Jallianwala Bagh, 1919 Read online

  The British Secretary of State, Edwin Montagu, must be credited with the formation of the Hunter Committee on 14 October 1919. Ironically, its revelations probably caused the end of his career and the end of the Liberal Party as the principal alternative party of the government in Britain. The President of the Committee was Lord Hunter, a former Solicitor General of Scotland. Among the other white members were Justice G.C. Rankin; W.F. Rice, Additional Secretary, Government of India, Home Department; Major General Sir George Barrow, Commander of the Peshawar Division; and Thomas Smith, Member of the Legislative Council of the Lieutenant Governor of the United Provinces. The non-white members were Pandit Jagat Narayan, Member of the Legislative Council of the Lieutenant Governor of the United Provinces; Sir Chimanlal Setalvad, Advocate of the High Court, Bombay; and Sardar Sahibzada Sultan Ahmed Khan, barrister-at-law, Member for Appeals, Gwalior State.

  I have relied heavily on both the Majority and Minority Reports to provide the official versions; I have also relied upon them for descriptions of the cross-examination of Dyer, O’Dwyer and others who created such a tragic situation in Punjab. I have also quoted from some excellent books on the subject such as Nigel Collett’s The Butcher of Amritsar and The Rediscovery of India by Meghnad Desai.2 It is the constant mining for information by writers such as these that has facilitated a progressively deeper understanding of what happened a hundred years ago in Amritsar.

  Throughout the writing of this book I could hear the cries of those hundreds, as they lay dying at Jallianwala Bagh, that sultry evening in April—deprived of water, medicine, help. These are voices I will carry with me forever, along with the sound of the whiplash across the back of young schoolboys as they begged for mercy. I will also carry the agony of the women who were trapped at home, without electricity or water, too afraid to step out to get help for their loved ones.

  With the writing of this book, my world shifted dramatically. There is no doubt that history belongs primarily to the victor, but only as long as we allow it. The truth cannot remain hidden for all time.

  Delhi

  April 2018

  KISHWAR DESAI

  * * *

  1. Lala Lajpat Rai, foreword to An Imaginary Rebellion and How it Was Suppressed by Pandit Pearay Mohan, vol. 1 (Lahore: Khosla Bros., 1920; Gyan Publishing House, 1999), p. 3. Citations refer to the Gyan edition.

  2. Nigel Collett, The Butcher of Amritsar: Brigadier General Reginald Dyer

  (London: Hambledon and London, 2005); Meghnad Desai, The Rediscovery of India (Penguin Random House India Pvt. Ltd., 2009).

  1

  A State of War

  Baisakhi, 13 April 1919, Amritsar

  The troops have orders to restore order in Amritsar, and to use all the force necessary. No gatherings of persons, no procession of any sort will be allowed. All the gatherings will be fired on. Any person leaving the city, or persons gathering in groups of more than four, will be fired on. Respectable persons should keep indoors until order is restored.

  Proclamation as heard by the people of Amritsar on 11 April 1919.

  —Report of the Commissioners Appointed by the Punjab Sub-Committee of the Indian National Congress.1

  Two days before the festival of Baisakhi, the city of Amritsar had been declared a war zone by the British administration in Punjab. The mood was sombre. Fear was writ large on many faces. People felt trapped inside the city, as there was a guard at almost every exit. Rich or poor, it was impossible for them to leave without written permission, and in the strained circumstances, such permission was unlikely to be forthcoming. Since the satyagraha against the Rowlatt Acts was still ongoing, the resulting hartal meant that food and daily supplies were becoming scarce. News from the outside world barely trickled in and censorship disallowed any news from leaking out.

  Even those who considered themselves close to the British rulers felt the sudden icing up of the relationship. The British were upset and they had to express their anger in every way possible. The feelings of the people of Amritsar were irrelevant. If at any time they had imagined that they could get political and social equality, now all they experienced was rejection. Indians were being clearly shown that they were a subject race. If they tried to resist or fight against the changed environment or assault a European, the full might of the British Empire would be brought to bear against them. The army had been called in and there were daily threats that the city would be bombed. The remains of buildings, still smouldering in the aftermath of the recent riots and shootings, bore the scars of a bloody battle.

  On the morning of Baisakhi, Sunday, 13 April, the old walled city was unnaturally tense. Those who had come from neighbouring villages and towns expecting a colourful, festive celebration had to struggle through the twelve city gates. Guards posted at some of the entrances and exits checked their luggage for lathis or any other weapons. The violent incidents of 10 April continued to be talked about and there were apprehensions of impending reprisals—reinforced by the heavy presence of the army. Memories of turbulence were alive everywhere.

  Just outside the Hall Gate of the old city was the railway bridge, where on 10 April, protesting residents of Amritsar had been wounded and killed. They had been trying to cross the Rubicon which divided the ordinary people of Amritsar from the Civil Lines and cantonment area. On the other side of the bridge was where the white sahibs, and more specifically, the British Deputy Commissioner, lived. The unarmed protestors sought desperately to meet him.

  The old city, on this side of the bridge, with around 160,000 residents, was congested and criss-crossed by narrow lanes, including the area that contained the famed Golden Temple. This was in sharp contrast to the large well-planned bungalows, surrounded by broad roads and gardens, which lay on the other side of the bridge. The balance of power between the ‘natives’ and their rulers was maintained by this sharp distancing. Most British officers and their families lived in the cantonment area; however, some Europeans had set up thriving businesses and banks in the old city, recognising its strategic commercial importance.

  Amritsar, at the turn of the twentieth century, was a prosperous trading centre for commodities and a textile manufacturing hub as well. It was close enough to the capital of Punjab—Lahore—and lay on the trade route between Afghanistan, Kashmir and Delhi, which explained its highly diverse population of Hindus, Muslims and, of course, Sikhs.

  The presence of the Golden Temple drew pilgrims from all over—Baisakhi was one of the most significant Sikh festivals. This was the day when the Khalsa sect (or the sect of the Pure) had been created in 1699 by Guru Gobind Singh, and the Sikhs were given their distinct identity, including the tradition of maintaining long hair. The day was usually celebrated by the Sikhs with a visit to the Golden Temple. A cattle fair would be held at around the same time, and a joyous atmosphere would prevail throughout the city.

  But this Baisakhi, following the troubles on 10 April, was already looking grim.

  To prevent any further rebellion, soldiers bearing rifles had been placed all along the street, right down to the city centre near the half-burnt Town Hall, which had been attacked on 10 April; its jagged skeleton of charred wood gaped at passersby.

  The central lane connecting Hall Gate to the Golden Temple also had debris strewn around. Apart from the Town Hall, the facade of the Chartered Bank lay shattered and, at the other end, the Alliance Bank and the National Bank had been reduced to cinders, as were some other buildings in the area. People had to walk around the shattered remains. At least three British bank managers had been burnt and murdered in retaliation for the killings of Indians at the railway bridge on 10 April. One British soldier and a railway employee were beaten to death outside the Hall Gate.

  The telegraph exchange building was attacked by the protestors and the telephone system of the city was cut off. In two other incidents, one British woman missionary was brutally assaulted, and a woman doctor had to hide from an angry crowd. In all, five Europeans and possibly about twenty Indians
were murdered in the attacks and counter-attacks. As always, since the Europeans were precisely named in official reports and the Indians were neither counted nor mentioned by name or profession, it was difficult to ascertain the exact number of Indians who had died.

  All the violence had taken place within a radius of about one mile, at a short distance from the Golden Temple.

  The assault on a group of unarmed Indians on 10 April by the police and the army was seen as the catalyst for subsequent troubles. All that the group had wanted was to plead with Miles Irving, the Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar, for the release of their jailed leaders, Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew and Dr Satya Pal, both respected residents of the city. The two had been tricked into attending a ‘meeting’ at around 10 a.m. on 10 April at Irving’s residence and had been whisked away to be jailed in Dharamshala.

  Kitchlew (32), a lawyer, and Satya Pal (34), a doctor, had both been politically active for a while. They were inspired by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, at the time a 49-year-old lawyer and activist who had practised non-violent protest in South Africa before returning to India. He had begun the Satyagraha Movement independently—he was not yet a leader with the Congress Party, which had been founded around 34 years earlier. The Congress Party leadership at the time was more interested in the idea of Home Rule.

  Gandhi started his satyagraha or ‘soul force’ movement in a small way—by publishing proscribed literature and distributing it: the laws were to be broken but peacefully. He then decided to organise protests against the proposed Rowlatt Acts, which he and many others considered to be draconian. There were two bills, out of which the Criminal Law (Emergency Powers) Bill was considered the worse of the two. The protest was to be organised by Satyagraha Sabhas, for which all participants had to take the following oath:

  Being conscientiously of (the) opinion that the Bills known as the Indian Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill No. 1 of 1919, and No. 2 of 1919 are unjust, subversive of the principle of liberty and justice and destructive of the elementary rights of individuals on which safety of the community as a whole and the State itself is based, we solemnly affirm that, in the event of these Bills becoming law, we shall refuse civilly to obey these laws and such other laws as a committee, to be hereafter appointed, may think fit, and we further affirm that in the struggle we will faithfully follow (the) truth, and refrain from violence of life, person or property.2

  The non-violent protests were to take the form of a hartal, that is, the general closing of shops, and suspension of all work, accompanied by fasting, public mourning and prayers, and other religious observances and public meetings.

  Journalists like Benjamin Guy Horniman (who was based in Bombay, and was later externed to Britain for his frank coverage of the disturbances in Punjab and their severe repression) reported an extraordinary response from the public to this call from Gandhi. (While the Indian National Congress was not officially part of this protest at the time, individual members were supporting it.) In Bombay, Horniman noted that ordinary people who had never taken part in politics felt encouraged to do so.

  In the city of Bombay. . .about a hundred thousand people opened the day by going to the sea shore and taking part in a purifying immersion in the sea. They then marched in processions to various temples and mosques, gathering numbers as they went, and held public prayers. No distinctions of creed were recognised. Hindus were admitted freely to the Mohammedan mosques and not only prayed but spoke to the congregations. Moslems were as freely admitted to the precincts of Hindu temples. This breaking down of religious barriers was unheard of before and almost incredible to those who had not seen it. It set the seal of approval of the whole population on the Hindu–Moslem entente, which the necessity for unity in the face of oppression of the whole people had brought about.3

  Thus it was that at Amritsar, Kitchlew, a Muslim, and Satya Pal, a Hindu, took the satyagraha oath. The meetings organised by them to decry the Rowlatt Acts, and to propose satyagraha, were attended by all communities. Kitchlew, a good-looking and energetic Kashmiri, who had studied law at Cambridge and later at the Munster University in Berlin, was on the radar of the British. This was partly because Amritsar’s Deputy Commissioner, Miles Irving, who had been posted there recently, in February, was nervous about the increasingly well-attended political meetings taking place in various parts of the city. He was particularly concerned that the well-spoken Kitchlew had a lot of influence in Amritsar, and felt he should be prevented from organising any further meetings.4

  Besides the efforts of Kitchlew and Satya Pal—who was a Lieutenant in the Indian Medical Service—the rallies proposed by Gandhi in Punjab in early April were also unwelcome for the British administration, particularly the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab, Sir Michael O’Dwyer.

  O’Dwyer, who had been the Lieutenant Governor since 1913, was due to retire shortly. He did not want his reign to be disrupted. He was that rare breed, an Irishman without any sympathy for the Indian freedom struggle. Having begun his career in Lahore in 1885, he was to end it there over three decades later, at the top of his profession. He wanted to leave behind an unblemished record as a tough administrator. Over the years, he had ruthlessly uprooted all suspected ringleaders of rebellions and saw himself as someone who understood the ‘Orientals’ and their need to be ruled by force.

  Raizada Bhagat Ram, a barrister based in Jalandhar, had met O’Dwyer sometime around 7 April. He noted that O’Dwyer had expressed his ‘strong disapproval’ of the ongoing hartal in different cities across Punjab, as also for Gandhi’s satyagraha.

  After the meeting (of the Punjab Legislative Council) I met the Lieutenant-Governor in the drawing room. He asked me what sort of a hartal we had at Jullundur. I replied it was a complete hartal and there was no disturbance. Sir M O’Dwyer asked me what I attributed it to. I answered, ‘To my mind it was due to the Soul-force of Mr Gandhi.’ On this Sir Michael raised his fist and said, ‘Raizada Sahib, remember there is another force greater than Gandhi’s Soul-force.5

  To Bhagat Ram this undoubtedly indicated that O’Dwyer would soon act against those organising the satyagraha.

  O’Dwyer was not alone. Most British residents of Punjab found the hartals an enormous irritant. Not only did they unite the Hindu and Muslim communities against their common foe, the British, they were also well organised. In Amritsar the hartals had been very successful, and peaceful. A meeting on 30 March, at Jallianwala Bagh, had been attended by ‘30,000 to 35,000’, so the numbers were growing. Kitchlew said right at the end of the speech, on that day: ‘. . . we will ever be prepared to sacrifice personal over national interests. The message of Mahatma Gandhi has been read to you. All countrymen should come prepared for resistance. This does not mean that this sacred town or country should be flooded with blood. The resistance should be a passive one. Be ready to act according to your conscience, though this may send you to jail, or bring an order of internment on you.’6 He asked everyone to go in peace and not use harsh words.

  Satya Pal had already been prohibited from speaking to the public on 29 March and now Kitchlew was served the same orders. The order dated 3 April said that: ‘. . .he shall until further orders (a) remain and reside within the municipal limits of Amritsar city (b) refrain from communicating either directly or indirectly with the press and (c) refrain from convening or attending or addressing in writing or otherwise any public meeting.’7

  Despite this restriction on two important leaders, the meeting on 6 April was even larger. Presided over by another Muslim leader of the city, Dr Badrul Islam Khan, over 50,000 attended and a resolution was passed that the restrictions on Satya Pal and Kitchlew be lifted as ‘the only fault found with them is that they informed all of us of the real object of the Rowlatt Act.’

  Ram Naumi, a Hindu festival celebrating the birth of Lord Ram, fell on 9 April. ‘The leaders (in Amritsar) had decided that there should be complete fraternisation between Hindus and Muhammadans on that occasion.’ Ram Naumi was celebrated with enthusiasm, but
it undoubtedly got a larger significance this time due to the Muslim participation. Several bands played on the day and Kitchlew and Satya Pal received a ‘great ovation’ from the procession as it went past. The Deputy Commissioner, despite his fears, was acknowledged gracefully as the bands struck up ‘God Save the King’ upon approaching him. While there was no incident, some of the participants in the procession wore the uniforms of Turkish soldiers and clapped—which was seen as a sign of disrespect by Irving, for it was obviously an allusion to the recent events in Turkey, which had upset the Muslims in India.8

  Months later, Irving would express his unease at seeing the Hindu-Muslim unity despite the fact that the procession was peaceful. He thought that the motive was sinister.

  He made this obvious in his answers to Sir C.H. Setalvad during the Hunter Committee gathering of evidence in Lahore on 13 November 1919.9

  Q: Then on April 9th were not the proceedings of the Ram Naumi day quite orderly in spite of the number of police being so very few in the city?

  A: It went off very well.

  Q: And this was the occasion when Hindus and Muhammadans fraternized between themselves?

  A: Yes.

  Q: Were you afraid of this? From a government point of view, from a political point of view?

  A: It depends for what object they join. If for a good purpose I am all in favour of it.

  Q: They give up their religious animosities and be friends? You are not against it?

  A: No, certainly not.

  Q: Therefore when you find that Hindus were drinking water which was touched by Muhammadans and that they were joining in the religious processions, was it not a matter of entire satisfaction to you?