Amritsar 1919 Read online

  When Hans Raj and Jai Ram Singh came back from the telegraph office, Bashir told them that he had sent people around to proclaim a hartal and that they should do the same; they were also to announce a mass meeting to be held at Jallianwala Bagh that afternoon.14 The immediate response to the deportation was accordingly to call a hartal – the only means by which the people of Amritsar could express their grievances and protest against the actions of the authorities. Hans Raj was now joined in the ghari by Satyapal’s father and, as they made their way slowly through the city, Jai Ram Singh was sitting on the roof, shouting: ‘Kitchlew and Satya Pal have been arrested. Close your shops, till they have been released and come to the Jallianwala Bagh at 4 o’clock.’15 The news spread fast, and people soon began closing their shops and joining the crowds gathering throughout the city. ‘The whole city,’ an Indian official noted, ‘went into Hartal almost immediately.’16

  As soon as Dr Bashir received the news, he told Ratto and Bugga, the two local leaders who had organised crowds during the municipal election, to gather people at Gol Bagh, just outside Hall Gate. From there they were to go to the Civil Lines, to the house of Irving, and submit a faryad, or petition, for the release of Kitchlew and Satyapal. At the time, the Indian journalist Malaviya described the petition march in terms of Ma Bap or ‘mother–father’ – the traditional supplication entailed by the line ‘You, My Lord, are my mother and father!’17 According to Malaviya: ‘oral petitioning is a very ancient, popular and well known institution of India and anybody with the slightest pretension to Ma Bap solicitude for the masses must be well familiar with its unrestricted prevalence among the people’.18 Irving, in other words, was formally being petitioned as the Ma Bap of Amritsar, which according to common usage required him to respect the legitimacy of the petition.19 The crowd that Ratto and Bugga prepared to take across the railway lines were, furthermore, bareheaded and barefooted, thus invoking the traditional ritual of both mourning and humble supplication.20

  Before they left, Dr Bashir exhorted Ratto and Bugga to be persistent and to tell Irving that people would not work and that they would not move until Kitchlew and Satyapal were released. It was accordingly believed that it was possible to negotiate with the British and to use the hartal as a bargaining tool. Ratto was explicitly told ‘not to move even if threatened with death’.21 This was indeed one of the key tenets of the Satyagraha pledge, or, as Gandhi himself had put it: ‘a satyagrahi fights even unto death’.22 This message had found its way to Amritsar, albeit in garbled form, and just a week earlier a poster was found on the clock-tower next to the Golden Temple, calling on people to be prepared to ‘die and kill’.23 The primacy of non-violence in Gandhi’s teaching had evidently been lost in the transmission – but the power of this spiritual call to arms had not.

  Over the past few months, the people of Amritsar had experienced a political awakening and had become empowered through the mass meetings and hartals organised by Kitchlew and Satyapal. These were the means through which they had come to demonstrate their new-found solidarity and commitment to what may be described as local nationalism – but also to express their grievances and to protest.24 The crowds gathering spontaneously outside Hall Gate for the petition were thus responding to the arrests of Kitchlew and Satyapal the only way they could, namely by continuing the popular politics of the Rowlatt Satyagraha. Local power-brokers, such as Ratto and Bugga, could furthermore activate their neighbourhoods and draw on their own men, who included gundas and wrestlers.25 The very same people, and local networks, who had turned the Ram Naumi processions the previous day into a large-scale spectacle, with thousands of Hindus and Muslims marching through the city, were thus able to quickly and effectively mobilise the local population. O’Dwyer’s strategy had deprived the protesters at Amritsar of their main leaders but had done nothing to hamper their ability to organise.

  The crowds gathered at Gol Bagh were chanting the familiar cries of the Rowlatt Satyagraha, ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai’, but now with the names of the deported leaders added: ‘Dr Kitchlew ki jai’ and ‘Dr Satyapal ki jai’.26 Young boys and students joined the crowd for the diversion, but so too did labourers and onlookers who were just curious. ‘They passed just near my house,’ a local resident later recalled, ‘and I went with them to see what was going on.’27 The man continued: ‘I went with them to see what they were doing because never before had such a mob collected in Amritsar. I was really surprised to see such a big mob and I wanted to see whether they were allowed to interview the Deputy Commissioner.’28 The annual cattle fair was taking place at the time, and there were thus thousands of people already gathered on the open ground between the city walls and the railway lines. For as many who knew of the arrest of their leaders and were gathering specifically to deliver the petition to Irving, there were hundreds who simply drifted along. Growing by the minute, the huge crowd eventually set off from Gol Bagh towards the Civil Lines around noon.

  Mr Jarman, the Municipal Engineer, was cycling into the city to his work at the Town Hall. Coming down Hall Bazaar, he rode past the crowd making its way in the opposite direction. ‘They took no notice of me,’ he later recalled. He stopped briefly at the National Bank and talked to A.J.L. Stewart and G.C. Scott, the manager and accountant. ‘No business was being done in the banks,’ Jarman noted, ‘and there was obvious excitement in the air.’29 Gertrude Lewis, who was headmistress of one of the local girls schools, also passed the large crowd near the Hall Gate, as people were moving in the direction of the bridges. ‘They made way for my tonga and did not interfere with the traffic in any way. I heard cries of “Hindu Mussalman ki jai.”’30 The famous writer Saadat Hasan Manto later described the atmosphere at Amritsar on 10 April 1919:

  The news of Dr Satyapal’s and Dr Kitchlew’s expulsion had spread through the city like wildfire. Every heart was tense with apprehension, fearing that something dreadful was about to happen. Yes, brother, there was a palpable feeling of heightened emotion everywhere. All businesses had come to a standstill and a deathly silence had enveloped the city, the kind that pervades cemeteries. However, the surface calm was not without the resonance of the passion raging beneath it. Following the news of the expulsion orders, people began to assemble in thousands, intending to march to the Deputy Commissioner Bahadur and petition him to rescind the orders seeking the banishment of their beloved leaders.31

  Mr Beckett, the Assistant Commissioner, had taken his polo-mare Mary to the court that morning, and was wearing his white riding breeches and jacket in preparation for any unrest. He later described the events of that morning:

  I might have been working for half an hour or an hour, ready in my riding kit for anything that might happen, with my mare waiting ready saddled outside and only needing the girths to be tightened, when Miles Irving, the Deputy Commissioner came into my Court. There seemed to be trouble in the City, but all the telephone lines had been cut. Would I please go down to the Hall Bridge and take up my place, if the report was true?

  It did not take me long to get on my horse, but there did not seem to be any immediate urgency. I was smoking my pipe and trotting along the road on Mary, who had a good fast trot. I was about half a mile away from the Hall Bridge when I heard a sound that I had never heard before and which I am not particularly anxious to hear again. It was for all the world like breakers booming along a stormy shore. I quickly clapped my pipe into my pocket and dug my heels into Mary to gallop the rest of the way as fast as I could.32

  In the written orders issued early that morning, Irving stated that ‘A situation has arisen in which there is reason to believe that a mob from the city will attempt to approach the District Court with the intention of overawing by force or show of criminal force the constituted authorities. And I consider that action to prevent this is necessary to prevent a riot.’ The wording of Irving’s orders referred to section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code, dating back to 1860, which prohibited the gathering of more than five people considered to be threateni
ng public order, and authorised their dispersal as an ‘unlawful assembly’.33 Irving thus directed that no groups or individuals ‘whose demeanour appears subversive of the public tranquillity, shall cross any of the railway bridges and crossings leading from the City to Civil Lines or Cantonments until further orders.’34 At the Hall Bridge, the crowd had thus found its progress blocked by a mounted picket consisting of two British and two Indian troopers of the Ammunition Column, armed only with two lances, a carbine and a pistol. The plan had been to avoid a violent confrontation like the one that had taken place at Delhi on 30 March, if at all possible, as Irving explained: ‘The only thing infantry can do is to fire whereas the ordinary crowd can be very easily turned back by heavy ammunition column horses.’35 Due to the secrecy of the deportation, however, no official announcement had been made inside the city that groups would not be allowed to cross the bridges, and so it fell to the hapless troopers to face the crowd.36

  People at the front refused to turn back and instead sat down, and many were calling out and demonstratively beating their chest – the public display of mourning usually associated with Shia processions during the festival of Muharram.37 As Beckett arrived at the bridge, people got up again and began approaching the entrance to the bridge. Since the military picket was formally deployed in support of civil authority, they could only act on his orders, and Beckett told them to hold the crowd back ‘but on no account to fire on them’.38 Riding out in front of the picket, the Assistant Commissioner called on people to move back, though with little effect:

  I could not make myself heard but the crowd stretched as far as I could see and they were continually increasing. There were three men who were in the front of the crowd running about. I could not make out why. The crowd were all shouting and behaving in a most fanatical manner, making faces, waving their hands. The first thing that I did was to go with the four men of the picket to the crowd and try and make myself heard, but I found that was impossible so I shouted out to them to go back and relied on my gestures to show that they were not to come forward.39

  An Indian eyewitness, who was standing on the footbridge a few hundred yards away, described the chaos: ‘The horses were getting very restless and the man in white was telling people to get back. But no one listened to him.’40 At the head of the crowd, Ratto was following Dr Bashir’s directions and refused to budge, as he later described: ‘There at the bridge the object of the people was not to use any force or violence. Its object was to make a request to Deputy Commissioner to try for the release of Kitchlew and Satyapal; and the show was made to make impression on Deputy Commissioner.’41 This was an agitated crowd, empowered by its sheer size, and Beckett described how people were hitting and pushing the frantic horses, while one boy waved a handkerchief to excite the animals.42 People felt wronged by the authorities and convinced their cause was a righteous one. To Beckett, the agitated protesters, beating their chests, clapping and shouting as they were pushing their way across the bridge, were, however, simply a ‘fanatical’ and ‘howling’ mob.43

  Beckett called to the troopers, reminding them of what was at stake: ‘We have got to keep this crowd from crossing this bridge and you have got to do all in your power to prevent them from doing so.’44 As people pushed from behind, however, the crowd would move forward only for the people at the front to be stopped by the frantic horses and arrest the movement momentarily. With this fluctuating movement, the crowd kept pushing on by sheer force of numbers, slowly driving Beckett and the picket back across the bridge. The horses were frantic, Beckett recalled, and the situation was getting critical:

  I do not know how long all this went on. I thought at the time it was for twenty minutes, but someone who was watching from the Ram Bagh has told me it was only five minutes and he is probably right, for one loses all sense of time on these occasions and I was wondering all through it how long it would be before we were relieved. Gradually we were forced back, losing valuable and irrecoverable ground every time there was a bolt in the rear [by the horses of the troopers] and losing it more rapidly as we were driven back to the descent and the crowd gained more confidence.45

  As Beckett and the men finally bolted, the cheering crowd followed them down the sloping road towards the footbridge and the intersection near Madan’s shop. At the foot of the bridge, there happened to be piles of bricks and stones from ongoing roadwork, and the crowd streaming across the railway tracks, and at the heels of the riders, now began to pelt the fleeing picket with the ready-made missiles. ‘The bricks came in a steady hail,’ Beckett noted, ‘luckily not very well aimed.’46 One of the British troopers reined in his panicking horse near the footbridge and fired his rifle blindly at the pursuing crowd before finally taking off towards the Civil Lines. Mian Husain Shah, a 35-year-old ‘raffoogar’ or darner, had followed the crowd across the bridge and had just turned down the descent when he heard shots fired: ‘One man near me, to my right, was shot on his side, and I had my right hand shot. I saw one more man falling down. Both died on the spot.’47 Another Indian eyewitness described the moment when the picket retreated: ‘I followed slowly, but some people rushed ahead down the road leading to the station. By the time I had crossed the bridge, I saw a mounted officer near the foot bridge fire towards the approaching mob. One or more shots were fired, and 3 men fell down.’48 The witness then went on the roof of a nearby house, from where he saw ‘people carrying the 3 bodies going back over the bridge towards the city’.49 Meanwhile, the crowd continued throwing stones as Beckett and the picket made a headlong retreat up Court Road, where they found Irving, who had just arrived at the intersection of Queen’s Road.

  Irving watched in horror as his planned defence of the Civil Lines came apart before his eyes: ‘They were totally unable to hold back the crowd. They were being driven back. I endeavoured to rally them and get them to charge. But the horses would not charge.’50 While Beckett was just about able to rein in his trusted polo-mare, the untrained heavy horses of the Ammunition Column were completely uncontrollable under the incessant barrage of stones. Even as Irving sought to extract the picket in an orderly fashion, without turning their backs to the crowd, desperation took hold among the harried troopers. A large group of boys and men had run ahead of the main crowd and were keeping up the shower of stones at close range.51

  At the railway station, 400 yards west of the carriage bridge, Captain J.W. Massey had seen the entire thing unravel: ‘I saw a roaring crowd surging out of the city and coming out of Aitchinson Park [Gol Bagh] and from that direction. I saw the picket being driven back. Mr Beckett was there trying to wave the crowd back. They were being rushed over the bridge.’52 In spite of all their precautions, the British thus found themselves having to fend off what a later official account described simply as ‘a determined attempt to rush the Civil Lines’.53 Having been informed earlier that the crowd would make for either Irving’s house or the court house, Massey panicked. ‘I found that I was being cut off,’ he later claimed, and ‘seeing the attitude of the crowd, I wanted to bring my infantry into position.’54 Massey accordingly decided to fall back to a defensive position and redeploy the British troops kept in reserve along the Mall. That way, if the crowd got through and broke over the open ground of the golf course, between Court Road and Ram Bagh, he would be able to fight them off.55 Before dashing off, Massey ordered the troops of the 54th Sikh Frontier Force to guard the station, and to send a detachment across the railway lines to protect the telegraph office on the city side near the footbridge. The direct route between the station and Ram Bagh, along Cooper’s Road, was now blocked by the crowds coming across the bridge, and instead Massey rode at full speed along Queen’s Road. As he turned left up Court Road, he bounded right past Irving, Beckett and the beleaguered picket. Seeing the military commander riding at full speed into the Civil Lines, and away from the muddle, the troopers assumed that orders to retreat had been given and simply followed suit.

  At this point, a Lieutenant Dickie arrived from
the Ram Bagh, with a hastily gathered mounted reserve consisting of just two British and two Indian troopers from the Ammunition Column.56 Irving promptly left Beckett in charge of the situation and bolted after Massey up the Court Road. The Deputy Commissioner later claimed that this was a strategic decision, rather than a panicked flight: ‘I thought the best course was to go after him and explain the situation and ask him to take such action as might be necessary.’57 And so it was left to Lieutenant Dickie and his four men to hold the line. Seeing the crowd, Dickie pleaded with Beckett to allow them to open fire: ‘Now you see if you will not allow us to shoot them, you will be held responsible.’58 Beckett, however, refused to give his permission and instead galloped off to the Ram Bagh for further reinforcements, leaving Dickie and the mounted reserve to fend for themselves.59 Faced by a large stone-throwing crowd, and without the means to defend themselves, they eventually took to their heels as well. Apart from the train station, the British had in other words abandoned a major part of the Civil Lines in a bout of panic and confusion. This established a dangerous precedent in terms of putting the authorities on the back foot right from the outset of the tumultuous events of 10 April.

  Meanwhile, Ratto and the other leaders had actually abandoned the attempt to reach Irving’s bungalow, and instead helped carry the men who had been shot back across the bridge.60 While the formal petition march had thus descended into chaos after the firing, people were not frightened off by the deadly outcome of this first test of strength. On the contrary: the retreat of the picket, and abandonment of the two bridges, allowed people from the city to spill over the railway lines by the hundreds. The crowd had literally pushed its way across the bridge and the road to the Civil Lines now lay open to them, while they could reach the railway station on the left, or the Ram Bagh on the right, in a matter of minutes. But without leadership, the momentum of the crowd fizzled out. Apart from the few dozen boys and men who pursued the fleeing pickets up to the intersection of Court Road and Queen’s Road and kept throwing stones, most of the crowd that crossed the railway lines did not advance much further.61 Several thousand people were thus gathering in the area on the tracks between the two bridges and in the area around Madan’s shop.62 Every minute more were coming over from the city side.