Amritsar 1919 Read online

  AMRITSAR 1919

  Copyright © 2019 Kim A. Wagner

  All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publishers.

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  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018962167

  ISBN 978-0-300-20035-5

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  for Julie . . .

  CONTENTS

  List of Plates and Maps

  A Note on Spelling and Colonial Sources

  Introduction: Amritsar 1919–2019

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue Shadows of the Mutiny

  1Pool of Nectar

  2Rowlatt Satyagraha

  3Party of Anarchy (30 March–9 April)

  4Like Wildfire (10 April)

  5Tokens of Violence (10 April)

  6All Force Necessary (11 April)

  7A State of Rebellion (12 April)

  8Baisakhi (13 April)

  9Massacre (13 April)

  10Forces of Terror (14–30 April)

  11Testimony of Blood

  12A Piece of Inhumanity

  13Aftershocks

  Conclusion An Empire of Fear

  Epilogue Jallianwala Bagh

  Glossary

  Endnotes

  Bibliography

  Index

  PLATES AND MAPS

  Plates

  1. A street in Amritsar. Courtesy of the Davinder Toor Collection.

  2. The Golden Temple. Courtesy of the Davinder Toor Collection.

  3. Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew. The Modern Review, January 1920.

  4. Dr Satyapal. The Modern Review, January 1920.

  5. Ratto. Pearay Mohan, An Imaginary Rebellion (Lahore, 1920).

  6. Bugga. Pearay Mohan, An Imaginary Rebellion (Lahore, 1920).

  7. Melicent Wathen. Courtesy of Roderick Wathen.

  8. Gerard Wathen. Courtesy of Roderick Wathen.

  9. Michael O’Dwyer. © National Portrait Gallery, London.

  10. General Reginald Dyer. Major-General Nigel Woodyatt, Under Ten Viceroys: The Reminiscences of a Gurkha (London: Herbert Jenkins Limited, 1922).

  11. Hall Bridge seen from the Civil Lines. © The British Library Board, Photo 39 (49).

  12. An intersection in the Civil Lines. © The British Library Board, Photo 39 (46).

  13. Hall Gate. © The British Library Board, Photo 39 (54).

  14. Hall Bazaar. Courtesy of the Davinder Toor Collection.

  15. Entrance to Jallianwala Bagh. © The British Library Board, Photo 39 (82).

  16. A crowd at Jallianwala Bagh, late summer 1919. Courtesy of The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library.

  17. The north-eastern side of Jallianwala Bagh. Courtesy of The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library.

  18. A panoramic view of Jallianwala Bagh. © The British Library Board, Photo 39 (84).

  19. Locals inspecting bullet-holes at Jallianwala Bagh in late 1919. L’Illustration, 20–27 March 1920.

  20. A speaker addressing a crowd at Jallianwala Bagh, late 1919. L’Illustration, 20–27 March 1920.

  21. A cartoon of the massacre by Eduard Thöny. Simplicissimus, 21 January 1920, p. 615.

  22. A photograph of the crawling order by Sergeant R.M. Howgego of the 25th London Cyclists. © National Army Museum, London.

  23. A cartoon of the crawling order by David Low. The Tatler, 31 December 1919.

  24. British troops at Amritsar. © The British Library Board, Mss Eur C340/10.

  25. A later re-enactment of the crawling-order in Kucha Kaurianwala. Photo by N.V. Virkar, Alamy Stock Photo.

  26. An aerial view of Amritsar, 1930s. © The British Library Board, Photo 894/4(50).

  Maps

  1. The Punjab, showing offences committed between 10 April and 1 May 1919. Redrawn from the Report of the Committee appointed by the Government of India to investigate the disturbances in the Punjab, etc. (Disorders Inquiry Committee 1919–20 [Report, DIC]) (Calcutta, 1920).

  2. Amritsar City. Redrawn from the Report of the Committee appointed by the Government of India to investigate the disturbances in the Punjab, etc. (Disorders Inquiry Committee 1919–20 [Report, DIC]) (Calcutta, 1920).

  3. The area around the two railway bridges, the site of the shooting on 10 April 1919.

  4. Ground plan of Jallianwala Bagh. Redrawn from the Congress Punjab Inquiry 1919–1920, vol. I: Report of the Commissioners Appointed by the Punjab Sub-committee of the Indian National Congress [Report, CPI] (Bombay, 1920).

  A NOTE ON SPELLING AND

  COLONIAL SOURCES

  Colonial spelling was often inconsistent and the same Indian name might thus appear in different variations in the archive and in official records. While I recognise the colonial connotations of nineteenth- and twentieth-century transliteration, I have retained the original spelling in quotes to avoid confusion and to stay as close to the primary material as possible. It should nevertheless be kept in mind that ascribed caste and religious identities were shaped by colonial taxonomies and as a result often over-simplified if not actually misleading.

  INTRODUCTION

  AMRITSAR 1919–2019

  Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, 13 April 1919

  Inside an open space, surrounded by buildings and a crumbling brick wall, a large Indian crowd of thousands has gathered around a Sikh man, who is addressing his audience from a platform. There is a small dilapidated temple within the square, as well as a few trees, and behind the rooftops the unmistakable onion-domes of a mosque can be discerned. People are mostly dressed in varying shades of white, yet the colourful turbans of the bearded men provide a stark contrast to the drab grey houses behind them. Close around the speaker, the audience is sitting down, while, on the outskirts of the crowd, people are standing or moving about and a vendor is busy peddling his wares carried on a pole across his shoulder. From the balconies of nearby houses people are watching, and a handful of boys are playing in the background. The air is filled with the low murmur of a large crowd, but the earnest words of the speaker resonate with clarity within the square:

  England is so powerful – its army and its navy, all its modern weapons – but when a great power like that strikes defenceless people it shows its brutality, its own weakness. That is why the Mahatma begs us to take the course of non-violence.

  Elsewhere in the city, an armoured car emerges from a gate, followed by a military vehicle with two British officers in pith helmets and fifty Indian troops with rifles making up the rear. The vehicles and uniforms are all in the same khaki colours, and the slouch hats and pointed turbans of the troops reveal them to be Gurkhas and Baluchis. The rumble of the engines merges with the rhythmic sound of the soldiers trotting behind the cars as the column winds its way through the narrow streets of Amritsar. The commanding officer, the broom-moustachioed General Dyer, is sitting motionless in the car, looking straight ahead, as they drive past local residents, who stop what they are doing and stare at the procession. With unerring precision, the column continues further into the city. Outside the park where the meeting is taking place, the armoured car grinds to a halt as the alley is too narrow. With great agility, General Dyer jumps down and orders the car to back away, signalling for the troops t
o follow him. He marches through the entrance with great determination, his horsewhip under the arm.

  The speaker is still busy exhorting the crowd: ‘If we riot, if we fight back, we become the vandals and they become the law! If we bear their blows, they are the vandals – God and his law are on our—’ The hoarse yell of orders being given, and the staccato sound of marching feet as the soldiers spill through the entrance and line up on both sides, brings the speaker to a sudden halt. Here and there, people in the crowd turn around to see what this interruption is, more curious than frightened. General Dyer is standing at ease, right in the middle with his troops to the right and left, surveying the crowd before him with a cold, unmoving, expression. More people have noticed the sudden arrival of the soldiers, and some stand up to get a better view. In place of the speech, the open space now echoes with the order to fix bayonets. The murmur of the crowd grows louder as fear grips the thousands gathered. As the first row of soldiers assumes a kneeling position, more people are getting up, visibly worried.

  The speaker, with less certainty than before, continues: ‘We must have the courage to take their anger—’ General Dyer gives an order to the Havildar-Major, and the double-line of troops lift their rifles to take aim with one synchronised movement. By now the crowd is growing more restless and a crying baby can be heard amidst the yelling of people and the clattering of the guns. Everyone in the crowd is standing, facing the line of rifles and bayonets trained squarely at them. Dyer’s ADC, sweating and slightly nervous, asks his superior: ‘Should we issue a warning, Sir?’ With a stern sidelong glance at his subaltern, the General replies stiffly: ‘They’ve had their warning. No meetings.’ A ripple of panic spreads among the crowd, no more than a hundred feet away, as people desperately begin to push back. General Dyer barks the order: ‘Fire!’

  All fifty troops fire at the same time, and the sharp report of the volley reverberates between the walls of the surrounding buildings. Shrill screams can be heard over the report of the rifles, and, as people are hit and tumble over in the dust, the crowd scatter in a chaotic stampede. As those at the front receive the brunt of the firing, and fall by the dozen, the great mass of people surge backwards and to the sides. The erratic firing continues as people run and are felled by shots, including mothers with their babies. As the troops methodically fire and load their Lee-Enfield rifles, the General calmly walks behind his men, his eyes fixed on the slaughter before him. In the chaos of the panicking crowd, the bodies are beginning to pile up. Dyer reminds his men to take their time, and as they repeat the same motions, shooting and loading, over and over, the spent cartridges fall to the ground with a chinking sound.

  The open ground is now enveloped in a cloud of dust, and amidst the chaos of the dead and the dying, some are trying to carry the wounded to safety. A group of women reach an exit but find it locked by a gate with iron bars and scream in fear as those behind continue pushing. Keeping a sharp lookout, the General notices that some men are trying to scale the wall on the left and he promptly directs the fire towards them, shouting to make himself heard above the din. As the troops swing their rifles towards the wall, people are shot in the back and fall down on top of others. As the firing continues, and with the exits blocked, people are running around aimlessly, some even jumping into a large open well. As Dyer keeps watching, his face devoid of any trace of emotion, more people jump into the well to escape the bullets. Meanwhile the troops keep shooting and loading, shooting and loading, the piles of cartridges growing at their feet. The ground is littered with dead bodies, and a small girl is crying next to the bloodied corpse of her mother.

  The Hunter Committee, Lahore, 19 November 1919

  General Dyer is sitting under a Union Jack hung on the wall, in a large courtroom, facing a panel of Commissioners: Lord Hunter, Mr Justice Rankin, General Barrow, a British civil servant, and an Indian barrister. Behind Dyer, who looks somewhat detached, there is a small audience of British officers.

  Sitting behind the long table filled with legal documents, Justice Rankin asks the first question:

  ‘General Dyer, is it correct that you ordered your troops to fire at the thickest part of the crowd?’

  General Dyer stares woodenly at the panel, confirming with just the slightest nod of his head: ‘That is so.’

  Slightly taken aback by the attitude of the man before him, the mild-mannered Rankin rubs his hands and reads out from his notes: ‘One thousand five hundred and sixteen casualties with one thousand six hundred and fifty bullets?’

  Not missing a beat, General Dyer replies with conviction: ‘My intention was to inflict a lesson that would have an impact throughout all India.’ A small murmur arises from the officers behind the General, who nod in approval. Rankin looks at Dyer with a degree of disbelief, but the General’s expression reveals no emotion whatsoever.

  The Indian barrister asks the next question: ‘General, had you been able to take in the armoured car, would you have opened fire with the machine gun?’

  After a slight pause, Dyer responds, barely moving his mouth as he speaks: ‘I think, probably – yes.’ The barrister stares at the General for a moment, then simply lowers his eyes.

  For the first time, the presiding judge, Hunter, now addresses Dyer: ‘General, did you realize there were children – and women – in the crowd?’

  ‘I did,’ Dyer responds, without a hint of regret.

  Rankin intercedes: ‘But that was irrelevant to the point you were making?’

  Dyer seems almost pleased that someone understood his reasoning: ‘That is correct.’

  There is an awkward silence before Rankin picks up the questioning once more: ‘Could I ask you what provisions you made for the wounded?’

  Clearly stumped, Dyer replies after a moment: ‘I was ready to help any who applied.’

  Baffled by what he was hearing, Rankin asks rhetorically: ‘General . . . how does a child shot with a .303 Lee-Enfield apply for help?’

  For the first time, Dyer seems uncertain of himself.

  This was how director Richard Attenborough reimagined the Amritsar Massacre and the subsequent Hunter Committee inquiry in the Oscar-winning movie Gandhi from 1982.1 This is also how many people today think of what was arguably the bloodiest massacre in the history of the British Empire. While there is an abundance of visual material informing our understanding of key aspects of the history of British India – the viscerally bleak photographs from both 1857 or 1947, for instance – there are no contemporary images of the violence at Amritsar on 13 April 1919. The photographs taken of the Jallianwala Bagh shortly after the massacre show only an empty space.2 It has thus been left largely for Attenborough’s movie to fill in the canvas of the popular imagination and provide the visual repertoire through which today we approach the events of 13 April 1919.

  The brutality of the massacre is captured on screen by the deft deployment of what have since become iconic motifs: the relentless methodical firing, the empty cartridges piling up at the soldiers’ feet, the fleeing women trapped and crushed against an iron gate, people jumping into the well or a child sitting crying next to its dead parent. Many of these images, it may be noted, were clearly inspired by the famous ‘Odessa Steps’ sequence in Eisenstein’s film Battleship Potemkin from 1925.3 Since the release of Gandhi, however, a spate of popular Indian movies, including Shaheed Udham Singh (2000), The Legend of Bhagat Singh (2002) and Rang di Basanti (2006), have again drawn from, if not outright copied, these key scenes from Attenborough.4 Most memorable, however, is Edward Fox’s portrayal of General Dyer as a callously brutal and stiff-upper-lipped caricature of the quintessential colonial officer.

  Presented without any real context in the movie, the Amritsar Massacre functions simply as a grim vignette to illustrate the power of Gandhi’s message of non-violence. The speaker at Jallianwala Bagh is giving voice to the doctrine of Satyagraha, or soul-force, when he is silenced, quite literally, by British bullets. The massacre is thus depicted as the inevita
ble result of the clash between Gandhi’s righteous struggle and the oppression of colonial rule – or, to use Niall Ferguson’s awkward analogy, the clash between soul-force and fist-force. Yet the violence unleashed on the unarmed men, women and children at Amritsar is entirely embodied by Edward Fox’s Dyer: a man seemingly incapable of emotions, who appears as nothing so much as an automaton.

  Concluding the depiction of the massacre with the scene from the Hunter Committee inquiry, in which Dyer is effectively put on trial, the movie thus presents the massacre as an aberration and one which the British Government ultimately disavowed. The visible discomfort of Justice Rankin, as he questions the irascible General, is also the discomfort of the audience, and is meant to remind us of the essentially benevolent and humane side of British rule in India. Like the members of the Hunter Committee, as depicted in the movie, we as an audience can only listen to Dyer’s response with a mix of shock and disbelief. The General’s clipped answers to the questions of the panel cannot be recognised as providing a reasonable explanation, let alone justification, for his actions. What happened at Jallianwala Bagh defies logic and thus eludes attempts to make sense of it. The Amritsar Massacre is reduced to a pure symbol of colonial violence.

  Today, the events of 13 April 1919 are known simply as an iconic example of brutality within the British Empire – often mentioned alongside the Irish Famine, the concentration camps of the South African War, the Bengal Famine or the suppression of the Mau Mau. Similarly to Sharpeville or Bloody Sunday, Jallianwala Bagh has thus become a mere byword for colonial violence, usually encapsulated by formulaic reference to the 379 civilians supposedly killed by the 1650 bullets fired by the colonial troops over the duration of 10 minutes.5 Even those who wax lyrically and nostalgically about the Empire will concede that the Amritsar Massacre was an unfortunate tragedy and a stain on the record of British rule in India. They do so, however, only to insist that it was an anomaly which in no way reflected on the character of the Empire as, essentially, a force for good in the world. Whether the massacre is regarded as a shameful crime, or as an exception to the rule, it is seen essentially as a discrete event and as little more than an item on the so-called ‘balance-sheet’ of empire. Understanding what happened, and appreciating the structural dynamics of the event itself, thus becomes largely immaterial.