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FREEDOM MOVEMENT
running to me with the news that many had
been killed and wounded in the Jallianawal-
lah Bagh. As I knew that my son and brother
had gone to the bagh to attend the meeting I
became very anxious and at once proceeded to
the bagh. I found my son safe and entered to
the bagh by climbing over the wall... we saw a
very large heap of the dead and the wounded
near the exits... all the exits were blocked by
very large number of the dead and wounded...
I found my brother lying dead under three or
four dead bodies.... lots of kites were hovering
very low over the dead and wounded, so much
so that it was with great difficulty that one
could keep his turban on his head...."
One of the English news papers,
"The
Daily Heraldon"
(reproduced by
Amrita Ba-
zaar Patrika
12-1-1920)
wrote about the trag-
edy in the following words:
"The first detailed account of the
April shootings at Amritsar, in the
Punjab, shows it to have been one of the
most bloody massacres of modern his-
tory.
Of the various stones of imperial
oppression and the revolt against it by
the subject races of the British empire
which we print today, the most amazing
and stupefying in its naked horror is that
of the massacre of Amritsar. According
to the report of General Dyer’s evidence,
over 400 Indians were killed and 1,500
wounded by the deliberate firing on a
crowd of 5,000 who were listening to a
speech.
No blacker or fouler story has ever
been told. General Dyer is reported as
admitting that the crowd might have
gone away peacefully and without blood-
shed, and that his motive for the slaugh-
ter was merely that the crowd would in
that case have come back again and
laughed, and he would have made a fool
of himself!
...
with incredible indifference to hu-
man suffering, the British authorities left
the wounded unattended in the streets.
This, we presume,
was
done in order to
teach men and women, of a different civi-
lization and a different religion, what a
beautiful and merciful thing Christianity
is, and how sacred we British hold the
law of Him who said that we were to love
our enemies."
After the massacre, Martial law was
declared and the administration was still at
least nominally in the hands of civil authority.
Martial law was proclaimed at Amritsar on the
15th April 1919 and in the 5 districts of the
Punjab between 15th and 24th April.
The regime of martial law was a veritable
reign of terror characterised by acts of brutal-
ity and deliberate rascality unworthy of any
civilised government.
Dyer did not take any step to look after
the wounded at Jallianwala Bagh. On that
very day he issued a curfew order that all
persons must be indoors after 8 p.m. and
would go into the streets at the risk of being
shot at sight. It was surprising that the
wounded lay in their agony, the dead lay pu-
trefying in the hot atmosphere of an
Amritsar April night, that the vultures and
jackals came to tear the flesh from the bod-
ies of the innocent victims of this dreadful
holocaust while the anxious relatives of. in-
nocent victims remained terrified in their
houses. The curfew order in Amritsar was
maintained for weeks, and was admini-
stered with the utmost vigour.
Among General Dyer's inspirations was
the cutting off of the water supply and the
electric supply of the city. One of the most
astounding inventions of Dyer's fertile brain
was the crawling order. By his orders for
several days, everyone passing through the
street in which Miss Sherwood, the lady doc-
tor, was assaulted was ordered to crawl with
the belly to the ground. Floggings were a
common feature of the administration of
martial law in Amritsar as in other areas...A
public platform for whippings was erected
near the fort, and a number of triangles for
floggings were erected in various parts of the
city.
There were other indignities too. Some
people were made to touch the ground with
their foreheads by way of making them ac-
knowledge authority. Some persons were
limewashed and made to stand in the sun. As
many as 107 persons were kept in a public
cage without any overhead covering. They
were exposed to the burning sun.
In India, the Englishmen regarded Dyer as
the saviour of the British Empire. A fund was
set up for General Dyer to organize a memorial
of him. A collection was made by the English
ladies in India who started a Dyer Apprecia-
tion fund at Mussoorie. Dyer was presented
with a sword and a purse of 20,000 pounds.
'Mahatma Gandhi returned the awards he
had received, the Zulu War Medal and the
Kaiser-I-Hind Medal, declaring that ‘co-op-
eration in any shape or form with this satanic
government is sinful.’
One of those who was injured at
Jallianwallah Bagh, Udham Singh, shot dead
Sir Michael O'Dwer, who was Governor of
Punjab at the time of the tragedy, on 13th
March 1940 at Caxton Hall, London. Udham
Singh was sentenced to death and hanged on
12th June 1940. Justifying his action he
exclaimed,
"I
did it because I had a grudge against
him. He deserved it. He was the real culprit,
he wanted to crush the spirit of my people,
so I have crushed him. For full 21 years I
have been trying to wreak vengeance. I am
happy I have done the job. I am not scared of
death - I am dying for my country. I have
seen my people starving in India under the
British rule. I have protested against this. It
was my duty. What greater honour could be
bestowed on me than death for the sake of
my motherland? "
As a strong reaction to the bloodshed in
Punjab, Rabindranath Tagore turned the
knighthood awarded by the British. He wrote
a strong protest letter to the Viceroy on 31 st
May 1919 which reads as:
“The disproportionate seventy of the
punishments inflicted upon the unfortu-
nate people and the methods of carrying
them out, we are convinced, are without
parallel in the history of civilised gov-
ernments.... The accounts of insults and
sufferings undergone by our brothers
in the Punjab have trickled through the
gagged silence; reaching every comer
of India and the universal agony of
indignation roused in the hearts of our
people has been ignored by our rulers,
-
possibly congratulating themselves
for what they imagine as salutary les-
sons ....the very least that I can do for
my country is to take all consequences
upon myself in giving voice to the pro-
test of the millions of my countrymen,
surprised into a dumb anguish of terror.
The time has come when the
badges of honour make our shame
glaring in their incongruous context of
humiliation, and I for my part wish to
stand shorn of all special distinctions,
by the side of those of my countrymen,
who, for their so called insignificance,
are liable-to suffer a degradation not fit
for human beings... ”
Eternal India