159–60.
5
Fascist, Racist or Both?
Punjab 1919
How shall our love console thee, or assuage
Thy hapless woe; how shall our grief requite
The hearts that scourge thee and the hands that smite
Thy beauty with their rods of bitter rage!
Lo! let our sorrow be thy battle-gauge
To wreck the terror of the tyrant’s might
Who mocks with ribald wrath thy tragic plight.
And stains with shame thy radiant heritage!
O beautiful! O broken hearted and betrayed!
O mournful queen! O martyred Draupadi!
Endure thou still, unconquered, undismayed!
The sacred rivers of thy stricken blood
Shall prove the five-fold stream of Freedom’s flood,
To guard the watch-towers of our Liberty.
—Sarojini Naidu1
The policy of the British towards India, at the start of the twentieth century, appeared confused. They owed a huge debt to the Indian soldiers who had fought on their side in World War I, but the colony was still regarded through the prism of the ‘mutiny’ of 1857. Resistance was brewing all over India, and Punjab, Bengal and Maharashtra were among the most rebellious. ‘By 1918, the government held 806 political prisoners in Bengal. . . a preliminary investigation committee reported that 70 to 80 per cent of them are inexperienced and young students’ as well as teachers, clerks and ‘persons of no occupation’.2
Yet, as Helen Fein points out, the Rowlatt Committee claimed that ‘all these plots have been directed towards one and the same objective, the overthrow by force of British rule in India. . . All have been successfully encountered with the support of Indian loyalty.’ Why, given such an optimistic conclusion, asks Fein, were the British in need of new legislation? ‘Although they had been able to foil all attempts at armed revolt and had subverted plans to obtain German arms, they were unable to squash the underground movement. Most crimes were never solved, fewer were persecuted, and even fewer defendants were convicted. The police, as the Rowlatt Committee described them, were generally illiterate, untrained in detection, and lacked modern communication devices.’3 (Here the reference is specifically to so-called acts of sedition against the British, which were poorly investigated) Fein further points out that while witnesses were reluctant to appear, as some who did had been murdered in the past, government lawyers were hopeless at presenting cases that could ‘stand up’.
The one person who understood the need for greater freedoms in India was Sir Edwin Montagu, the British Secretary of State. He had proposed the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms, which were bitterly resented by many who were ruling India at the time. The Governors and Lieutenant Governors did not appreciate the idea of diarchy, according to which Indians would gradually be absorbed into positions of power. These local satraps had got used to ruling independently. They reported directly to the Viceroy, who was either in Delhi or Simla, and who in turn passed all information on to the Secretary of State in London. There were many loopholes in this system, which could easily be exploited in a vast country like India. The agitation over the Rowlatt Acts grew quickly, precisely because of these lacunae.
Gandhi, having spent his formative years in London and then South Africa, understood the importance of collective agitation. There was a strength in numbers that he wanted to tap into, and this was exactly what the British feared.
Why did the anti-Rowlatt Act protests expand so swiftly into a movement, which was then squashed with such great cruelty? Perhaps because many of the top leaders of the time—Gandhi, Malaviya, Mohammed Ali Jinnah—were lawyers and understood the dark side of the Acts only too well.
The Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act, or the Rowlatt Acts, were actually two bills. They had been gazetted in early 1919 and were then quickly introduced in the Imperial Legislature. They were drafted following the concern that the Defence of India Act, the Indian DORA, had been a ‘war emergency’ measure and something equivalent was needed in peace time. An English judge, Sir Sydney Rowlatt, presided over a committee which included two Indian judges as well, but they conducted their deliberations in-camera, and the material they dealt with were mostly secret police records. None of the men whom they considered ‘revolutionary’ appeared or spoke in their own defence. Except for four sittings in Lahore, the rest were conducted in Calcutta.
There was stiff opposition to the passing of the bills. Bill No 1 was actually the weaker of the two bills and strangely, it was enacted before it was published. The usual procedure was for a bill to first be published in all the provincial gazettes, and then become law after a period of time.4 But this was not how it happened in this case.
‘It has been stated that the Secretary of State cabled his sanction only for the publication of the bills, but the Government of India misunderstood or misread the cable, and took as conveying sanction to proceed with its enactment, with the result that the first intimation of this fact that Mr Montagu had came to him in the newspapers. The error was rectified too late and the first Bill was then allowed. . .’5
The first bill, though not as drastic as the second, provided for an amendment of the Indian Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure. It made the Sedition Law even more severe. Section 124 B was added, which made the possession of seditious literature punishable with imprisonment and/or
with a fine as well. This meant that one could be punished even for accidental possession of any literature that was considered seditious. A seditious document, as per the code, could be one ‘which instigates or is likely to instigate the use of criminal force against the King, the Government, or a public servant or servants.’6 Even historical documents or books could be misconstrued as seditious. The onus would be on the possessor of the document to prove his or her innocence.
The bill also contained some added provisions under Chapter VI of the Indian Penal Code, which stated that in case the accused had a previous conviction, or had been associated, habitually or voluntarily, with a person who had been convicted under that chapter, it would affect his or her own case. This meant that even friends and relations of the previously convicted person would have to shun him or her, so as to not be accused. Further, the bill stated that even those convicted only once would be under the scrutiny of the state and could even be prohibited from public speech and writing. Eventually, this bill was dropped.
Bill No 2, Part 1, was far more dangerous in its limitation of safeguards and checks. People could be tried by courts, which could sit in-camera, and there would be no juries, no preliminary proceedings for committal, and no appeal allowed either. Extraordinarily, evidence could be accepted from dead or missing persons and any previous conviction could also be admitted as evidence. The tribunals comprised of three persons, who could be either high court judges or person of similar stature, and their judgement could send the convicted to Kala Paani in the Andamans or to the gallows.
Part II of the bill empowered the Executive to restrict and restrain anyone thought to be complicit in ‘anarchical and revolutionary movements’. This could also mean restrictions through bonds and keeping the police notified of one’s movements. Disobedience of any order would attract a fine of ₹500 (a huge sum in those days), imprisonment for six months, or both.
However, it was Part III which was found to be the most ‘alarming’. It empowered the Executive to arrest and search without warrant and to confine persons thus arrested ‘without trial in any part of a prison or place not actually used for confinement’. These so-called criminals could be kept in solitary confinement as well. In Part IV, there was provision for an automatic continuance of persons to be confined or restricted, were they already confined or restricted under the Defence of India Act. Part V added a few more provisions to make these punishments watertight.
Jallianwala Bagh, 1919 Page 19