Amritsar 1919 Read online

  None of this was actually true, but that mattered little and for the ‘men on the spot’, it seemed inconceivable that the riots of 10 April could have been anything but the result of a conspiracy. Lieutenant-Colonel Smith, who was fed information by ‘respectable’ Indians, believed that ‘gangs were organized on the night of the 9th and that there was a butcher attached to each gang’.4 ‘My view is that these bands were acting under order,’ Smith continued, and the attack on Miss Sherwood and Easdon in particular struck him as unusual: ‘I do not think the people of Amritsar city would interfere with their missionary ladies unless there was some definite plan behind it.’5 Irving similarly suspected that ‘the extraordinary speed in which the various acts were committed within an hour as evidencing the work of some form of organization’.6 There was indeed a pervasive sense that the true nature of the ‘natives’ had finally been exposed in these acts of violence. E.M. Forster captured some of these sentiments in his description of the fictional Collector in the aftermath of the alleged assault on Miss Quested: ‘When he saw the coolies asleep in the ditches or the shopkeepers rising to salute him on their little platforms, he said to himself: “I know what you’re like at last; you shall pay for this, you shall squeal.”’7 Colonial panic and vulnerability often triggered a violent response as fear was replaced by righteous anger and the need for retribution. While attacks on white women, in particular, caused outrage, the mere fact that the supposedly inviolable bodies of Europeans had been assaulted was infuriating – as Orwell described it in Burmese Days, following the killing of an officer, ‘they were almost mad with rage. For the unforgivable had happened – a white man had been killed. When that happens, a sort of shudder runs through the English of the East [. . .] the murder of a white man is a monstrosity, a sacrilege.’8

  During the early hours of 11 April, the situation at Amritsar was still extremely volatile and further violence seemed more or less inevitable, as one official report described: ‘The British troops who saw the bodies carried away are reported to be “seeing red”. There are now machine guns and aeroplanes with bombs at Amritsar and if fighting is renewed casualties are likely to be very heavy. . .’9 With more military reinforcements arriving throughout the morning hours, Kitchin, who was effectively, if not officially, in charge, was preparing to re-establish British control by force. The previous night, reports had reached him that people would gather for the funerals of those who had been killed during the riots. Uncompromising in his response, Kitchin informed Lahore that ‘we intend to prohibit and break up such processions with military force’.10

  Despite the apparent precarity of the situation, Major MacDonald was reluctant to take any action, for which he would bear full responsibility, without the residents of Amritsar being formally warned.11 The result was that Irving wrote up what became the first of several official announcements addressed to the local population concerning the use of force:

  The troops have orders to restore order in Amritsar and use all force necessary. No gatherings of persons nor processions of any sort will be allowed. All gatherings will be fired on. Respectable persons should keep indoors until order is restored. Dead may be carried out for burial or burning by parties of not more than eight at intervals of not less than 15 minutes by the Gheemandi, Lohgar, Khazana and Chatiwind Gates.

  Miles Irving, D.C.

  11.4.19.12

  The problem now was how to get this message clearly across since relying on the town crier in the aftermath of the riot was no longer possible. There was also an issue of urgency for, as Kitchin put it, ‘there was not sufficient time to make it known to the people of Amritsar’.13 Two of the pleaders who had been helping keep the crowds back the previous day, namely Mahmood and Gholam Yaseen, were summoned by Irving and told to take the order back into the city.14 Since this written announcement was unlikely to be widely disseminated, Kitchin also sent a message to Gerard: ‘I asked the principal of the Khalsa College who was thereabouts to send in his own students to tell the people that we considered that a state of war had broken out and they must settle down.’15 It was still only 7am when Gerard received this, and he immediately dashed off to the train station.16

  By the time Gerard arrived at the makeshift headquarters, a meeting was under way in which Irving, Kitchin and MacDonald and others were discussing their options. Mahmood and Yaseen had just returned from the city, with the news that people refused to comply with the order and were at that very moment gathering by the hundreds for the funeral processions.17 Kitchin was furious with the demeanour of the Indian lawyers: ‘I had expected some penitence after the murders and the lootings of the previous day, but there was no indication of anything of the kind.’18 According to Mahmood, Irving was just as belligerent:

  His attitude was most offensive. He became very angry and was trembling. He shouted at us ‘No more talking we have seen our dead bodies charred. Our temper is changed.’ We expressed our sorrow for the murders. This drove him wild and he shouted out ‘You are sorry now, you ought to have been sorry when you were attending those foolish meetings of yours, and you may be sorry before you leave.’ We simply said that we had never attended or addressed any foolish meetings and withdrew. Col. Smith was present all the time at the station and suggested bombing the city to quiet the mob.19

  The idea of bombing Amritsar appeared to be a particular obsession of Smith’s and, although he was not in a position to make decisions, he was widely known among the people of Amritsar as a hardliner who was ‘always advising the authorities to bombard the town or to give the people another dose of shooting’.20 One of the other Indian lawyers who were present at the meeting, Mohammed Sadiq, recalled the negotiations with the officials:

  The impression I got from the talk I had with them was that as Europeans had been murdered, their blood could not remain unavenged, and if there be the least resistance or disobedience or any breach of the peace, sufficient amount of force would be used, and if necessary, the city would be bombarded. I, at once, protested against such measures. My words to them were that they had no right to adopt such measures, in which innocent women and children and old men staying in the houses would suffer. Colonel Smith [. . .] insisted on resorting to strict measures. Mr Wathen supported me and my companions.21

  Several of the officers insisted that the locals would be fired upon if they ignored the proclamation but Gerard, as he later told Melicent, did his utmost to dissuade them, arguing ‘that it was political madness to do such a thing now without warning. Yesterday when the murdering was in swing would have been a different matter.’22 Gerard eventually managed to convince Major MacDonald to allow the residents of Amritsar to form processions and conduct the funerals without interference. This was not to Kitchin’s liking, but he had himself handed over the authority to MacDonald and, accordingly, could not complain when the officer took a more lenient approach. Irving’s revised order was brief:

  People will be allowed to bury their dead in number about 2000 provided

  (1) Only Sultanwind and Chatiwind Gates used.

  (2) All over by 2pm.

  (3) At 2pm, warning by bugle.

  (4) After 15 minutes fire.

  (5) No lathis.23

  Mahmood, Yaseen and the others were thus sent back with this message while Gerard despatched some of his students and a local maulvi to warn people within the city to disperse by 2pm, by which time ‘aeroplanes were to ascend and if the crowds still persisted bombs were to be dropped’.24

  Meanwhile, at the principal’s house at Khalsa College, Melicent was trying to finish the packing. The luggage that had been sent ahead was reported to be safe although the servants had been bullied by the crowds who had apparently ‘looted the rest of the station’ at Chhekarta. Gerard had sent some of the students to watch over the luggage until the train they hoped to catch later that evening would pass through. ‘Our feelings were intense all that morning,’ Melicent noted and she sought to distract herself with a novel: ‘I read the Secre
t City by Walpole feverishly in between whiles – the more lurid situation about the riots in Petrograd being peculiarly in keeping and somewhat harassing to one’s nerves during those trying hours.’25 There was indeed much in Walpole’s recently published novel about the Russian Revolution that resonated with Melicent’s own situation. One of the central characters describes the claustrophobic sense of being under siege at Petrograd while the violence unfolds all around: ‘I had been indoors all that Monday . . . They all came late in the afternoon and told me all the news . . . The whole town seemed to be in revolt, so they said.’26 Other parts spoke more directly to the political context of the unrest at Amritsar, as when a Russian revolutionary addresses an English character:

  Yes, you English, with your natural hypocrisy, pretend that you are fighting for the freedom of the world. What about Ireland? What about India? What about South Africa? . . . No, you are all alike. Germany, England, Italy, France, and our own wretched Government that has, at last, been destroyed by the brave will of the People. We declare a People’s War!27

  Literature was not merely an innocent pastime, and for Anglo-Indian women like Melicent, who were left on their own much of the time, it could be uplifting and morally edifying, but also deeply unsettling. If Melicent did not explicitly mention the ‘Mutiny’ of 1857, it was nonetheless at the back of her mind and the obvious point of reference when the talk fell on riots or rebellion in India.28 At the very same time that Melicent was trying to distract herself at Amritsar, Rosamond Lawrence was tortured by the sound of drums in the ‘native’ city at Karachi: ‘Suddenly the tom-toming takes on a much quicker, more frenzied note. It starts a dreadful measure in three time, that goes on and on and on, punctuated by bursts of full-throated voices. I think of hounds baying round a stag in some deep Exmoor coombe. I think of that book I had lately read, Indiscreet Letters from Pekin.’29 The novel in question was an evocative account of the siege of the foreign legations at Peking during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 – an event that at the time had drawn strong comparisons with similar occurrences during the ‘Mutiny’.30 When she learned of the riots and deaths at Amritsar on 10 April, Rosamond pondered: ‘What a fearful thing a mob! One remembers Balzac’s saying ‘how terrible is the vengeance of a sheep’. I think how brave English women were, with their children, in the Afghan war, in the Mutiny; but I am afraid . . .’31

  It would not be too much to say that, for those Anglo-Indian women confined to the loneliness of their bungalows, the unrest in Punjab in 1919 was experienced largely through literature – for better or for worse. In the novel Cecilia Kirkham’s Son, written a few years before, a visitor from England, the insufferable Mr Denning, is talking about the history of British rule in India with Helen, an Anglo-Indian memsahib:

  ‘Then its history up to the time when we took it under our rule, on to the Mutiny, and most especially interesting of all, the Mutiny itself.’

  Helen’s eyes dropped to the tablecloth.

  ‘I don’t call the Mutiny – interesting,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t care for history? But if you only –’

  Helen turned upon him suddenly.

  ‘I don’t care,’ her voice was very low, but there was an odd vehemence in it, ‘to read about things that make me sick with terror to think of. You can read all these ghastly horrors and – go back to England. I can’t. I’ve got to live out here for the present at any rate. And,’ with a short little laugh, ‘I’ve got an imagination.’32

  If the fictional Helen never actually expressed what she could imagine, George Orwell had no such qualms and was rather more explicit in describing the worst fears of another fictional memsahib, namely Mrs Lackersteen in Burmese Days: ‘To her mind the words “sedition”, “Nationalism”, “rebellion”, “Home Rule”, conveyed one thing and one only, and that was a picture of herself being raped by a procession of jet-black coolies with rolling white eyeballs. It was a thought that kept her awake at night sometimes.’33

  Such were the uncomfortable thoughts that Melicent was entertaining as she waited at Khalsa College.34 There was still no news from the city and, having packed away her favourite belongings in preparation for the journey, she laid on the sofa, ‘nerves stretched to breaking point’. To calm herself, Melicent had a whisky and soda and, she mused, ‘began to understand how people took to drink’.35 The day passed slowly, and the deadline for the dispersal of the crowd approached:

  As the time drew on and 2 o’clock came nearer tension was intense. At last the hour struck – we heard the planes go up. Would they fire? Had the crowds dispersed? One, two, three minutes passed [. . .] I went onto the drive, breathless to listen. Gerard came up, then the old Maulvi appeared – he had been to the mosques. At the one by the Hall Gate he had had some trouble to get a hearing, but he did so at last, and they listened to him and had gone to their homes. Still the planes hovered round, but no bomb was dropped. Gerard had saved the city and saved the government from endless political difficulties in the future.36

  The funerals had indeed gone off without any incidents and the crowds dispersed well ahead of the deadline. Many of the local leaders and Satyagraha activists had taken part in the processions and the communal unity first displayed during the Ram Navami was once more put on display, as Hans Raj described: ‘When we reached the graveyard the Hindus and Muhammedans said their prayers at one place. The Muhammadans brought wood to burn the Hindus [. . .] the Hindus in turn, dug the graves of the Muhammedans and we, that is, the crowd, were told to go back.’37 Some people noticed that ‘an aeroplane kept hovering over the crowd’, but most seemed unaware of the danger they were in, or the destruction that would have been unleashed, had they failed to comply with Irving’s orders.38 That the British seriously contemplated bombing Amritsar in April 1919 was never publicly acknowledged and, crucially, it was not mentioned in any of the official reports.39 As such, it never became a part of the historical narrative of the Punjab unrest, yet a pithy diary-entry by Thompson, O’Dwyer’s Chief Secretary, reveals just how close it had been: ‘Aeroplanes are here ready to bomb, if need be.’40 Melicent was not exaggerating the significance of her husband’s intervention.

  Inside the city, local leaders and merchants had gathered at Bashir’s house following the funerals. The hartal that had been announced in the morning of 10 April was still in effect and people were unable to purchase the foodstuffs they required, and fruit and vegetables were rotting in the stores. No-one, however, dared to break ranks and be the first open their shop and they accordingly asked for Bashir to call off the hartal. One local official, who was a well-known ally of the British, described the heated discussion that followed:

  Rattu and Bugga were there, and they refused to allow it and assumed the position of leaders and said they should first go to the Deputy Commissioner, and get him to release Kitchlew and Satyapal and promise to arrest no one else. When I said there would be trouble Bugga said ‘Kacha pich hon de’ – let there be a struggle. Eventually they said they would get the shops open for a couple of hours for middle class people, who could not go to langars.41

  At the very moment that aeroplanes were poised to drop bombs on Amritsar, people thus still believed there was room for negotiation with the authorities and that the hartal could be used as leverage to secure the release of their leaders.42 While it was ultimately decided to continue the hartal, exceptions were made to accommodate the needs of the local residents. There was accordingly a distinct social aspect to the continued political mobilisation in the city. Apart from ensuring that food was accessible to the poor as well as the rich, the Satyagraha volunteers also continued to maintain a night-watch and bamboo sticks were purchased specifically for that purpose.43 Yet again, Hans Raj found himself in the midst of these activities:

  Sadiq Hassan said that a Sub-Committee should be formed that volunteers should register their names and patrol the city the whole night. L. Duni Chand supported this and said that most of the volunteers should be
members of the Satyagraha Sabha, so that there may be no disturbance. The Maulvi said who should be responsible if the European soldiers came in the night and fired at the volunteers. I replied that it was the duty of the Satyagrahas that if bullets were fired to receive them on their breasts.44

  In the absence of a functioning police force, the activists and local leaders stepped in and the very same networks of strongmen and gundas who had been mobilised during the municipal elections were now redeployed to keep the streets of Amritsar safe at night. When Irving learned how the local residents had established their own means of maintaining order, the conclusion he drew was both misguided and deeply alarmist: ‘they were organizing themselves, I do not know whether they wanted the watch and ward of the city, but they were busy in making their own arrangements of a semi-police or a semi-military nature. They were setting up as if it were a rival organization.’45 The rather innocuous establishment of a neighbourhood watch was accordingly taken as yet another direct challenge against the authority of the Raj. Although Amritsar had been quiet since the day before, the continuing unrest in the surrounding countryside and elsewhere in the province contributed to the general impression among colonial officials that the city was still in a state of open rebellion.

  At Khalsa College, the time had finally come for Melicent to leave. She and the kids got into a tonga with all their luggage, while Gerard rode alongside on his bicycle. They soon reached Amritsar train station 2 miles away, which had been turned into the rallying point for the British forces: ‘At the station the relief of finding oneself guarded by plenty of troops was immense. British and Gurkhas, fully armed guarded every inch of the place, in a siding stood the armoured train, machine guns ready – overhead droned the two aeroplanes. And the relief after the last four days no-one can imagine.’46 Melicent described in great detail her and her husband’s final hours together while waiting for the train that was to take her and the children to the safety of the hills; Gerard would have to stay behind and could travel with them only as far as Lahore: