Jallianwala Bagh
Through British eyes

On the 90th anniversary of the massacre on April 13, Sekhar Phadnis assesses
the impact of the event on the British empire 

After the Jallianwala Bagh massacre Mahatma Gandhi remarked that the British had got control of India at Plassey in 1757 and lost it in 1919.

While the Indians realised the implications of the massacre soon enough, what transpired in the British ruling circles after the massacre in which 379 unarmed civilians were killed and 1,500 wounded under Gen Reginald Dyer’s orders remained a mystery for a long time.

This information has come to light nine decades after the massacre after the death of some British satraps, who deified General Dyer. Many eminent authors and journalists in their biographies of British statesmen and the Generals of 1920s had also inquired into this great massacre.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica says that Dyer’s subsequent bravado was only a mask, and he knew that he had committed a grave crime. In fact, it is thought that Dyer did not know about the lack of exits from the Jallianwala Bagh. As he fired into the crowd, he mistook the action of rushing forward to escape, to be an attack on himself. Hence, he directed the bullets "where the crowd was the thickest".

In this context, years later, Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar Miles Irving was asked by journalist Edwards Thompson about the first remark made to him by General Dyer after the firing. Irving replied, "Dyer came to me all dazed and shaken up and said ‘I never knew that there was no way out." Quite a different response to the one he gave during the Hunter enquiry, when he said, "I had made up my mind that I would do all men to death if they were going to continue the meeting." General Dyer further told P.G. Puckle, Financial Secretary to the Punjab Government, six months later, "I have not had a night’s sleep since that happened. I keep seeing it all over again."

To his daughter-in-law, who comforted him a few days before his death on July 23, 1925, he said, "Thank you, But I do not want to get better`85so many people, who knew the conditions in Amritsar, say that I did right. But so many others say, I did wrong. I only want to die and know from my maker, whether I did right or wrong."

General Dyer was suffering from arterial sclerosis during his military command of Amritsar, and he was temporarily insane during the firing. The Dyer family itself was under no illusion that the massacre was not justified and in the words of his son Rex Dyer, " It was a brutal, horrific episode and to pretend otherwise is quite stupid."

Of other British officials who praised General Dyer, Sir Michael O’ Dwyer, the Lt Governor of Punjab, who had backed General Dyer and one of the earliest appreciations Dyer received was from him to say ‘Your action correct’.

But O’ Dwyer later stated that he gave permission for the words ‘Lt Governor approves’ with reluctance and entirely based on the fact that the military superiors of Dyer had already approved his action.

The top echelons of the Indian Army, who handed the Dyer case, stated decades later, that the Army Headquarters had earlier decided to back Dyer against any political pressure. But, when they heard Dyer extolling his action and stating that he had decided to fire even before he reached bagh and that if he had been able to get the armoured cars into the bagh, he would have used machine guns and caused even greater slaughter, the top Army brass decided that no one could protect such a foolhardy witness.

Edwin Montague, as the Secretary of the State, had the unenviable task of trying to protect the Government of India in the British Parliament and confessed that even by November 16, 1919, six months after the massacre, he did not have a complete report on the tragedy. Montague himself had no sympathy for Dyer about whom he wrote in July 1919 to the Viceroy, "It was the savage and inappropriate folly of the order, which arouses my anger."

Another participant in the tragic drama was Winston Churchill, who was Defence Minister of Great Britain, and had to urge the Army Council to punish General Dyer. Hence it was decided that Dyer be reverted to half pay and be bypassed for promotion.

But he had a hard time with imperialist diehards in the Army Council and they at one stage, persuaded the new Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army Lord Rawlinson, to state that he would not go to India "if justice was not done to Dyer." Finally, Churchill had to threaten that he would not hesitate to dismiss Dyer from the Army if the Army Council procrastinated and the Generals agreed reluctantly. — MF

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