Scars of freedom

In memory of...

Historic sites and monuments are evocative. We’re enchanted when we see the Taj Mahal as a symbol of eternal love. When walking through the haunted forests of Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, I felt my skin gooseflesh: above me and around me were the vibrations haunting  the air from the chantings of the priests centuries ago, said the  guide.

At Bamiyan, my heart felt desolate at the empty niches where the Taliban had blasted off the Buddhas. And at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, I looked at the narrow corridor from where the soldiers shot at the spectators and revellers inside in a horrific incident in 1919, I felt sad and angry.

Over the years, many details have become hazy, such as the exact number of people who got shot, killed or injured. But it does not matter to me at least; I resonate with the poet John Donne: “Every man’s death diminishes me.” What struck me was the fact that Winston Churchill called it “an event which stands in singular and solitary isolation”.

A flashback

The story goes thus. The British local commander, Brigadier General Reginald Dyer, had issued an order to avenge the alleged insult to an English missionary lady who reported that she had been molested on a street in Amritsar. He ordered that all Indians using that street should crawl on their hands and knees. He also authorised the indiscriminate whipping of natives who came within lathi length of British policemen. This had incensed the local population; they also were not to hold protest meetings.

It was hard to visualise that the peaceful walled garden we were in was the scene of so much carnage. It was a rainy morning although the bluster of the previous day had vanished, leaving threatening clouds. Green leafy trees sprinkled the remaining raindrops on us as we walked slowly around the garden. Neat paths intersected. On our left was a series of shrubbery cut in the shapes of soldiers in firing positions to remind us of what happened on that fateful day.

It was Baisakhi or spring festival time. Many had gathered in the Bagh, which is in the vicinity of the Golden Temple, both to celebrate the seasonal festival and to protest against the extraordinarily rigorous measures the government was taking to extract revenge. Most entrances had been closed in the Bagh and there was this one main entry way. So there was no escape route for the unarmed defenceless crowds there. So, on the fateful morning of April 13, 1919, General Dyer gave the order to his troops to shoot. It is said that for about 10 or 15 minutes, 1,650 rounds of ammunition were unloaded into the terrified crowd.

According to Churchill, “the Indians were packed together so that one bullet would drive through three or four bodies”. As usual, figures differ wildly. The British Indian sources give a figure of 39 identified dead, with approximately 1,100 dead, the Indian National Congress estimated 1,000 dead, with about 1,500 dead. The truth, as usual, would lie somewhere in between. Dyer’s offhand explanation was that his intention was not to disperse the meeting, but “to punish the Indians for disobedience”. Many, in fear and helplessness, stampeded towards the gates and lost their lives in the crush, while some jumped into a well within the compound of the garden. Now the well is closed to public, but a plaque near the site says that 120 bodies were removed from the well. 

One woman, on being questioned, said she saw men writhing in pain, and a young boy asked for water which she could not give as she had none, and there were heaps of bodies.

Apart from the well, there is a portion of a wall which still had bullet holes in them and visible from the entrance is the monument, which was designed in 1961 by American architect Benjamin Polk. This four-sided monument of red stone looks like a truncated obelisk, in a shallow tank.

Chronicling events

There is also a museum within the precincts of the garden which has a painting of the massacre and photographs of freedom fighters, quotations from Churchill’s speech denouncing the act, and yellowing snippets from newspapers at the time including a description of Sir Sankaran Nair, who resigned his membership of the Viceroy’s Executive Council in the Legistlative Council of Punjab in protest.

General Dyer added injury to insult when he told his superiors that he had been “confronted by a revolutionary army”. A committee of enquiry was formed to investigate the incident. General Dyer made no excuses for himself and even went so far as to say “that a little shooting would not do any good”, therefore did not stop shooting until the crowd dispersed. He also said that he did not make any effort to look to the wounded. “It’s not my job. Hospitals were open and they could have gone there.”

It was a horrendous act, cold bloodedly envisaged and executed, with no regret or remorse shown by Dyer. And surprisingly his story made him a martyr to many Englishmen with the Conservative party presenting him with a jewelled sword inscribed: “The Savior of the Punjab.”

The Hunter Commission, formed to look into the matter, took statements from witnesses over the following weeks after the massacre. Although the final report unanimously condemned Dyer’s actions, no penal or disciplinary action was taken as various superiors condoned his actions. He was, however, relieved of his command and he died of a stroke which paralysed him.

But the story does not end there. A young Sikh teenager from an orphanage was a witness on that day and vowed to avenge his countrymen. On March 13, 1940, in Caxton Hall, at a meeting, Udham Singh, the young witness, fired six shots at Sir Michael Dwyer, who was governor of Punjab at the time of the massacre. Singh was hanged at Pentonville Jail.

History is replete with such instances where power and avarice are stakes in the game. Yet the same game is played in all countries even now with innocents being slaughtered. Will we ever learn from the mistakes in history?

So a space in the Holy city, Amritsar, named after its owner Jalia, innocuous and used as a dumping ground sometimes in the early days, has now become the symbol of cruelty and colonial oppression, and of the martyrdom of the innocent. It was also the harbinger of events to come; India would recover its independence. Truly has the Scottish poet, Thomas Campbell, said: “Coming events cast their shadows before them.”