'Disneyfication' of Old Amritsar

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar is not simply a tragic tale of the past — the horror of the British colonial enterprise crushes the soul. General Reginald Dyer and his contingent fired over 1,650 rounds at 20,000 innocent, unarmed people, including children, for daring to transgress an order banning public gatherings and the right to express dissent — especially against the Rowlatt Act, which allowed detention without trial for 'seditious' activities.

This monstrous carnage of April 13 is eternally engraved in the collective consciousness of Indians. The visceral violence and collective trauma represent a watershed moment in acts of remembrance — crucial to the idea of nation-building, an exercise every nation undertakes, often by looking at its past through a homogenous and linear lens to shape its present identity. In popular discourse, the massacre also marked the rise of Mahatma Gandhi and the advent of mass struggle through the Rowlatt Satyagraha.

Yet over a hundred years since, it is time to disrupt dominant narratives that tightly compartmentalise what constitutes national identity and experience. We must also reflect on the role of General Dyer’s troops — 25 Gorkhas and 25 Baluchis — ordered to fire at common people. Their stories remain buried. Fate played a cruel hand: thousands were lured into the British Army during World War I, misled by calculations of leaders like Gandhi who believed loyalty would earn them a homeland after the war. Some of the soldiers returned, only to be commanded to fire at their own people.

Were the soldiers conditioned to display blind obedience to authority in a dehumanising system, or did they have some agency amidst it all? What were the experiences of Indian women present in the city that day, especially considering that one of the supposed triggers of Dyer’s inhuman actions was the assault on a British woman by some Indian men, just days before the massacre?

Was freedom fighter Udham Singh present that day? There remains scarce awareness of his legacy, now appropriated by politicians using Sikh symbols to outdo one another. Was the recent renovation — what Kim Wagner calls “Disneyfication" of Old Amritsar city — necessary? By painting bright murals and trimming lush gardens, has the government diluted the horror the space evoked?

Does it not risk making a mockery of the absolute horror the site represents, sending shudders down the spine of anyone who stepped into the bullet-riddled space? By transforming the site, has the government diluted its haunting character, inviting visitors to voyeuristically revel in this chapter of history, rather than confront its painful, raw truth?

It is our responsibility to remember Jallianwala Bagh, not just through linear narratives, but through fragmented memories, personal testimonies and literary depictions, so future generations can reflect on, feel, and even critique our nation’s rich, melancholic, and often unsettling history.

It would be prudent to find new ways of looking at key events that shape our collective consciousness. Other people’s histories can often be read comfortably, like reading a novel — impersonal and detached. But finding ways to engage with our own history, to locate a space where personal memories and official public testimonies do not merge seamlessly, like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, but rather like an uncomfortable light that exposes fault lines and gaps, can help us critically examine our history.

It would be worthwhile to apply a literary lens to the massacre, revisiting the works of writers like Manto and Intizar Hussain — who were deeply affected by it. Their writings allow us to go beyond homogenous narratives and construct a memory of pain that is often diverse, non-linear, wounded, and fragmented. They help us understand psychological violence — how an insurmountable and eternal wound lingers, how an event can impact people in a plethora of ways, and how the melancholia of a community shapes its historical perspective.

Memories often carry the burden of transporting our consciousness from present to past and vice versa, sometimes even merging the two. It is now our responsibility to remember the massacre — and other such key events — through personal testimonies and literary depictions — to pass on from generation to generation, compelling each of us to feel the nuances of that melancholic suffering, to reflect and even critique our nation’s rich, sometimes contradictory, and often unsettling history.