Amritsar 1919 Read online

  We got some tea with great difficulty – not a soul was on the platform except the D.C. and Commissioner and these soldiers – everything was hushed and expectant. I couldn’t help a sickening feeling at the thought of leaving Gerard and the journey before us, but I also felt the journey must be got through at all costs. The train was nearly four hours late, but she came in at last. [. . .] At Chheharta there was a seething mob, but our good students put our luggage in and thanks to them we have lost nothing.47

  The sun had gone down long ago, and the train continued into the night. ‘It stopped three times before Lahore,’ Melicent noted, ‘and at every station a dense mob of angry peasants pressed against the windows staring at us, we in the light, they in darkness with our lights shining on their faces. The only thing was not to think, we were absolutely defenceless, and every time the train started again we breathed a sigh of relief.’48 Finally they reached Lahore, which was crowded with soldiers, much like Amritsar, and offered ‘a grim spectacle’, as Melicent recounted:

  Pickets of Sikhs up and down the platform, talk of strikes all down the line, processions, rioting, meetings in Lahore, grave looking soldiers eating hurried meals in the refreshment room, ourselves the only civilians. Gerard took me in for a last meal. He was dressed in khaki with his collar open and like every other man looked as though he had neither sleep or rest for days, like all these men he wore the tense look, the look of constant expectation – of what? Of what no-one could tell. He said ‘We may never meet again – things are as bad as they have even been in our history – the whole country is ablaze – We don’t yet know what we are in for.’ And with almost these words, and very much these feelings, we parted. He standing there on that hot platform with its lurid half-light in which soldiers stood and sat in knots, they showed all that is best in our race and so we passed out of the station, only one thing certain, that we were all in greater danger at that moment than ever in our lives, or that I hope we may ever be again.49

  Just a few hours before Melicent and the children left, a car unexpectedly arrived at the train station at Amritsar, carrying Brigadier-General R.E.H. Dyer, commanding officer of the 45th Brigade headquartered at Jullundur. Dyer was in his mid-fifties and one of the officers who served with him described him as ‘a short, thick-set man of more than average ability as a soldier and with a great knowledge of, and sympathy for, the Indian. He was extremely conscientious and rather religious.’50 Born in India, Dyer was the quintessential colonial soldier and had served all over the Empire, including Ireland, Burma, the North-West Frontier and, during the First World War, in Persia and Baluchistan. His arrival at Amritsar on the evening of 11 April was in many ways the culmination of the gradual escalation of the British response to the unrest.

  Following the meeting at the train station that morning, Lieutenant-Colonel Smith had gone back to the hospital, where he told his Indian staff that the military was on its way to Amritsar and that the city was about to be bombed. Assistant Surgeon Bal Mukund described the colonel’s threats: ‘He drew diagrams to show us how the city would be stilled, and how the whole city would be razed to the ground in half an hour. I said that I lived in the city, and what was to become of me, if there was bombardment. He replied that I had better leave the city and live in the hospital, if I wanted to save myself.’51 This was nothing more than bluster on part of the bellicose surgeon, but Kitchin too had come away from the meeting deeply disappointed by MacDonald’s conciliatory tone. The situation, Kitchin insisted, was still extremely dangerous and it irked him that they had to negotiate with the locals:

  Their attitude was defiant and the situation continued to be of a purely military one. Reports of outrages all round Amritsar continued to come in, and it was perfectly clear that unless peace and order were established in Amritsar, the trouble would spread indefinitely. In fact a state of war already existed. Constant rumours were coming in of the mutiny of troops, and while we had definite news that there was trouble in Lahore, we also heard rumours that the troops in Lahore had mutinied, and that Lahore Fort had been taken.52

  When Kitchin returned to Lahore that afternoon, this was the message he relayed to O’Dwyer. Crucially, he also advised the divisional commander at Lahore, Major-General William Beynon, to replace MacDonald. Lieutenant-Colonel H. Morgan of 1/124th Baluchis, who was also MacDonald’s commanding officer, later recalled what happened next:

  [MacDonald] had been less than forty-eight hours in Amritsar when I was summoned to the Divisional office. I was shown a letter from Kitchin, the commissioner, to General Beynon, saying ‘Major MacDonald has done nothing to quell the rebellion. Please send an officer who is not afraid to act.’ General Beynon decided that I was the officer. I was ordered to proceed as soon as possible to Amritsar . . . ‘Amritsar is in the hands of the rebels. It’s your job to get it back.’53

  Morgan immediately left for Amritsar, but when he arrived that evening he found that General Dyer had already arrived from Jullundur and had assumed command. While Morgan stayed on in an advisory capacity, the insufficiently aggressive MacDonald was sent back to Lahore.

  Remarkably, Dyer was never ordered to go to Amritsar but went on his own initiative. Having personally seen the unrest in Delhi on 30 March, he was unnerved by the news of the riots at Amritsar and despatched more reinforcements than required on 10 April, since he perceived the situation to be ‘very dangerous’.54 Once the news of Gandhi’s arrest had reached Punjab, riots had broken out in a number of places, and at Lahore the military and police opened fire and killed several protesters. Telegraph wires had been cut and communication between Amritsar, Lahore and Jullundur was as a result intermittent, which only added to the general confusion. While Jullundur itself was only some 50 miles from Amritsar, Dyer’s assessment of the situation was accordingly based on the panicky telegrams and fragmented phone conversations that were whirring across Punjab at the time.55 Before he sent off Major F.A.S. Clarke with 300 men on the evening of 10 April, Dyer had told him to fight his way through if necessary: ‘You must reach Amritsar at all costs as soon as possible – you may consider it war.’56 When Clarke returned the following day, having left the troops in Amritsar, his report to Dyer was anything but reassuring and he described ‘an unsatisfactory situation which the civil authorities have given up attempting to control’.57

  Since Jullundur remained quiet, Dyer, in his own words, ‘came to the conclusion that the situation at Amritsar demanded my presence there’.58 He was later to claim that he received orders to proceed to Amritsar, but that was simply not the case and Beynon had very explicitly ordered Morgan to take over command that evening.59 During an emergency such as this, however, Dyer’s decision was allowed to slide. Before he left Jullundur, Dyer took his son Ivon aside, who was also serving in a regiment there, and told him that ‘Mussulman and Hindus had united. I have been expecting this, there is a big show coming.’60 By the time that Dyer arrived unannounced at Amritsar on the evening of 11 April, he was prepared for the worst.

  General Dyer immediately assumed charge from MacDonald and, along with his trusted Brigade-Major, Captain F.C.C. Briggs, held a conference in a railway carriage, which served as a makeshift headquarters. ‘On my arrival at Amritsar,’ Dyer later recalled, ‘I was confronted with a crisis of the gravest kind.’61 The situation as described by Irving was as serious as the General had feared:

  I found a clear conviction upon the part of the local officials and abundant signs that a determined and organized movement was in progress to submerge and destroy all the Europeans on the spot and in their district and to carry the movement throughout the Punjab, and that the mob in the city and the excitable population of the villages were being organised for this purpose.62

  According to Dyer, Irving told him that ‘he could not deal with the situation any longer, that it was beyond all civil control, and that I could take matters in hand’.63 Before Kitchin had returned to Lahore earlier that afternoon, he had left MacDonald and the military in ch
arge of Amritsar. When Dyer turned up and took over from MacDonald, due to seniority, Irving was thus bound to formally hand over to Dyer, and this was done by simply adding a line to the order he had issued that very morning: ‘Handed over to the G.O.C. 45th Brigade, and signed by the Deputy Commissioner midnight 11th–12th April 1919.’64 This was as far as any formal transition of power between the civil and military authorities at Amritsar ever went.65

  It was by this stage quite evident that the military was no longer acting merely in support of civil authority, for which there were strict rules of engagement, as outlined in the Manual of Military Law.66 It was this reliance on civil authority that Kitchin had deliberately sought to dispense with when he put MacDonald in charge on 10 April. This was more than a technicality, however, since Military Law required the military to issue formal warnings before opening fire on rioters, as well as an adherence to the doctrine of ‘minimum force’ – the use of the least amount of force required when involved in the suppression of riots. Dyer, on the other hand, appeared to consider the circumstances as de facto martial law: ‘I was Commanding Officer of the District and therefore,’ he argued, ‘if the civil law ceases to operate, it became my duty to take matters in hand, and civil law had ceased to operate.’67 Martial law was defined by the ‘negation of all law’ and, by definition, there were no guidelines, or limitations, for military action under martial law. ‘The law was handed over to me,’ as Dyer put it, and the only accountability to which he would be subjected was that he, as the commanding officer, would act bona fide, in good faith.68 The problem was that martial law had not been declared and civil law had not in fact ceased to function. Irving insisted that he continued to carry out the duties of the civil administration: ‘I should regard myself as the adviser of the Military commander, but I was, of course, carrying out a good number of duties of which he had no cognisance . . . but I could do nothing against his orders and could not do very much without them.’69

  This confusion was all the result of Kitchin’s improvised abdication of authority the previous night. While this unauthorised measure may only have been intended as a contingent strategy, to ensure the military regained control over Amritsar quickly, it remained in place during the subsequent turmoil. Kitchin had effectively invoked a state of exception for which there was no legal precedent, and, while civil authority never ceased to function, the British response to the unrest was turned into a purely military operation, unfettered by legal restraints which might inhibit the use of force. ‘We were threatened with the greatest calamity since the Mutiny,’ Irving argued. ‘Frankly, I did not at the time get out my law books and look at the precedents of the High Court.’70 At Lahore, O’Dwyer was also not very concerned about the legality of these measures, and he never informed the Government that the military had been put in control at Amritsar: ‘I take it that it was necessary in the emergency; it was an act taken for the benefit of the public. That is the only way I can explain it. I am not a legal authority on constitutional law. Anything that is not expressly prohibited may be taken as allowed.’71 By default, rather than by design, General Dyer was thus given completely free rein at Amritsar and effectively operated beyond the law. ‘I thought I was fairly just in any action that I took,’ he was later to claim, ‘and I thought I was right.’72 This was the very definition of the Punjab tradition and a potent apotheosis of the colonial state of exception.

  CHAPTER 7

  A STATE OF REBELLION

  12 APRIL

  In the early hours of 12 April, Dyer ventured into the city with a force of fifty British troops. They made their way through the Hall Gate and straight to the Town Hall, through the dark and empty streets and past the blackened ruins of the National Bank, which were still smouldering.1 Dyer noted simply that ‘everything was quiet’.2 The kotwali was still occupied by the police and Dyer brought Chief Inspector Ashraf Khan back with him to the train station in order to get further information about the unrest in Amritsar. Talking to Ashraf Khan, Dyer became convinced that the situation remained critical:

  Telegraphic and telephonic communications had been cut and trains could no longer proceed in safety in various directions from Amritsar. The inhabitants of the surrounding villages who had been told that the British ‘Raj’ was at an end, were coming into Amritsar in increasing numbers with the object of swelling the ranks of the mob. A Danda Fauj [Bludgeon Army] was to be formed so numerous that with ‘slaps alone’, it was said, they could drive the British out of the country.3

  The problem was that Ashraf Khan had up till that point not left the kotwali and the only information he was in possession of was little more than bazaar rumours gathered by his policemen. It was nevertheless sufficient for Dyer to move his headquarters, along with the military force at his disposal, to Ram Bagh park, which was both more spacious and further away from the city. Dyer also reorganised his force and reduced the size of the pickets posted throughout the Civil Lines and along the railway tracks. ‘I wanted a larger striking force in case of necessity,’ the General stated, in a clear move towards a more assertive strategy.4

  Dyer was to make use of that strike force much sooner than expected. Around 10am, the aeroplane deployed on reconnaissance reported that thousands of people were gathered near the Sultanwind Gate. With a hastily assembled column of 125 British troops, 310 Indian troops, and two armoured cars, Dyer, along with Irving and Massey, rushed across the railway tracks and skirted southwards along the city wall.5 At the Sultanwind Gate, they encountered a large crowd of people returning from the funerals of the last victims of 10 April and slowly making their way back into the city. The troops were deployed, and the crowd was ordered to disperse. This was Dyer’s first encounter with the residents of Amritsar, and it did not leave a good impression: ‘They were shouting the cry of Hindu–Musalman ki jai. I asked them to go away, but they would not move off, and a certain number of people spat on the ground.’6 This was a tense moment and there was a momentary stand-off as some of men in the crowd were arrested. Irving also got out and warned people to leave, which they eventually did, ‘but very reluctantly’, he claimed.7

  Once the last of the crowd had dispersed, the column moved on through the gate. As Dyer and his troops entered the city, they were met by a strange sight: heaps of flowers had been scattered before the funeral processions and the streets turned into what one eyewitness described as a ‘sea of rose leaves’.8 Lieutenant McCallum of the Gurkhas was among the troops making their way to the kotwali, marching softly on a bed of flowers. ‘As we went through the narrow streets,’ he noted, ‘angry faces looked down on us from the roof tops.’9

  Once they reached the kotwali, police search-parties were despatched to make arrests in the city accompanied by strong military escorts for protection.10 One of Dyer’s first actions had been to request that Ashraf Khan provide a list of the ringleaders responsible for the unrest – the assumption being that the riots, murders and arson of 10 April had been both organised and directed. This put Ashraf Khan, and by extension also Plomer and the entire police force, in a predicament, since their surveillance during the preceding days and weeks had been singularly inept. At the same time, however, Ashraf Khan had to produce names of nationalist agitators, real or not, which meant that he ultimately decided on whom the responsibility for the violence was pinned. The only names initially provided included those of Bugga and Ratto, who had been seen with the crowds during the riots on 10 April, but also other activists known to be involved in the anti-Rowlatt protests and Satyagraha movement.

  Accompanied by British troops, the police thus carried out house-to-house searches in the hunt for the alleged ringleaders and caused an outcry when they entered the women’s quarters, which were traditionally kept private from strangers. The Indian journalist Malaviya imaginatively described the scene at Bugga’s house:

  A small force raided his house to arrest him. He was not in but his wife was lying in her room upstairs. She was astonished and shocked to find enter her
zenana without any announcement a couple of Tommies with ‘fixed bayonets’. Before she could find tongue to call for an explanation, the licensed intruders placed the point of the bayonet very near her breast and in their chivalry commanded her to give them the whereabouts of her husband.11

  Bugga himself was arrested shortly afterwards when he was spotted by police informers, as was Dina Nath, one of the other Satyagraha leaders. It was evident that the police were simply targeting people who had been seen at the mass-meetings or during the hartals, but also others who had done nothing more than take part in the preparations for the Ram Navami celebrations three days earlier. Dyer, however, was not particularly concerned with the legal status of either the arrests or the subsequent treatment of the prisoners. ‘There were no warrants as far as I know,’ Dyer simply noted. ‘We could arrest those people under martial law.’12 Martial law had not in fact been declared but the General was only too happy to leave the details to the police who, he claimed, ‘knew their job, they would arrest them and have them tried in the ordinary way’.13 The administrative confusion thus enabled both military and civil authority to be deployed simultaneously, and in contradictory ways, while the legal accountability of either was at the same time essentially suspended. After the arrests, Lieutenant McCallum was posted at the kotwali to guard the prisoners with a picket of Gurkhas, while the rest of the troops were to return to the Ram Bagh. Before Dyer left, McCallum was called over: ‘I was marched up to General Dyer who asked me my orders. I replied, it is possible an attempt will be made by the mob to release prisoners. If this happens I am to open fire. “Yes” said Dyer, “and just you – well, see that you do.”’14 Dyer was indeed prepared to use force, and few realised how close it came to a violent confrontation earlier that day. The General later described the incident: