Amritsar 1919 Read online

  There were many among the British, however, who simply dismissed the rumours concerning the Rowlatt Act as bazaar gossip – or, as Melicent Wathen put it, ‘lies . . . spread amongst the lower classes such as the tonga wallahs and sweepers and fruit sellers’.68 O’Dwyer and the Punjab administration similarly assumed that the opposition to the Rowlatt Act was based on ignorance and that nationalist agitators were deliberately spreading misinformation. When Indian CID (Criminal Investigation Department) officers attended the protest meetings organised by Kitchlew and Satyapal, they invariably noted in their reports how the Rowlatt Act had not been explained properly. The antidote to this campaign of misinformation, it was reasoned, was simply more propaganda: if the Indian population understood what the legislation was really about, they would come to their senses and realise the British Government only had their best interests in mind.69 O’Dwyer later described these efforts:

  To expose the falsehoods about the Rowlatt Act employed to excite the ignorant mobs, we had hastily printed and distributed tens of thousands of copies of an explanation of the Act – which had not yet been brought into force in any part of India and could not be without the special sanction of the Government of India. These copies were torn up or burned publicly, for those who were behind this lawless agitation knew that it could only thrive on falsehood.70

  Gerard Wathen’s attempt at explaining the actual implications of the Rowlatt Act to his students at the Khalsa College can also be seen as an extension of this – ultimately unsuccessful – effort to diffuse the tensions caused by the passing of the new legislation. Yet more information and pamphlets issued by the authorities were not going to succeed where the Rowlatt Report had already failed so conspicuously.71

  At the end of February, Hans Raj and everyone else in Amritsar could read in the newspapers a letter from an emergent political figure, named Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi:

  I enclose herewith the Satyagraha Pledge regarding the Rowlatt Bills. The step taken is probably the most momentous in the history of India. I give my assurance that it has not been hastily taken [. . .] I have been unable to find any justification for the extraordinary Bills. I have read the Rowlatt Committee’s Report. I have gone through its narrative with admiration. Its reading has driven me to conclusions just the opposite of the Committee’s. I should conclude from the Report that secret violence is confined to isolated and very small parts of India, and to a microscopic body of people. The existence of such men is truly a danger to society. But the passing of the Bills designed to affect the whole of India and its people arms the Government with powers out of all proportion to the situation sought to be dealt with, is a greater danger and the Committee utterly ignores the historical fact that the millions in India are by nature the gentlest on earth.72

  In early 1919, Gandhi was yet to become the famous Mahatma. A lawyer by training, he had up to this point been involved mainly in smaller disputes in the Bombay Presidency between peasants and labourers and the British Government, and he was still a rather peripheral figure in the political landscape of Indian nationalism. Drawing on his previous experience in South Africa, where he had first applied his ideas of passive resistance and civil disobedience during the preceding decades, Gandhi was now developing a new philosophy of popular political mobilisation in India. For Gandhi there was no real distinction between swaraj, or self-rule, for the individual or for the nation; spiritual purification and national independence went hand in hand and neither could be achieved without the other.73 The pledge referred to in Gandhi’s letter thus invoked the concept of Satyagraha, or the reliance on moral or spiritual force to resist oppression, which was deliberately conceived as a non-violent alternative to revolutionary nationalism. Those who signed the pledge made a commitment to resist the Rowlatt Act to the point of courting arrest, yet without ever resorting to violence themselves; only through passive resistance could Indians demonstrate how British policy was unjust and oppressive. While his earlier protests had been limited to particular local issues, the ramifications of the Rowlatt Act affected all Indians and Gandhi’s initiative proved hugely successful in mobilising the wider population on a national scale. Gandhi did not have an extensive organisation, and while formal support for the Rowlatt Satyagraha was far from uniform across British India, he could rely on the volunteers and networks of the Home Rule League, as well as Arya Samaj and the Khilafat movement.74

  Gandhi wrote to the Government and even met in person with Governor-General Chelmsford to convince him to repeal the Rowlatt Act, but his pleas went unheeded. On 18 March 1919, the Rowlatt Act was passed in the Legislative Council with 35 votes to 20; all Indian members present voted against it. While some Indian representatives had absented themselves from the vote, others resigned completely from the council in protest against the result.75 When later asked about his objections to the Rowlatt Act, Gandhi responded:

  As I read the Rowlatt Committee’s report and came to the end of it, and I saw the legislation that was fore-shadowed, I felt that it was not warranted by the facts that were produced by the committee. As I read the legislation itself, I felt that it was so restrictive of human liberty, that no self-respecting person or no self-respecting nation could allow such legislation to appear on its regular statute book. When I saw the debates in the Legislative Council, I felt that the opposition against it was universal and when I found that agitation or that opposition flouted by the Government, I felt that for me, as a self-respecting individual, as a member of a vast Empire, there was no course left open but to resist that law to the utmost.76

  It was not the nature of the Rowlatt Act itself that provoked Gandhi as much as the manner in which the British had pushed it through the Legislative Council, abandoning all pretence of liberal governance in the process and belying in the most striking fashion the rhetoric of reform and ‘responsible government’. Gandhi’s mobilisation of the Satyagraha movement was as such an act of desperation, albeit a highly idealistic one, since Indians had effectively no other means available to protest the iniquity of what was now described as the ‘Black Act’.77 The failure of the Indian members of the Legislative Council to challenge the Rowlatt Act revealed the impotence of constitutional politics in the face of a determined colonial government. Mass mobilisation thus emerged as the only possible option.78

  The formal impact of the Rowlatt Satyagraha in Punjab was at first glance negligible: before 30 March, no-one in Amritsar had signed the pledge, and there was no formal Satyagraha Sabha, or chapter of the organisation, established until later. Yet Gandhi provided a symbolic framework and a powerful language through which people such as Hans Raj and thousands of others could make sense of their struggle. Punjab had been rocked by protests before, as had been the case in 1907, but the Rowlatt Satyagraha became the impetus for unprecedented mobilisation and, for the first time, Hindus and Muslims, rich and poor, were coming together as part of something bigger. The Rowlatt Act was seen to affect all Indians, irrespective of creed, class or caste, and Gandhi’s simple teachings of civil disobedience and passive resistance, allowed the protests to become a genuine mass movement, prefiguring his emergence as a dominant leader in Indian politics years later.79

  One of the key tools of Gandhi’s civil disobedience was the hartal, which combined the political strike and voluntary closure of shops and schools with a more spiritual notion of fasting and purification for the individual.80 When the Rowlatt Act was passed, Gandhi decided it was time to take the campaign of civil disobedience to its next step and announced a hartal on the second Sunday following.81 Gandhi had had 6 April in mind when he called for the all-India hartal, but, due to confusion over his wording, many people believed it to be 30 March, and at Amritsar, and in a number of other cities, preparations were made to bring his words into action.82 Hans Raj had by this point attached himself to Kitchlew and Satyapal’s fledgling movement, which relied on volunteers to announce meetings, distribute pamphlets, and help with other practical matters. Since Hans Raj cou
ld read and write, and proved eager to help out, he was a useful activist.

  A speech delivered by Satyapal on 29 March ‘made a great impression on me,’ Hans Raj later stated, ‘and on the next day when there was a Hartal, I kept fast . . .’83 The young man and several others associated with Kitchlew and Satyapal were busy on 30 March, driving around the bazaars of Amritsar in a horse-drawn ghari, calling out for people to obey Gandhi’s order and close their shops in observance of the hartal.84 The activists were not in a position to force shop owners to comply, but implied that other people might object if they did not; as with any strike involving hundreds or thousands of people, the line between voluntary commitment, peer pressure or threats was a blurry one. Large parts of Amritsar were eventually shut down as a result of the hartal, and in the evening a large meeting was held in the open space in the heart of the city known as the Jallianwala Bagh.

  Since shops were closed and business suspended throughout the city, the day became a ‘public holiday’, as one local policeman put it, and thousands of people turned up at the Bagh.85 Hans Raj claimed that more than 30,000 people were present, while others put the number even higher.86 These numbers, however, were very loose estimates based on nothing more than a general sense of what a crowd of thousands looks like. It is nevertheless clear that the size of the gathering was significant and much larger than any of the previous meetings that had taken place. Kitchlew himself noted with joy that even women, who would not usually attend such large gatherings, had turned up to watch from the rooftops of the houses that enclosed the Bagh.87 Uniformed police had been told to keep back so as not to provoke any excitement with so many people gathered, although this precaution was hardly necessary. The atmosphere at the meeting was in fact remarkably relaxed: the Sub-Inspector of the CID, Babu Obadullah, had been given a table next to the speaker’s platform, where he was sitting in full sight taking notes of the proceedings.88

  During the course of the afternoon, several speeches were made, and patriotic poems recited, before the enthusiastic crowd, which intermittently broke out in what had by then become the familiar slogans at Amritsar: ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai’ and ‘Hindu-Mussalman ki jai’. It was only with great difficulty that the spectators were induced to quiet down so that the speakers could be heard.89 One poem by Pandit Kotu Mal was notable for being addressed to the higher authority of George V, or ‘King’, as well as a non-denominational ‘God’, or ‘Lord’:

  O King, nothing is hidden from Thee. It was their misfortune that a split took place between the representatives of the King and leaders of India, who unanimously protested against the Bill but the former made it into law. O God! the subjects are faithful and honest and ready to sacrifice their head for the King. O Lord! remove the present unrest from the country and scatter the Rowlatt Act. O Lord! soften the hearts of our rulers and accept our prayers, as our rulers do not accept it. Thou art the Protector of the poor, we humbly beseech Thee.90

  This combination of political analysis, clearly referring to the vote on the Rowlatt Act in the Legislative Council, and divine invocation, revealed that even in the midst of the biggest protests India had so far experienced the British king was still considered a supreme authority to whom loyalty was declared. Following the conventional format for such gatherings, two resolutions were also made: one protesting against the Rowlatt Act and another for the proceedings of the meeting to be forwarded to Gandhi.

  As the chair of the meeting, Kitchlew gave the keynote speech and encouraged the crowd to ignore those who tried to dissuade them from participating in the protests. His speech was carefully recorded by the CID:

  Such men who convey false information to officers that the citizens of Amritsar have nothing to do with politics should know that the present large gathering was consisting of persons of all grades of society. Even the Marwari traders were also present [. . .] It was evident that the people of Amritsar aspired for self-Government and Home Rule.91

  The significance of Hindu–Muslim unity was also emphasised and Kitchlew expressed the hope that the swaraj flag, which represented all Indians regardless of religion, might be flown over their gatherings in the future. The CID report recorded that Kitchlew in his final words told the crowd:

  that it was unnecessary to shed streams of blood in the sacred land, but they should prepare themselves to disobey all orders which might be against their conscience and the commandments of God. It would not matter if they would be sent to jail or interned. They should prepare themselves for the service of the country and always act on the policy of Passive Resistance, even if they were attacked.92

  One of the police officers present ended his report on a note of relief: ‘The meeting came to an end and the crowd took long to disperse. In the evening, a few shops were opened, all passed off very quietly and smoothly, without the slightest hitch or disturbance.’93 One voice, however, was conspicuously absent from the list of speakers, namely that of Satyapal. After the meeting the previous day, as he later described it, ‘I was called by the Inspector of Police and served with an order under the Defence of India Act, prohibiting me from taking part in any public meetings, or writing to the press, and ordering me to report my movements to the Police like a criminal.’94 These orders came directly from O’Dwyer and the Punjab Government at Lahore; Irving had played no part in the decision to silence Satyapal. During his speech on 30 March, Kitchlew deliberately kept quiet about this, so ‘that the people might not get excited’, as he put it.95

  Once the meeting at Jallianwala Bagh on 30 March was over, Kitchlew and his followers, including Hans Raj, convened at the former’s house. Satyapal’s political restraining order was a worrying development, and Kitchlew expected that it was only a matter of time before he too would be stopped: ‘What is going to happen then?’ There was some talk of sending out people to mobilise the villagers in the surrounding areas and relying on personal contacts to spread the Satyagraha movement further afield. Political speeches were not going to make any difference, Kitchlew argued, until the masses ‘were roused and joined in’. Others emphasised the need for Hindus and Muslims to settle their differences and so present a united front against the British. The night ended with Hans Raj and the others taking the Satyagraha oath. Since they did not have actual pledges to sign, this was merely a verbal commitment ‘undertaking to disobey the Rowlatt Act and other laws that Gandhi might decide on’.96

  The British had observed with some fear the unprecedented popular mobilisation against the Rowlatt Act and recognised that their Indian subjects had been stirred by what could only be described as a spirit of burgeoning nationalism. To O’Dwyer and the Punjab Government, the Rowlatt Satyagraha thus represented nothing so much as a revolutionary movement in the making. Any mobilisation of the Indian masses was considered as a potential threat to the colonial state; misleading rumours were one thing, but it was something altogether different that tens of thousands of Indians were gathering to listen to speeches that expounded the iniquities of British rule. O’Dwyer’s own account of these events was highly revealing. The passing of the Rowlatt Act on 18 March, he claimed, ‘was the signal for the opening of Gandhi’s passive resistance’. O’Dwyer continued:

  The ground had meantime been prepared by his manifesto of March 1st, announcing his intention and formulating the pledge of passive resistance, by the menacing speeches of several members in the Legislative Council, threatening the authorities with an agitation of unprecedented violence if the Bill became law, by a series of most inflammatory articles in the Indian Press generally, and by the mobilisation in a campaign against the Act of every political or semi-political association – the Congress and Khilafat Committees, Indian Association, Hindu–Mohammedan Associations – generally headed in the Punjab by extremist journalists, lawyers, and members of the Arya Samaj.97

  This can only be described as a deeply paranoid assessment of the situation, completely misrepresenting the nature and scope of Indian protests – much as the Rowlatt Report
had less than a year before. What was to most Indians experienced as a political awakening, to the British seemed both sinister and threatening. And there was nothing passive about the resistance. As O’Dwyer later described it: ‘Gandhi, having marshalled his forces, began the war against the Act by proclaiming a Hartal or stoppage of all work throughout India on the following Sunday – 30th March.’98 Any critique of the British Government was thus labelled simply as extremist, and any form of organisation or movement was immediately branded a conspiracy.99 The notion of a pledge, as one of the key tenets of the Rowlatt Satyagraha, also sounded too much like a secret oath – the bête noire of any government that ruled through coercion rather than consent. Not only did an oath signify loyalty to a cause other than the British Government, but Gandhi’s pledge explicitly entailed a commitment to disobey the law, which made the Satyagraha movement criminal by definition as far as officials such as O’Dwyer were concerned. At a time when fears of Bolshevism were so prevalent, hartals were also considered simply as general strikes, which in the words of one British official would make it impossible ‘to carry on Government’, and they were as a result deemed to be dangerous and illegal.100