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 JALLIANVALA
BAGH MASSACRE, involved the killing
of hundreds of unarmed, defenceless
Indians by a senior British militry
officer, took place on 13 April 1919
in the heart of Amritsar, the holiest
city of the Sikhs, on a day sacred to
them as the birth anniversary of the
Khalsa. Jallianvala Bagh,. a garden
belonging to the Jalla, derives name
from that of the owners of this piece
of land in Sikh times. It was then the
property the family of Sardar Himmat
Singh (d.1829), a noble in the court
of Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1780-1839),
who originally came from the village
of Jalla, now in Fatehgarh Sahib district
of the Punjab. The family were collectively
known as Jallhevale or simply Jallhe
or Jalle, although their principal seat
later became Alavarpur in Jalandhar
district. The site, once a garden or
garden house, was in 1919 an uneven
and unoccupied space, an irregular quadrangle,
indifferently walled, approximately
225 x 180 metres which was used more
as a dumping ground.
In the Punjab, during World War I (1914-18),
there was considerable unrest particularly
among the Sikhs, first on account of
the demolition of a boundary wall of
Gurdwara Rikabgang at New Delhi and
later because of the activities and
trials of the Ghadrites almost all of
whom were Sikhs. In India as a whole,
too, there had been a spurt in political
activity mainly owing to the emergence
of two leaders Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma)
Gandhi (1869-1948) who after a period
of struggle against the British in South
Africa, had returned to India in January
1915 and Mrs Annie Besant (1847-1933),
head of the Theosophical Sociely of
India, who established, on 11 April
1916, Home Rule League with autonomy
for India as its goal. In December 1916,
the Indian National Congress, at its
annual session held at Lucknow, passed
a resolution asking the British government
to issue a proclamation announcing that
it is the aim and intention of British
policy to confer self governnnent on
India at an early date." At the
same time India having Contributed significantly
to the British war effort had been expecting
advancement of her political interests
after the conclusion of hostilities.
On the British side, the Secretary of
State for India E.S Montagu, announced,
on 20 August 1917; the policy of His
Majesty's Government, with which the
Government of India are in complete
accord, is that of the increasing association
of Indians in every branch of administration
and the gradual development of self-governing
institutions with a view to the progressive
realization of responsible government
in India ..." However, the Viceroy
of India Lord Chelmsford, appointed,
on 10 December 19l7, a Sedition Committee,
popularly known as Rowlatt Committee
after the name of its chairman, to investigate
and report on the nature and extent
of the criminal conspiracies connected
with the revolutionary movement in India,
and to advise as to the legislation
necessary to deal with them. Based on
the recommendations of this committee,
two bills, popularly called Rowlatt
Bills, were published in the Government
of India Gazette on 18 January 1919.
Mahatma Gandhi decided to organize a
satyagrah, non-violent civil disobedience
campaign) against the bills. One of
the bills became an Act, nevertheless,
on 21 March 1919. Call for a countrywide
hartal or general strike on 30 March,
later postponed to 6 April 1919, was
given by Mahatma Gandhi.
 The
strike in Lahore and Amritsar passed
off peacefully on 6 April. On 9 April,
the governor of the Punjab, Sir Michael
Francis O'Dwyer (1864-1940), suddenly
decided to deport from Amritsar Dr Satyapal
and Dr Saif ud-Din Kitchlew, two popular
leaders of men. On the same day Mahatma
Gandh,'s entry into Punjab was banned
under the Defence of India Rules. On
10 April, Satyapal and Kitchlew were
called to the deputy commissioner's
residence, arrested and sent off by
car to Dharamsetla, a hill town, now
in Himachal Pradesh. This led to a general
strike in Amritsar. Excited groups of
citizens soon merged together into a
crowd of about 50,000 marching on to
protest to the deputy commissioner against
the deportation of the two leaders.
The crowd, however, was stopped and
fired upon near the railway foot-bridge.
According to the official version,
the number of those killed was 12 and
of those wounded between 20 and 30.
But evidence before the Congress Enquiry
Committee put the number of the dead
between 20 and 30. As those killed were
being carried back through the streets,
an angry mob of people went on the rampage.
Governmcnt offices and banks were attacked
and damaged, and five Europeans were
beaten to death. One Miss Marcella Sherwood,
manager of the City Mission School,
who had been living in Amritsar district
for 15 years working for the Church
of England Zenana Missionary Society,
was attacked. The civil authorities,
unnerved by the unexpected fury of the
mob, called in the army the same afternoon.
The ire of the people had by and large
spent itself, but a sullen hatred against
the British persisted. There was an
uneasy calm in the city on 11 April.
In the evening that day, Brigadier-General
Reginald Edward Harry Dyer (b. 1864,
ironically at Murree in the Punjab),
commander 45th Infantry Brigade at Jalandhar,
arrived in Amritsar. He immediately
established file facto army rule, though
the official proclamation to this effect
was not made until 15 April. The troops
at his disposal included 475 British
and 710 Indian soldiers. On 12 April
he issued an order prohibiting all meetings
and gatherings. On 13 April which marked
the Baisakhi festival, a large number
of people, mostly Sikhs, had poured
into the city from the surrounding villages.
Local leaders called upon the people
to assemble for a meeting in the Jallianvala
Bagh at 4.30 in the evening. Brigadier-General
Dyer set out for the venue of the meeting
at 4.30 with 50 riflemen and two armoured
cars with machine guns mounted on them.
Meanwhile, the meeting had gone on peacefully,
and two resolutions, one calling for
the repeal of the Rowlatt Act and the
other condemning the firing on 10 April,
had been passed. A third resolution
protesting against the general repressive
policy of the government was being proposed
when Dyer arrived at about 5.15 p.m.
He deployed his riflemen on an elevation
near the entrance and without warning
or ordering the crowd to disperse, opened
fire. The firing continued for about
20 minutes whereafter Dyer and his men
marched back the way they had come.
1650 rounds of .303-inch ammunition
had been fired. Dyer's own estimate
of the killed based on his rough calculations
of one dead per six bullets fired was
between 200 and 300. The official figures
were 379 killed and 1200 wounded.
According to Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya,
who personally collected information
with a view to raising the issue in
the Central Legislative Council, over
1,000 were killed. The total crowd was
estimated at between 15,000 and 20,000,
Sikhs comprising a large proportion
of them.
The protest that broke out in the country
is exemplified by the renunciation by
Rabindranath Tagore of the British Knighthood.
In a letter to the Governor General
he wrote: "... The time has come
when badges of honour make our shame
glaring in their incongruous context
of humiliation, and I for my part wish
to stand shorn of all special distinctions
by the side of those of my countrymen
who, for their so-called insignificance,
are liable to suffer degradations not
fit for human beings...." Mass
riots erupted in the Punjab and the
government had to place five of the
districts under martial law. Eventually
an enquiry committee was set up. The
Disorder Inquiry Committee known as
Hunter Committee after its chairman,
Lord Hunter, held Brigadier-General
R.E.H. Dyer guilty of a mistaken notion
of duty, and he was relieved of his
command and prematurely retired from
the army. The Indian National Congress
held its annual session in December
1919 at Amritsar and called upon the
British Government to "take early
steps to establish a fully responsible
government in India in accordance with
the principle of self determination."
The Sikhs formed the All India Sikh
League as a representative body of the
Panth for political action. The League
held its first session in December 1919
at Amritsar simultaneously with the
Congress annual convention. The honouring
of Brigadier-General Dyer by the priests
of Sri Darbar Sahib, Amritsar, led to
the intensification of the demand for
reforming management of Sikh shrines
already being voiced by societies such
as the Khalsa Diwan Majha and Central
Majha Khalsa Diwan. This resulted in
the launching of what came to be known
as the Gurdwara Reform movement, 1920-25.
Some Sikh servicemen, resenting the
policy of non-violence adopted by the
leaders of the Akali movement, resigned
from the army and constituted thc nucleus
of an anti-British terrorist group known
as Babar Akalis.
The site, Jallianvala Bagh became a
national place of pilgrimage. Soon after
the tragic happenings of the Baisakhi
day, 1919, a committee was formed with
Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya as president
to raise a befitting memorial to perpetuate
the memory of the martyrs. The Bagh
was acquired by the nation on 1 August
1920 at a cost of 5,60,472 rupees but
the actual construction of the memorial
had to wait until after Independence.
The monument, befittingly named the
Flame of Liberty, build at a cost of
9,25,000 rupees, was inaugurated by
Dr Rajendra Prasad, the first President
of the Republic of India, on 13 April
1961. The central 30-ft high pylon,
a four-sided tapering stature of red
stone standing in the midst of a shallow
tank, is built with 300 slabs with Ashoka
Chakra, the national emblem, carsed
on them. A stone lantern stands at each
corner of the tank. On all four sides
of the pylon the words, "In memory
of martyrs, 13 April 1919", has
been inscribed in Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu
and English. A semi-circular verandah
skirting a children's swimming pool
near the main entrance to the Bagh marks
the spot where General Dyer's soldiers
took position to fire at the gathering.
footnote : On 13th April 1919, a Sikh
teenager who was being raised at Khalsa
Orphanage named Udham Singh saw the
happening with his own eyes and avenged
the killings of 1300+ of his countrymen
by killing Michael O'Dwyer in London.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Copyright © Harbans Singh "The
encyclopedia of Sikhism. "
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