Amritsar 1919 Page 9

  One of the key features of the Rowlatt Report was the way that disparate anti-colonial activities, covering everything from burglary to assassination, in different parts of the subcontinent, were all depicted as being part of one coherent revolutionary movement.34 The scope of the threat posed by nationalist revolutionaries was thus consistently exaggerated and sensationalised.35 The unravelling of the so-called Ghadar conspiracy in 1915 – the great bugbear of O’Dwyer and the Punjab authorities – had, for instance, been somewhat anti-climactic. Following police raids on a number of locations in Lahore, prompted by information provided by informers, police arrested fourteen individuals. They furthermore confiscated a sword, two revolvers, nine bombs along with bomb-making equipment, eleven revolutionary flags, a printing press, and revolutionary pamphlets and literature.36 The most notable part of German involvement in these global networks of anti-colonial revolutionaries, namely the attempt to smuggle arms from the US to India in 1915, similarly came to a pitiful end when the boat on which the arms were to be transported turned out to be incapable of crossing the Pacific. In the Rowlatt Report, however, these ill-fated and haphazard ventures assumed momentous proportions, threatening the very edifice of the Raj.

  Faced by the challenge posed by the revolutionary movement, the report asserted, the existing system of policing and criminal legislation had proven to be entirely insufficient. The legal system, it was argued, was exploited by revolutionaries to cause significant delays in bringing them to justice. This meant that the time elapsed between a crime and its eventual punishment rendered the latter ineffective as a preventive measure. Evidence and testimonies could furthermore be challenged and, worst of all, witnesses be intimidated or in some instances actually killed to prevent the pursuit of justice.37 In short, due process and the rule of law, on which the British prided themselves, hindered the effective prosecution of revolutionary crimes and endangered colonial rule during a time of crisis. By 1914, it was claimed in the Rowlatt Report, ‘the forces of law and order working through the ordinary channels were beaten’.38 O’Dwyer’s alarmist call for emergency legislation in Punjab in 1915, quoted in the report, summed up the entire gamut of special measures deemed necessary to defeat the bogey of the Indian revolutionary movement:

  the situation in the Punjab could not be allowed to drift any further. It was necessary that effective power should be given, as soon as possible, to the local Government to deal with violence and political trouble. The spread of revolutionary propaganda must be checked forthwith; violent and seditious crimes must be promptly punished; the men behind them must be removed and interned; the mischievous activities of newspapers must be curtailed; and every precaution must be taken to ensure that the poisonous teaching of open rebellion was kept both from the army and from the people from which the army was recruited.39

  According to the Rowlatt Report, the passing of the Defence of India Act of 1915 had provided those very tools to safeguard the Raj. No longer bogged down by the need for evidence or cumbersome legal procedures, the British had successfully defeated each and every conspiracy devised by Indian revolutionaries and their war-time allies. The danger of the ‘revolutionary movement’ had thus been averted, the report concluded, because of the emergency laws – ‘by those means alone has the conspiracy been paralysed . . .’40 This was particularly emphasised in the case of Punjab:

  It is evident that the Ghadr movement in the Punjab came within an ace of causing widespread bloodshed. With the high-spirited and adventurous Sikhs the interval between thought and action is short. If captured by inflammatory appeals, they are prone to act with all possible celerity and in a fashion dangerous to the whole fabric of order and constitutional rule. Few persons reviewing the history which we have summarized, will not be disposed to endorse the considered opinion of the Punjab authorities that ‘had not Government been armed with extensive powers under the Defence of India Act and the Ingress Ordinance, the Ghadr movement could not have been suppressed so rapidly; and delay of preventive action and retribution in such a case would have increased yet more the amount of disorder to be coped with’.41

  However, with the end of the war, and the temporary emergency acts set to expire, the report warned that British rule in India would once again be vulnerable to the revolutionary threat. The recommendation of the Rowlatt Committee was, accordingly, that the provisions of the war-time emergency measures should continue and be made permanent after the end of the conflict.

  The report, however, could not, in good faith, make those recommendations on the basis of the current political situation in India, which, in the aftermath of the First World War, was a far cry from the widespread unrest that preceded the global conflict. In spite of the hardship of the population in Amritsar and elsewhere, there were no major revolutionary networks active in 1919. The Ghadar movement had, in effect, been crushed and there were no other significant anti-colonial organisations mobilising against the Raj. Although the Rowlatt Committee claimed to have been concerned ‘with the future’ and not with the past, it is noteworthy that the report made no attempt at producing an up-to-date threat assessment. With no mention of the unrest in other parts of the Empire, including Ireland and Egypt, or indeed the implications of the First World War, its findings were based exclusively on the actions of revolutionary nationalists during the preceding decade. Recommendations were accordingly made in relation to ‘possible future emergencies’, rather than any clearly identified threat.42 The argument of the Rowlatt Committee was nevertheless clear: ‘To postpone legislation till the danger is instant, is, in our view, to risk a recurrence of the history of the years 1906–17.’43 This was, in short, a pre-emptive move to enshrine emergency legislation in law before the need arose. The Rowlatt Act was thus meant to reassure those conservative-minded officials who had been opposed to the Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms, that the British remained firmly in control and had the means required to stave off any future challenges to the authority of the Raj.44

  To British officials in India, including Governor-General Chelmsford, the Rowlatt Act was seen as a necessary measure required for the successful implementation of reforms, emphasising the notion that reform and repression could be carefully calibrated to reward moderates and punish extremists.45 Unless the authorities were armed with the tools of the Rowlatt Act, the argument went, seditionists might derail the reforms and eventually even Montagu was convinced to sanction the bill.46 Almost all of the recommendations of the Rowlatt Report were subsequently worked into the Rowlatt Act, or the Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act as it was formally known. The act was to come into effect in March 1919 and would be reviewed after three years.47 The provisions of the act allowed for detention without trial, and trials without jury held in camera (without press or public having access to the proceedings). In essence, these measures amounted to carte blanche in dealing with Indians suspected of revolutionary crimes.

  As an exercise in public relations, however, the Rowlatt Report had been an unmitigated disaster. The British had completely misread the political climate of post-war India and it was little short of delusional to assume that a narrative of the revolutionary movement, written from an exclusively colonial perspective, was ever going to convince any Indian nationalists of the need for permanent emergency legislation. The central idea behind British colonial governance during these years was that constitutional agitation ought to be tolerated, whereas unconstitutional sedition had to be ruthlessly repressed and crushed. The Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms supposedly provided the framework for the former, and the Rowlatt Act the tools for the latter: the intention behind this seemingly contradictory set of policies was that reform and repression could be applied selectively: only moderate nationalists would benefit from the reforms, and only a minority of criminal-minded extremists would be affected by the repression. The argument was that the majority of law-abiding Indians had nothing to fear from the Rowlatt Act. The British thus believed that they could secure the future of the Raj an
d chart a safe course through the tumultuous waters of the post-war crisis by balancing coercion with conciliation. The problem was that the carrot was far too small, and the stick was far too big.

  The acceptable limits of agitation contracted during times of crisis and the British Government of India had proven itself to be particularly prone to panic in this regard. The years during which the Defence of India Act of 1915 had been in operation revealed exactly how the British administered emergency legislation within a colonial context: the only type of nationalist politics that the British were truly willing to tolerate was one that accepted as its basic premise the sovereignty of the Raj. Any other speeches or writings which questioned, or outright rejected, the legitimacy of British rule in India were regarded as implicitly revolutionary and accordingly had to be kept in check, even when no laws were being broken.48 Since the Rowlatt Act, furthermore, incorporated many elements of the legislation that it superseded, it was evident that the British were not only perpetuating war-time emergency measures in 1919 but were in fact redeploying some of the most draconian and repressive aspects of nineteenth-century legislation.49 While the reforms seemed to promise a liberal and permissive political culture, allowing and even encouraging Indians to speak their mind, the Rowlatt Act at the very same time enabled the authorities to shut down dissent whenever they saw fit. No amount of political spin could hide those facts. At a time when Indian nationalists were eagerly looking towards the future, inspired by the rhetoric of ‘responsible self-government’, the most reactionary and repressive aspects of colonial rule were becoming increasingly entrenched. At Amritsar, Dr Satyapal described the sense of profound disappointment: ‘The termination of the war was a relief, and the people were in an expectant mood to get a decent reward for services rendered to the British Throne so unstintingly. Our disappointment was very poignant, when instead of taking a step forward, the Government passed one of the most reactionary measures ever passed.’50

  Now, my Lord, a bad law passed is not always used against the bad. In times of panic to which all alien Governments are unfortunately far too liable, in times of panic, caused it may be by very slight incidents, I have known Governments lose their heads. I have known a reign of terror being brought about [. . .] It is all very well to say that the innocent are safe. I tell you, my Lord, when Government undertakes a repressive policy, the innocent are not safe. Men like me would not be considered innocent. The innocent man then is he who forswears politics, who takes no part in the public movements of the times; who retires into his house, mumbles his prayers, pays his taxes and salaams all the Government officials round. The man who interferes in politics, the man who goes about collecting money for any public purpose, the man who addresses a public meeting, then becomes a suspect [. . .] It will hurt the good as well as the bad, and there will be such a lowering of public spirit, there will be such a lowering of the political tone in the country, that all your talk of responsible government will be mere mockery.51

  Srinivasa Sastri’s speech in the Legislative Council in February 1919 was a particularly poignant example of how so-called moderate Indian politicians, supposedly co-opted by the colonial state through the promise of reforms, interpreted and responded to the Rowlatt Act. The provisions of the new legislation made it far too easy for the authorities to suppress legitimate dissent, and, ever since the publication of the report the previous summer, opposition among Indian political leaders and the public more generally had been growing more vocal.52 Local protests were further energised by the opposition to the Rowlatt Act offered by notable Indian members of the Legislative Council, such as Srinivasa Sastri, which was widely reported in the press.

  The local leaders of Amritsar, most of whom were lawyers or medical practitioners, put aside their previous disputes, and Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims, who had been bitter rivals during the municipal elections, now found common ground in their opposition to the Government. As Kitchlew later described it: ‘I found a new wave of life among the masses; but they needed the lead of some persons to work for their motherland.’53 The Rowlatt protests that sprang up across Punjab from the beginning of 1919 similarly drew a receptive audience from across the entire section of the local population. In Amritsar, meetings were held regularly from January onwards and thousands of people, sometimes tens of thousands, turned up. Meetings were initially held in the Bande Mataram Hall, but, as the crowds grew bigger throughout February and March, the gatherings were moved to parks and other open spaces within the city.

  One of the thousands of ordinary Indians caught up in the excitement of the Rowlatt protests, was the 23-year-old Hans Raj, a Hindu Khatri who lived in the Katra Bagh Singh neighbourhood of Amritsar.54 Hans Raj had passed the university entrance exam in 1911 but had drifted from one job to another since then: he had been a travelling ticket inspector on the North Western Railway, and he had also tried, and failed, to join both the police force and, later, the Indian Defence Force. Subsequently, he had worked as a correspondent clerk for a local municipal commissioner at Amritsar, then a banker in the city, finally ending up as a commission agent for stationary and medicine. Rumour had it that he had been dismissed from several of his jobs for embezzlement and those who knew him claimed that Hans Raj lived off the illicit earnings of his wife and mother, who were both said to be prostitutes.55 He was also known to loiter in the bazaar and was apparently on friendly terms with some of the local police officers of the city.56

  Hans Raj had joined the Home Rule League back in 1917 but only became actively involved in nationalist politics with the platform agitation in January 1919 – ‘the idea being that if we had Home Rule we could go on to the platform without a ticket’ as he explained it.57 Edmund Candler, who wrote extensively about politicised Indian youths at the time, described the typical student as ‘the prey of chance influences, equally impressionable, gullible and unstable’.58 This was not just a British stereotype, and one contemporary Indian spoke derisively of ‘the half-educated youths of the country’: ‘Take a boy who has passed to the High School and has little knowledge of English, still less a knowledge of English history. He reads newspapers which he only half understands and feeds on his own predilections instead of checking them.’59 This might have been written specifically about Hans Raj, who, like so many other young Indian men, failed to secure the respectable livelihood that he expected from his education.60

  The protests against the Rowlatt Act at Amritsar and elsewhere, however, were never just about the legislation, but instead reflected a whole range of issues that touched directly on the everyday concerns of people. While knowledge of the exact provisions of the legislation was limited, there were, as Rosamond Lawrence had noted, numerous rumours circulating – and it was these, more than anything else, that people like Hans Raj responded to. At Amritsar, Deputy Commissioner Irving described how: ‘Among the ignorant people the wildest rumours were prevalent; such rumours for example that more than four people would not be allowed to assemble together; that there would be a tax levied on every marriage; that Government would collect its revenue in kind by taking half the produce.’61 Some of the rumours had clear roots in the actual provisions of the Rowlatt Act, including the notion that police would have increased powers and would be able to arrest people and search their houses without a warrant.62 Others, however, reflected long-standing fears over Government intrusion into the private sphere of ordinary households, including official interference in marriage ceremonies and funerals. These were not too different from the rumours that had circulated among the Indian population at regular intervals over the past century – revealing the seemingly insurmountable distance between coloniser and colonised. Other rumours again were the direct result of the economic hardship of the time and typically evolved around anxieties over new taxation and revenues.

  As opposed to Irving, the Commissioner of Lahore, A.J.W. Kitchin, gave a remarkably perceptive account of the rumours:

  Few of the opponents of the Act had read it, but they
knew that it was passed in the face of the whole of the Indian representatives on the Imperial Council, showing that Indians had no power in their own country [. . .] The general dislike of the police, which is very deep-seated indeed, was utilised to the full by stories of enormous powers of summary arrest which were to be conferred upon them. The stories about the intended interference in marriage customs and domestic life can undoubtedly be traced to the Patel Marriage Bill, which orthodox Hinduism regards with horror. The general rumour about confiscation of property comes from annoyance at the enhanced Income Tax and Excess Profits Tax. The old commercial resentment of the Punjab Land Alienation Act can be traced in others of the Rowlatt Act rumours. Indeed a study of the rumours which were afloat is most interesting and instructive, and reveals much of the secret grievances and aspirations of the political classes.63

  Although this analysis was obviously biased, it was essentially accurate – a wide range of grievances, and everything that ordinary Indians resented about colonial rule, was attributed to the Rowlatt Act.64 Many of the rumours that circulated among Gerard’s students at Khalsa College, and elsewhere in Amritsar, were clearly far-fetched. And yet, their very existence revealed something important about the manner in which ordinary Indians, the very public to whom the Rowlatt Report was supposed to justify the legislation, perceived British rule in 1919. Nationalist leaders, such as Kitchlew and Satyapal, also played a central role in tying local grievances to the bigger issue of the Rowlatt Act.65 During one protest meeting in late February, for instance, the possibility of opening cheap grain shops to make basic foodstuffs available to the poorest classes of Amritsar was raised. In his speech, Kitchlew blamed the high prices on the British Government, pointing out that the grain seized under the Defence of India Act was being shipped to Europe.66 The implication was that, when the Defence of India Act was replaced by the Rowlatt Act, such oppressive policies would continue and people’s hardship was unlikely to improve. Protests against the Rowlatt Act thus covered a whole range of issues and national politics, becoming completely enmeshed with issues ranging from the Khilafat movement to epidemics, drought, high food prices, the platform agitation – all of which was exacerbated by the disappointment of the expected reforms and a general disillusionment following the end of the war. As Kitchin put it, ‘The Rowlatt Act was the occasion and not the cause of the trouble.’67