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FREEDOM MOVEMENT
encyclopedia
PHASE IV - 1918-1950 AGE OF GANDHI , SUBHAS, NEHRU, PATEL
Khilafat Movement
1919
Government of India Act
1919
Non-co-operation Movement
1920
Dandi March
1930
Round Table Conference
1930-31
Quit India Struggle
1942
INA Trials
1945
Freedom and Partition
1947
Birth of Indian Republic
1950
One of the worst political crimes of the
twentieth century was committed in Punjab
during 1919. Gandhiji's call for a country-
wide
hartal
to protest against the Black Acts
received a tremendous response on 30th March
and 6th April. The agitated mood of the
people and Hindu-Muslim solidarity demon-
strated on the hartal days and on the 9th April
celebration of the Ramnavami festival made
the Lt. Governor Michael O'Dwyer's admini-
stration panicky. Gandhi was banned from
entering Punjab. Two popular leaders, Kitch-
lew and Sathyapal from Amritsar, were ar-
rested. All these provocations led to hartals
and mass demonstrations in Lahore, Kasur,
Gujranwala and Amritsar. In Amritsar, the
police firing on demonstrators provoked some
of them to commit acts of violence. The next
day the city was handed over to Brigadier-
General Dyer. He carried out a number of in-
discriminate arrests and banned meetings and
gatherings.
On 13th April-the day of the
Baisakhi
festival- a meeting was called in the afternoon
at the Jallianwala Bagh, a ground enclosed on
all sides. Thousands of people, from sur-
rounding villages who came to the fairs in
Amritsar and were unaware of the ban order,
gathered at the meeting. Suddenly General
Dyer appeared there with troops and without
any warning to the people, ordered firing on
the completely peaceful and defenceless
crowd. The fusillade continued till Dyer's
ammunition ran out. About a thousand people
are estimated to have been killed. The cold-
blood carnage, Dyer admitted, was perpe-
trated
‘
to strike terror into the whole of
Punjab.’
The horror of Jallianwala Bagh is re-
flected in the account given by Valentine
Chirol before the Hunter Commission of In-
quiry which investigated the disturbances in
the Punjab.
Gen. Dyer
Jallianwala Bagh site map
PUNJAB HORRORS !!
GALLOWS IN PUBLIC!
RAIDS ON VILLAGES!
WHIPPING OF SCHOOL CHILDREN
(Bombay Cronicle, Monday, December, 1919)
PUNJAB 1919
How shall one love console thee or assuage
Thy piteous wounds? How shall our grief requite
The hate that-scourges and the hands that smite
Thy loveliness with rods of bitter rage?
Lo! let thine anguish be our battle-gage
To wreck the terror of the tyrant's might
That mocks with ruthless scorn thy tragic plight,
and mars with shame thine ancient heritage:
O beautiful ! O broken and betrayed!
Endure thou still, unconquered, unafraid,
O mournful queen! O martyred Draupadi!
The sacred rivers of thy stricken blood
Shall prove the five-fold stream of Freedom's flood.
and guard the watch-towers of our Liberty!
SAROJINI NAIDU
more but practically unarmed and all quite
defenceless. The panic stricken multitude broke
at once but for ten consecutive minutes he kept
up a merciless fusillade, in all 1,500 rounds,
on that seething mass of humanity, caught like
rats in a trap, vainly rushing for the few
narrow exits or lying flat on the ground to
escape the rain of bullets which he personally
directed to the points where the crowd was the
thickest. The ‘targets’ to use his own words,
were good and then at the end of those ten min-
utes, having almost exhausted his ammuni-
tion, he marched his men off by the way he
came.''
Dyer does not stand alone. The Govern-
ment of India, a section of the British people -
men and women - both in India and Britain,
endorsed his action and rewarded him for it.
Lala Nathuram, one of the eye witnesses
to the massacre said before the Congress in-
quiry committee : I
went to the top storey of
my house to find what it was... a boy came
Eternal India