Jallianwala Bagh, 1919 Read online

  Since 13 April was a Sunday, many of the shops were closed in any case and the hartal was still on. With the constant presence of the army on the streets, few people would have been out in the morning. However, at 9.30 a.m., Dyer decided to make two proclamations—neither of which was likely to have been heard. The Naib Tehsildar who was making the proclamations said he had halted at around 19 places where anywhere between 100 to 500 people had gathered. Most of them, he said, were jeering, and it was doubtful if anyone grasped the importance of his words. He also mentioned that there were announcements of the Jallianwala Bagh meeting taking place simultaneously, or at least discussions about it.

  There are also reports of people staying indoors when Dyer’s entourage passed by. In any case, the terms of the proclamations were unclear, perhaps deliberately so. They were read out to the beat of a drum by the Naib Tehsildar.

  The first proclamation said:

  The inhabitants of Amritsar are hereby warned that if any property is destroyed or other outrages committed in the vicinity of Amritsar it will be taken that incitement to perform these acts originates from Amritsar City, and such measures will be taken by me to punish the inhabitants of Amritsar according to Military law.

  All meetings and gatherings are hereby prohibited and I mean to take action in accordance with Military Laws to forthwith disperse all such assemblies.

  It was signed ‘R.E. Dyer, Brigadier General, Commanding Jullundur Brigade’.

  This was a printed proclamation, as was the first part of the second one. But the final and most crucial part of the second proclamation, which spoke of dispersal by ‘force of arms’, was only read out.23

  The first part said:

  It is hereby proclaimed to all whom it may concern, that no person residing in the city is permitted or allowed to leave the city in his own private or hired conveyance, or on foot without a pass from one of the following officers

  The Deputy Commissioner

  The Superintendent of Police—Mr Rehill

  The Deputy Superintendent of Police—Mr Plomer

  The Assistant Commissioner—Mr Beckett

  Mr Connor, Magistrate

  Mr Seymour, Magistrate

  Ara Muhammad Hussain, Magistrate

  The Police Officer-in-charge of the City Kotwali

  This will be a special form and pass

  The next part of the proclamation, which was only read out, said:

  No person residing in the Amritsar city is permitted to leave his house after 8 p.m.

  Any persons found in the streets after 8 p.m. are liable to be shot.

  No procession of any kind is permitted to parade the streets in the city, or any part of the city, or outside of it, at any time. Any such processions or any gathering of four men would be looked upon and treated as an unlawful assembly and dispersed by force of arms, if necessary.

  A note by Irving clarified, ‘I have put in the words “if necessary” in the draft which I was asked to edit in legal language so as to bring it into line with “liable to be shot” in paragraph 2. 14-4-19’24

  But did the addition of these words really have any preventive impact or was it only to protect Dyer and Irving?

  This second (ambiguous) statement was read out in Urdu and Punjabi and it is the addition of the last two words that indicated that some kind of warning would be given before shooting. The additional information that people would be shot if they were out after 8 p.m., also made it confusing for most. Many who heard it may have thought that people would only be shot after 8 p.m. if they were still on the streets. In any case, the proclamation was made at 19 places, none of which were close to Jallianwala Bagh or even the Golden Temple—the most crowded part of the city and an area where even visitors were likely to throng to. This fact was discussed during the recording of the statement of the Government of Punjab at the Hunter Committee hearings in December 1919.

  During the cross-examination, the Naib Tehsildar also clarified that the last and most crucial part of the proclamation was not printed and thus not handed out:

  A: The printed one was as follows:—‘The people of Amritsar are hereby warned that if there is any damage to property or life in the city of Amritsar or at any places outlying it’. . .

  Q: Was that the notification that was printed?

  A: Yes, this was printed.

  Q: The one about meetings was not printed?

  A: It was part of this.

  Q: The other about going out at night after 8 pm, was it printed or not?

  A: That was not printed.25

  The printed notices were only distributed by the Naib Tehsildar to those who were attending the meetings, and as he was being heckled throughout, it is doubtful if anyone was really interested in reading them. Khan remembered the crowd mocking his words in disbelief and speaking about their own meeting to be held later, at 4 p.m.26

  Not reading out the proclamation near the Golden Temple was another serious mistake. Copies of it were not pasted at the entrance to Jallianwala Bagh, nor were the Kotwali policemen told that they must prevent a crowd from gathering at Jallianwala Bagh in the evening. This could have been done simply by placing a guard at the single corridor which led in and out of the Bagh.

  Not only were insufficient announcements made and the notices not printed in toto, the process of making the proclamation across the city came to an abrupt end when the afternoon sun blazed overhead.

  DSP Plomer laconically provided the reason for which the promulgation was insufficiently advertised, in his evidence to the Hunter Committee. He thought that 8,000 to 10,000 people had heard the proclamation by 3 o’clock:

  Q: You thought that was sufficient notice for a town like Amritsar to give of an important proclamation?

  A: I did not think anything. When it was too hot to walk in the city I took the nearest route out.

  Q: You did not suggest to the General that a longer time might be given?

  A: No. When we got to the Majid Mandir the General remarked that it was getting too hot for the troops so took the route to Lohgar Gate.27

  Q: And then this proclamation was stopped?

  A: Yes.

  During the recording of evidence by the Hunter Committee, O’Dwyer was asked about the ‘certain precautions’ that had been laid down which officials would have to comply with, as enormous powers had been vested in them. From his answers, it became clear that Dyer had neither gone to the area around Jallianwala Bagh, nor made any proclamation there:

  Q: You told the committee that Jallianwala Bagh was the place where meetings were frequently held, good meetings, bad meetings and all sorts of meetings?

  O’ Dwyer: Yes, that was my information. I was speaking only of inflammatory meetings. I had heard of no other meetings there.

  (Later O’Dwyer added that there had been a suggestion that this could have been a prayer meeting.)

  Q: And this must have been known to the civil authorities in Amritsar. Well, when he started on his tour through certain parts of Amritsar City on the 13th of April to prohibit meetings, as you say, why should he have not gone of all places to Jallianwala Bagh to proclaim this notice?

  O’Dwyer: I fancy that if he had gone to Jallianwala Bagh, he would have found it empty. It is only used when a great gathering assembles there.

  Q: But this is the place, as you have stated, frequently used for the purpose of meetings. If it was his object to prohibit meetings it was an ordinary precaution that certain amount of publicity should have been given to the prohibition notice at that particular place and especially by pasting the notice there which was circulated in the town of Amritsar?

  O’Dwyer: I do not suppose General Dyer knew of the existence of the Jallianwala Bagh.

  Q: I see there were with him Mr Miles Irving and Mr Plomer who has been all his life in Amritsar. He would have consulted them as to what places he should have this notice circulated in?

  O’Dwyer: The Deputy Commissioner says in his report that they went through the cit
y and the proclamation was read.

  Q: On that point I very closely questioned the gentleman who read the notice and so on, but it was certainly not done, and General Dyer himself in his evidence said that he did not have it pasted on the Jallianwala Bagh?

  O’Dwyer: Yes.

  Q: Then further he says in his report that at 12.40 while he was still in the city he got news that a meeting was going to be held at Jallianwala Bagh at 4.30 pm?

  O’Dwyer: Yes, the Deputy Commissioner says it had been advertised.

  As became clear during the questioning, Dyer was more interested in how to dispose his troops and he ‘took absolutely no step to send any notices there (Jallianwala Bagh) or to send anyone there to tell them they ought not to be there.’28

  And lastly, the term ‘unlawful assembly’ in a public space was also confusing. Jallianwala Bagh was not a public space—it was ‘private property owned in common by several people’ and its narrow approach kept it discreetly away from the public sphere. If people met there, it could be construed as a private assembly—so long as the people arrived separately and not together in groups of four. Further, as noted earlier, other assemblies had been held there: the police were aware of it, and had not stopped anyone.

  In his report to O’Dwyer, dated 14 April 1919, sent at 1 a.m., Irving admitted that, regarding the proposed meeting at Jallianwala Bagh, ‘the General said he would attend it with 100 men.’ This was told to Irving at around 12.40 p.m. on 13 April.29

  ‘On 13th April, 1919 (yesterday) I accompanied the Brigadier-General Commanding into the city where two proclamations were read forbidding all public meetings. . . these were read by the beat of drum and explained. We went through the city and the proclamation was read in a number of places. It was not only read in legal phraseology but explained by a professional public orator.’

  Irving’s statement was somewhat of an exaggeration, as already mentioned.

  He further said: ‘A meeting had been advertised for 4.30 pm that day and the General said he would attend it with 100 men. I did not think that the meeting would be held, or if held would disperse. So I asked the General to excuse me as I wanted to go to the Fort.’

  It is inexplicable that Irving decided not to attend even though Amritsar was under the joint control of military and civil authorities. Nor did he do anything to ensure that the people of Amritsar (under his care) were aware of the dangers of going to that meeting, by pasting posters and so on.

  For the residents of Amritsar who wanted to attend, the fact that a respected local elder and barrister, Kanhya Lal, was going to address the assembly meant they could expect to receive some ‘sound advice’.

  Kanhya Lal himself said in his evidence to the Congress Committee: ‘I heard that some men (who have not been traced up to this time to my knowledge) had on the 13th April, proclaimed that a lecture would be given at Jallianwala Bagh by me. This led or induced the public to think that I should have given them some sound advice on the situation then existing.’30

  A boy with a tin can had also gone around announcing that Kanhya Lal would preside over the 4.30 p.m. meeting at Jallianwala Bagh. He too could not be traced later. Neither could Hans Raj, the person said to have called the meeting, be questioned about the meeting, as he became a government witness in the ‘Amritsar Conspiracy Case’. He did not give evidence before the Hunter Committee as he had left for Mesopotamia by then.

  Some historians suspect that Hans Raj was used to gather a crowd because Dyer wanted a large number of people to be ‘punished’.

  That the meeting was going to be held at 4.30 p.m. was confirmed at 1 p.m. to Dyer, who remained at Ram Bagh till at least 4 p.m., and later said, ‘I went there as soon as I could. I had to think the matter out. I had to organise my forces and make up my mind as to where I might put my pickets. I thought I had done enough to make the crowd not meet. If they were going to meet I had to consider the military situation and make up my mind what to do, which took me a certain amount of time.’31

  The ‘military situation’ meant he must have asked for a map of the area and studied how he could attack the enemy—with maximum impact. He was proud of his technical skills.

  Something of what was going through his mind is in his biography, The Life of General Dyer, written by Ian Colvin, in close association with Dyer’s wife, Anne, in 1929. Puzzled about how to attack the ‘rebels’, he had exulted over the ‘gift of fortune’ when the ‘rebels’ decided to congregate in an open space. He wanted to take ‘immediate action’ on the Amritsar ‘mob’ which had tasted blood and ‘began to feel themselves masters of the situation’. He realised that he needed to bring a sizeable crowd together, but how could he do it?32

  In the narrow streets, among the high houses and mazy lanes and courtyards of the city the rebels had the advantage of position. They could harass him and avoid his blow. Street fighting he knew to be a bloody, perilous, inconclusive business, in which, besides, the innocent were likely to suffer more than the guilty. Moreover, if the rebels chose their ground cunningly, and made their stand in the neighbourhood of the Golden Temple, there was the added risk of kindling the fanaticism of the Sikhs. Thus he was in this desperate situation: he could not wait and he could not fight.

  The fact that the rebels themselves chose to go to an open space, where they could be corralled in was an unexpected ‘gift of fortune’: something he could only have hoped for and not devised. As his admirer Ian Colvin said, now the enemy was within easy reach of his sword. ‘The enemy had committed such another mistake as prompted Cromwell to exclaim at Dunbar. “The Lord hath delivered them into my hands.”’33

  For Dyer, this was not a murderous attack on defenceless, innocent people. For him the people assembled were all guilty; it was a state of war, in which he wanted to teach them a ‘moral’ lesson. He assumed all of those present at Jallianwala Bagh to be guilty without any idea of who they were.

  Dyer’s planning was impeccable. He ensured that he conscripted soldiers who were sufficiently removed from Punjab so they were able to shoot without compunction. He deliberately took no British troops, because he wanted no blame to fall on them. He took none of the other commanders—what would have happened if they resisted his orders?

  He was thus accompanied by twenty-five Gurkhas and twenty-five Baluchis armed with rifles. These were fierce fighters and the Gurkhas, especially, were incredibly loyal. They had no connections with Punjab, they did not even know the language. Aware that if the crowd rushed towards him, there might be hand-to-hand combat, he took forty Gurkhas armed only with khukris. He was prepared for a bloodbath. Knowing fully well that they would not fit into the entrance, he took two armoured cars. This was more for effect and, if things got out of hand, for escape. He also placed pickets all along the routes to the Bagh so people could be shot even if they escaped.

  As the Hunter Committee admitted in its report to the British Parliament in 1920, ‘It appears that General Dyer, as soon as he heard about the contemplated meeting, made up his mind to go there with troops and fire’ because they had ‘defied his authority’ by assembling. The fact that they may have been unaware of his prohibitory orders was not important for him. He wanted to create a ‘wide impression’.

  He said, ‘If they disobeyed my orders it showed that there was complete defiance of law, that there was something much more serious behind it than I imagined, that therefore these were rebels, and I must not treat them with gloves on. They had come to fight if they defied me, and I was going to teach them a lesson.’34

  In his defence, British historians have said that he took a very small force and that he was surprised by the crowd that he found, forcing him to react the way he did. This is contrary to the facts. He had carefully calculated how he would spread the force available to him all around the city and an aircraft flying over the meeting had already conveyed to him the strength of the crowd.35

  Among the British troops, he had the following allocated already:

  Duty Men
/>
  Station pickets 37

  Bridge guard 11

  Detachment Tarn Taran 22

  Armed train to Pathankote 26

  Armoured train 17

  Fort Govindgarh 80

  Cantonments 190

  389

  And Indian troops

  Duty Men

  Detachment, Dhariwal 26

  Detachment, Tarn Taran 34

  Train escorts 80

  Repairing line escort 10

  Construction train 10

  Blockhouse on railway from 40

  Amritsar to Atari

  Amritsar pickets 132

  Kotwali (reinforcing police) 50

  38236

  He stationed around fifty men to protect his Ram Bagh base, and also dropped off five pickets of forty each en route to Jallianwala Bagh. It was thus that he was left with ‘fifty rifles, forty armed Gurkhas and two armoured cars.’ But he also had another fifty stationed at the Kotwali, which was not very far from Jallianwala Bagh.

  Of course, the people assembling at the Bagh had no inkling of his plan, while he knew about their meeting. The CID, based in the Kotwali, were keeping a close eye on the assembly, as they had been asked to do. They too did not request people to leave, or stop them from going to the Bagh, following the morning proclamation by Dyer. This would have added to the confidence of the gathering at Jallianwala Bagh, as the police would have watched them assemble and done nothing about it. Some members of the CID and a few police constables were even seen at the gathering—as was normal.

  It is also interesting to note that despite the large presence of the army and the discomfort and deprivations they had been subjected to, the people of Amritsar still had faith in the system, in each other and, to a large extent, the British. They were defiant, but also sombre—after the deaths on 10 April, they could not imagine that a peaceful gathering, so close to the Golden Temple, on the festive day of Baisakhi could become a bloodbath. The events of 10 April were seen as an aberration. The two days of calm that followed had given them false hope, leading them to believe that things had calmed down and they could carry on with their satyagraha.