The Amritsar Massacre

On 13 April at 3 pm, the lieutenant governor of the Punjab, with the concurrence of the general officer-in-command of the 16th Division and the chief justice of the high court, moved the Governor General in Council to suspend the functioning of ordinary criminal courts in Amritsar and Lahore districts, to proclaim Martial Law therein and to direct trial of offenders under Regulation X of 1804, ie, by court martial. The Government of India, of which Sir Sankaran Nair was a member, at once sanctioned the lieutenant governor’s proposals for Martial Law, ie, before Dyer’s action at Jallianwala Bagh. But sanction was not received till 14 April—the day described by O’Dwyer as the ‘high water mark of rebellion’— because of the disruption of communications. Martial Law was not formally proclaimed in Amritsar and Lahore till 15 April, though the situation was hardening into de facto Martial Law from 10 April. The lieutenant governor sent a wireless message to the Government of India on 13 April seeking permission for Martial Law to be proclaimed. The Bolshevist wireless station at Tashkent picked it up and used it to show that the British were fighting for their very existence in India. On 12 April, in order to prohibit the assemblies he had seen inside the town, Dyer decided to issue a proclamation. This he dictated to Briggs and it was passed on to the deputy commissioner to be translated and proclaimed around the city. It read as follows:

14 The inhabitants of Amritsar are hereby warned that if they will cause damage to any property or will commit any acts of violence in the environs of Amritsar, it will be taken for granted that such acts are due to the incitement in Amritsar city and offenders will be punished according to military law. All meetings and gatherings are hereby prohibited and will be dispersed at once under military law. On 13 April at 9 a.m., Dyer issued another proclamation which he decided to see announced personally in the city…

After the general’s proclamation, a counter-proclamation was made by the leaders of the mob calling upon people to assemble in Jallianwala Bagh that afternoon at 4.30 pm. Originally, it was intended to hold a meeting in the Golden Temple, but this was prevented by Sunder Singh Majitha, a member of the Imperial Legislative Assembly…

At about 1 pm Dyer heard that the people intended to hold a meeting at 4.30 pm in spite of his proclamation. At 4 pm, he received definite information from JF Rehill that a crowd of 1000 had collected at Jallianwala Bagh. Lewis, manager of the Crown Cinema, also confirmed the news in a letter he sent to Dyer through an intelligence officer. Dyer regarded it as a challenge to his authority and after 4 pm, he ‘matured his plans’. He assembled a striking force of ninety men and at about 4.15 pm marched them to the scene of the meeting. He also took two armoured cars equipped with machine guns along with him…

Dyer and Briggs rode together in a motor car followed by the two armoured cars and a police car with Rehill and Plomer inside. Troops were positioned ahead and to the rear of the four vehicles…

…Led by a guide, the procession passed Hall Bazaar and the Fawara Chowk (Fountain Square) and arrived at the narrow entrance to the Bagh between 5 and 5.15 pm Dyer, Colonel Morgan, Briggs and Rehill got out of the motor car and advanced up the alley followed by the troops. Briggs gives an eyewitness account:

Coming to the end of the alley we saw an immense crowd of men packed in a square listening to a man on a platform who was speaking and gesticulating with his hands. It was very hard to estimate the size of the crowd. The General asked me what I thought the numbers were, and I said about 5,000 or so, but I believe it has been estimated at more like 25,000.

An aeroplane displaying a flag circled low over the Bagh at about 4 pm. The people panicked and began to move away, but Hans Raj assured them that there was no cause for alarm. He remarked that the aeroplane was ‘doing its work and that we should continue our work [you do your own]’…

The crowd shouted, ‘Aagaye, aagaye’ (They have come, they have come). Dyer, standing on a raised platform inside the entrance, was struck by the diverse nature of the crowd. It was Baisakhi, a day which has special significance for the people of the Punjab, and as usual there was a large influx into the town of people from adjacent areas who had come for a dip in the holy tank surrounding the Golden Temple. The cattle market which was traditionally held on this day near Gobindgarh Fort had also attracted customers from outside and quite a large number of villagers had found their way to the Bagh. Some people were lying on the ground relaxing with half an ear to what the speakers were saying, some were sleeping and others were squatting in groups playing cards. Dyer saw the thickest crowd around the rostrum under the peepal tree about 150 yards away and the nearest groups within ten to twenty yards of him. It was approximately 5.15 pm. and the sky was still overcast. The dust disturbed by the crowds in the Bagh hung over the area and added to the gloom. Within thirty seconds of his arrival, Dyer deployed his troops, the Gurkhas to the left and the Baluchis to the right of the entrance to the square. The ground on which the soldiers stood was at a higher level than the rest of the area—an advantageous position from which to fire on the crowd. When asked before the Hunter Committee what his first action was upon reaching Jallianwala Bagh, Dyer answered, ‘I opened fire.’ In his statement before the Army Council, he wrote, ‘Hesitation I felt would be dangerous and futile, and as soon as my fifty riflemen had deployed I ordered fire to be opened.’

Durga Das was speaking and gesticulating with his hands. Hans Raj intervened exhorting the crowd to sit down and not to panic. Immediately the troops were deployed, they opened fire but at first the crowd shouted back ‘Phokian’, ‘Phokian’, imagining that it was just a bluff. They quickly lost their illusions, however, as people began to crumple and fall. The crowd’s reaction to the initial shock of the first volley was to stream away in great panic; but where could people go? Close to their left there were houses, further ahead the well, on their right the open space, and behind, the guns of the soldiers. They found themselves completely trapped. Each soldier was loading and firing. ‘The men did not hesitate to fire low and I saw no man firing high,’ said Captain Briggs. Many fell dead on the spot and many more, while falling, were crushed under the weight of others. Waves of men fell over each other and many died of suffocation. Some turned towards the samadh and took cover there but successive volleys pulled them down. A large number of people flung themselves down from the rostrum, others rushed towards the exits and others still tried to climb the mud-and-brick wall, but most of them were mown down by a hail of bullets. A few men managed to hoist themselves on to the wall but they fell down helplessly on the other side.

Girdhari Lal, who saw the scene closely, described it in grim detail: I saw hundreds of persons killed on the spot. The worst part of the whole thing was that firing was directed towards the gates through which people were running out. There were small outlets, 4 or 5 in all, and bullets actually rained over the people at all these gates… and many got trampled under the feet of rushing crowds and thus lost their lives… Blood was pouring in profusion… even those who lay flat on the ground were shot…some had their heads cut open, others had eyes shot and nose, chest, arms and legs shattered. People were even wounded on the second and third storeys of the houses abutting the Bagh. Mian Raizul Hasan, a resident of one of them, remarked, ‘A bullet struck my roof.’ Inside the Bagh, everyone was for himself, pushing and heaving, kicking and scratching in the frantic effort to escape. People continued to fall like flies and heaps of bodies began to pile up under the walls and before the narrow exits. But still the shooting continued unabated and the troops were even ordered to concentrate their fire on the masses that had collected at these exits. The carnage increased tenfold. When the firing ceased, there was not a corner left in the garden where people were not lying dead in large numbers. Even outside the Bagh, there was a heap of dead bodies. Khushal Singh, a resident of the Jallianwala Bagh area, notes, ‘In one gali there were fifty dead. Navi gali, close to the entrance near the Sultanwind gate, was full of dead people.’

In his statement on 25 August 1919 to the general staff, Dyer stated, ‘I fired and continued to fire until the crowd dispersed.’ The mob gradually disappeared. Those who ran knew not where they were running to because of the great terror that possessed them…

The city was absolutely quiet: not a soul was to be seen on the roads. At the Bagh, a few shocked survivors had remained to turn over the heaps of dead bodies in a desperate search for friends and relations….

Lala Nathu Ram found the body of his brother under three or four others quite near the raised ground from which the soldiers had fired, but many left not knowing the fate of their kin because they were afraid of being fired upon again after 8 pm. Those who remained were joined by Attar Kaur and Rattan Devi. Attar Kaur found her husband Bhag Mal Bhatia’s dead body and boldly took it home with the help of another person…

Next day hundreds of shoes left behind by the crowd fleeing from the Bagh were collected by the authorities, but the number of casualties was not counted nor was medical assistance provided for the injured. Different versions of the number of people assembled in the Bagh are given. In his statement to the Army Council, Dyer thought the crowd was between 15,000 and 20,000. Briggs believed that it was more like 25,000. Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya gave out the figures as being from 16,000 to 20,000.46 Dr Gurbax Rai, who is living at present (1969), told this writer that the crowd was not less than 15,000. Dyer’s estimate of the killed (between 200 and 300), which he sent to the lieutenant governor, was based on his wartime experience in France where it was calculated that one man was killed for every six shots fired. Without waiting for the military report, the lieutenant governor informed the Government of India that 200 persons had been killed. Shraddhananda went to Amritsar and calculated that on 13 April no less than 1500 persons must have been killed. At the meeting of the Imperial Legislative Council held on 12 September 1919, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya said that the figure of 1000 killed was nearer the truth than the official claim. According to him, there were forty-two boys among the dead, the youngest of them having been only seven months old. Malaviya’s assessment may not be as exaggerated as it appears for out of an assembly of 15,000 people crowded into a confined space into which 1650 rounds were fired, it is not improbable that around 700 perished.

(This is an edited excerpt from a new edition of Jallianwala Bagh: A Groundbreaking History of the 1919 Massacre by VN Datta with an introduction by Nonica Datta; Penguin; pages 248; Rs399)

About The Author

VN Datta