Amritsar 1919 Read online

  1. It is hereby proclaimed to all whom it may concern that no person residing in the city is permitted or allowed to leave the city in his own private or hired conveyance or on foot, without a pass from one of the following officers:

  The Deputy Commissioner

  The Superintendent of Police, Mr. Rehill

  The Deputy Superintendent of Police, Mr. Plomer

  The Assistant Commissioner, Mr. Beckett

  Mr. Connor, Magistrate

  Mr. Seymour, Magistrate

  Agha Mohammad Hussain, Magistrate

  The Police Officer in charge of the City Kotwali

  2. No person residing in the Amritsar City is permitted to leave his house after 8pm. Any persons found in the streets after 8pm are liable to be shot.

  3. No procession of any kind is permitted to parade the streets in the city or any part of the city or outside of it at any time. Any such processions or any gathering of 4 men will be looked upon and treated as an unlawful assembly and dispersed by force of arms, if necessary.12

  The key message in both proclamations thus concerned the restriction of movement imposed on the population of Amritsar – either beyond the city walls or outside their homes at night. This was, in other words an attempt at containing the unrest and preventing the agitators that Irving and Dyer believed were at the root of the unrest from spreading the sedition to the countryside. Both proclamations also warned that gatherings were prohibited and would be dispersed by force, though there was nothing about the long list of officials that indicated civil authority had ceased to exist at Amritsar. The proclamations were, in other words, the inevitable products of a situation in which military and civil authority had become completely enmeshed.13

  The procession carried on for more than three hours, in temperatures rising above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and the column made a total of nineteen stops at the main gates, thoroughfares and intersections of Amritsar. The route taken, however, left out the entire centre and eastern part of the city, and the column never went anywhere near either the Golden Temple or Jallianwala Bagh. Dyer later pleaded ignorance of the layout of the city: ‘I confess I do not know how far we had penetrated into the city. I do not know the city very well.’14 As a result, the General admitted, ‘There may have been a good many who had not heard the Proclamation.’15 For Dyer, however, the key purpose of the days’ procession was not simply to make a public proclamation but to put on a deterrent display of force. ‘I need scarcely say,’ as he put it, ‘that the mere procession of a body of troops round the city accompanied by the General himself and the Deputy Commissioner would be a demonstration of unusual significance and attracting general attention.’16 In an Indian city, Dyer insisted, such news would spread rapidly and, as far as he was concerned, the message was clear and unequivocal and the residents of Amritsar had been properly warned.17

  Sunday, 13 April 1919, was the day of the Baisakhi festival, which marked the anniversary of the creation of the Khalsa, or Sikh community. Coinciding with the cattle and horse fair, this was the biggest mela, or festival, in the province and every year attracted thousands of visitors and pilgrims.18 This was usually a day of celebration, but this year was different. Because of Kitchin’s ban on third-class train tickets, aimed at stopping the influx of ‘turbulent’ villagers, there were fewer people this year than usual.19 Thousands still made it to the city from the surrounding areas of Ajnala and Tarn Taran, however, and some even came from as far afield as Sialkot, Peshawar, and Rawalpindi.20 While the cattle and horse fair was still busy, all shops remained closed throughout the city.

  On the day of Baisakhi, the brusque interruption of Dyer’s column marching through the city was bound to be met by the ‘sullen and hostile’ looks that the British officers all noticed.21 There were also several random arrests made on the streets as the troops passed by. When the procession stopped in Hall Bazaar, for instance, a local liquor merchant, Sardar Atmasingh, approached Ashraf Khan to enquire about selling his wares outside the city walls:

  While I was speaking to the Inspector, Mr. Plomer came up and ordered me, ‘Come here, Abkari-wala, the General wants to see you.’ I was taken to the General who was sitting in a car with the Deputy Commissioner. I was at that time in my night dress and had just come out from my house which was quite close by, and was looking for my youngest child who was missing from the house. I was taken to the General in this garb; and when I wanted to explain to him the matter, I was ordered by the General to be shut up and was given in the custody of the British soldiers. I was then made to walk by force in the procession. They tied a cloth round one of my arms and dragged me along with them.22

  The aggressive attitude of the British would have been bewildering to the majority of the people of Amritsar, who did not think of themselves as having done anything unlawful. While the proclamations were intended to reassert the ban on meetings and threat of shooting made in Irving’s order of 11 April, few people actually knew about it since it had only been disseminated by word of mouth. The proclamations solemnly made at the head of the column were accordingly likely to be met with little more than confusion. In the crowds that reluctantly gathered around the Naib Tahsildar at the beat of the drum, it would furthermore have been virtually impossible to discern between the two different proclamations, the content of which overlapped, but which were worded slightly differently.23 The proclamations had been written in English, then translated into Urdu by Irving, before being read out and then extempor-aneously rephrased in Punjabi by the Naib Tahsildar on the spot.24 There was in other words every possibility for the details of the ban to get lost in the translation. Regardless of the number of people who actually heard the proclamations, it was accordingly far from certain that they were understood as General Dyer had intended. Girdhari Lal, the local businessman who had only just arrived in the city, described how he was visiting a friend near the Golden Temple around noon on 13 April: ‘Lala Daya Ram Suri came there and informed us, that there was a proclamation near the Kotwali that no one should attend any meeting and that the city was under Martial law from that date. Mr. Daya Ram said that the people ran away when they saw the troops and that very few persons heard what the proclamation was.’25 The reference to ‘Military Law’ in the first proclamation thus appears to have been generally misunderstood as a declaration of ‘martial law’, even by the Indian police officers in the procession.26 What that entailed, however, was not self-evident and there were many people who for one reason or another never heard the proclamation.

  While he was making the proclamations, at the head of the procession, the Naib Tahsildar overheard people in the crowd talking about holding a meeting at Jallianwala Bagh anyway. Obadullah, the Sub-inspector of Police, warned them that ‘if they held any meeting at that Bagh they would be fired on’, but their response was defiant, according to the Naib Tahsildar: ‘We will hold a meeting; let us be fired on.’27 There was accordingly an air of bravado and defiance in the way that people on the streets, many of them boys and young men, responded to Dyer’s proclamation. In many places, the Naib Tahsildar and others, including the General himself, noted that people were jeering at the proclamation.28 Following the riots of 10 April, the British had effectively ceded control of the city to its residents and, despite the arrests that had been made, the reach of the Raj inside Amritsar was limited to the small isolated force that was occupying the kotwali. ‘Hindu–Musalman ki hakumat’, or Hindu–Muslim rule, thus seemed like a reality – not because the city was in the throes of a rebellion, but because Dyer and Irving perceived their position to be more vulnerable than it actually was.29 The incident at Sultanwind Gate the previous day, furthermore, gave the impression that, for all the bluster, the authorities could still be expected to act with restraint.

  At the very head of the column, the Naib Tahsildar noticed that the proclamation failed to make much of an impression.30 Although Dyer by his own admission did not pay much attention to the proceedings, he too was becoming aware that people in th
e streets of Amritsar appeared to be anything but intimidated: ‘I could see that they were laughing and that they were not behaving very well evidently. I was told that they were saying “this is all bluff, he won’t fire,” “not to be afraid” and words to that effect.’31 By this point, however, it was well past noon. Dyer did not want to expose the troops any longer to the relentless sun, and so decided to call an end the procession and return to the Ram Bagh.32 On the way back, Dyer learned that a meeting had been called by the local activists that very afternoon. His attempt at warning the local population was thus, as Dyer put it, ‘answered by an immediate challenge’.33 This was, of course, not actually true, since the meeting at Jallianwala Bagh had been planned the previous day and not in response to Dyer’s proclamation. Yet to Dyer this appeared as a direct provocation, which made a mockery of his attempt to impress the population and reassert the authority of the Raj. ‘I gradually learnt on my return to the civil lines,’ the General noted, ‘that a counter-proclamation had been issued behind me, that the rumour had been set going that my action was mere pretence, and that I dared not fire.’34 Intended as a show of force to overawe the people of Amritsar, the proclamation and Dyer’s warning were apparently being ridiculed.

  The announcement of the meeting at Jallianwala Bagh on 13 April was not in fact the coordinated effort to challenge the ban on meetings that Dyer imagined it to be. One eyewitness described the announcement made the previous night:

  At the meeting on the 12th, Hans Raj announced that a meeting would be held on the 13th at the Jallianwala Bagh and that Lala Kanhyalal would preside over that meeting. He also announced that this would be proclaimed by beat of drum, so that the people who were not present at that meeting might be informed and he also requested those present at that meeting to inform their friends about it.35

  Earlier that morning, a langar, or free kitchen, had been arranged in one of the bazaars to alleviate the shortage of food caused by the continuing hartal. A 12-year-old boy, Brij Lal, was told to get a tin can to use as a drum and proclaim throughout the city that the langar was taking place and that both Hindus and Muslims were free to attend.36 Brij Lal did this, with a group of boys trailing along, and on the way he met a man making another proclamation to the effect that if Hindus and Muslims remained united, the Government would be powerless. Brij Lal was told to make this announcement as well and, a bit later, Hukam Chand, who was a friend of Hans Raj, got the boy to announce the meeting at the Jallianwala Bagh that evening. ‘I did so as well,’ Brij Lal simply said.37 At the same time, there was a rumour circulating that the police were catching stray cows and slaughtering them – a story with obvious echoes of the contentious issue of cow-slaughter, which for more than half a century had been at the root of Hindu–Muslim conflicts.38 As a result, a proclamation was made by a group of men, at the beat of a drum, for people in the city to look after their cows.39 A number of different people were accordingly making different proclamations in the streets and bazaars of Amritsar, and which of these it was that were noticed and reported to Dyer as the column was returning to the Ram Bagh must remain unclear.40

  News of the planned meeting at Jallianwala Bagh nevertheless spread quickly throughout the city and Girdhari Lal, for instance, heard that it was supposedly organised by Kanhyalal – a 75-year-old High Court pleader, who was a highly respected public figure in Amritsar.41 Kanhyalal did not in fact have anything to do with the meeting and had never even been approached by Hans Raj or any of the other volunteers.42 Knowing that Kanhyalal’s name would lend the event an air of respectability, however, it would appear that Hans Raj had deliberately made this announcement. The name and status of the old pleader provided the meeting with a semblance of an official event, and Kanhyalal himself surmised that: ‘This led or induced the public to think that I would give them some sound advice on the situation then existing.’43 With the Satyagraha organisation at Amritsar all but destroyed, Hans Raj and the remaining activists were desperate to keep the protests alive and therefore resorted to such underhand measures.

  The use of Kanhyalal’s name, however, added a significant element of confusion to the events of the day. A manager of a factory, Sardar Har Bhajan Singh, stated that he went to the Jallianwala Bagh ‘especially to hear Lala Kanhyalal, a well known local Vakil, who, as it had been rumoured in the course of the day, was to deliver a speech’.44 Due to Kanhyalal’s reputation, some people believed that the event was sanctioned by the authorities. One Indian clerk, for instance, heard that ‘Lala Kanhyalal would address a meeting at the Jallianwala Bagh in accordance with the wishes of the Deputy Commissioner.’45 Another local, Lala Hari Saran, who was a broker, similarly mistook the purpose of the meeting:

  On the 13th of April, as I was sitting at my house some people came and said that the shops would open that day and there would be a meeting in Jallianwala Bagh, presided over by Lala Kanhya Lal, Pleader. When I heard that the shops would open, I went to a friend and asked him to go with me to the Bagh, as the meeting must be about the opening of shops.46

  In the tense atmosphere of Amritsar, rumours were rife, and the separate proclamations, by the Naib Tahsildar at the head of Dyer’s procession and by a number of locals, including young boys, were confused for each other. In a bizarre turn of events, it would moreover appear that the meeting at Jallianwala Bagh was better announced, and more widely disseminated, than Dyer’s proclamation banning public meetings. The exact nature of the event that Hans Raj had hastily planned nevertheless remained obscure and many of the people who went to the Bagh expected to hear a lecture by Kanhyalal.47

  Back at the Ram Bagh, the troops rested while Dyer and his staff awaited further intelligence from the city. There were both police and CID agents gathering information, and Dyer despatched the aeroplane at his disposal to fly over Amritsar to provide visual reports. ‘We heard certain rumours that a meeting would take place, but did not attach any great importance to that,’ Irving later recalled. ‘I asked General Dyer if he could spare me as I wanted to go to the Fort.’48 The Commissioner later told a friend that ‘having gone without sleep for four days and nights, he was utterly exhausted’ and Irving accordingly left the headquarters to get some much-needed sleep.49 As a result, Irving was not present at the Ram Bagh when, around 4pm, Dyer received confirmation from Rehill that the meeting at Jallianwala Bagh was going ahead.50 About one thousand people were said to have already assembled and this was confirmed by a note from Mr Lewis, Miss Benjamin’s relative, ‘who had been in the city disguised as a native’.51

  Jallianwala Bagh had been the meeting-place for many of the political gatherings during the preceding weeks, which merely confirmed the impression that this was a continuation of the Rowlatt agitation. ‘The crowd, in complete defiance of my orders, forced my hand,’ Dyer noted, ‘and it was my duty to vindicate authority.’52 The General believed it was time to act:

  I knew that the final crisis had come, and that the assembly was primarily of the same mobs which had murdered and looted and burnt three days previously, and showed their truculence and contempt of the troops during the intervening days, that it was a deliberate challenge to the Government forces, and that if it were not dispersed effectively, with sufficient impression upon the designs and arrogance of the rebels and their followers we should be overwhelmed during the night or the next day by a combination of the city gangs and of the still more formidable multitude from the villages.53

  Jallianwala Bagh, meaning ‘Garden of Jalle’, in reference to the original owner, was not actually a garden so much as an open wasteland.54 Entirely enclosed by the backs of houses and brick walls, the Bagh was about 200 yards long and 150 yards wide, or 6.5 acres, roughly in the shape of a right trapezoid. On all four sides, the Bagh was hemmed in by the neighbouring houses and varying heights of mud and brick wall that formed an uneven but continuous enclosure. The open space was a bit below ground level, giving the impression of a vast shallow pool that had been emptied. The Bagh was almost entirely barre
n, and its only distinguishing features were a low open well surrounded by three banyan trees on the eastern side and a small samadh, or temple, under a big tree at the furthest end opposite the main entrance. ‘It hardly looked like a park then,’ the poet Manto recalled unsentimentally, ‘just a dreary and desolate stretch of uneven earth.’55

  ‘There are no proper doors,’ the Indian journalist Malaviya, who visited the Bagh in 1919, noted, ‘but there are five crevices or shabby lanes on different sides which for the purposes of ingress and egress to it, may be exalted to the dignity of doors!’56 The main entrance on the northern side, which led from the Queen’s Bazaar to the raised ground overlooking the Bagh, was a long narrow passage, wide enough for people to pass in both directions, though not so wide as to accommodate vehicles. On the western side, there were two small gates and a door, which led into the alley running between Jallianwala Bazar and Burj Mewa Singh Bazaar, while on the eastern side, behind the well, there was a large door, leading out to the Lakar Mandi Bazaar. These exits, Malaviya noted, all ‘lead to small lanes that are anything but wide and moreover, full of sewer nalies [open drains]’.57 On 13 April, the door behind the well, furthermore, happened to be locked.58

  Ever since the beginning of the Rowlatt protests earlier that year, Jallianwala Bagh had been the locus for popular mobilisation. It was here that meetings were held during the hartals of 30 March and 6 April, and this was also the place at which a meeting had originally been called following the arrest of Kitchlew and Satyapal on 10 April. Now that the Satyagraha movement had been all but wiped out, due to the British clampdown, the Bagh was the obvious location for a meeting. On 13 April 1919, Hans Raj and the few remaining volunteers thus simply did what they had done many times before. Jallianwala Bagh was seen as a safe space: no official had ever had any reason to visit this large stretch of open ground, hidden away deep inside the city, and accessible only through a few narrow doors and openings in the surrounding walls. A meeting in that place could not reasonably be interpreted as a provocative or aggressive action – or so it was assumed.