The legacy of Jallianwala Bagh

Salil Misra

There is a famous 19th century saying regarding the British. It was said that the British acquired an empire in a state of absent mindedness. To which it was added in the 20th century that, most laudably, they also lost it in a similar state of absent mindedness. In between acquiring and losing the empire, is the story of great contradictions and ambivalences. Nothing represents the contradictions better that the period of two years from 1917 to 1919. In 1917, the British parliament made what later came to be known as the famous August 1917 Declaration on India. The British parliament declared that preparing the Indian people for “progressive realisation of responsible government” was the aim of the British policy in India. This was a remarkable statement because it came very close to what the Indians were demanding at this stage. Never before or after, in the entire history of British imperialism in India, was there such a narrow gap between what was demanded and what was conceded. The declaration was appreciated and applauded in India as a noble statement of British intentions vis-à-vis Indians.

However in less than two years time, on 13 April 1919, the same British government inflicted on the people of Amritsar the most barbaric genocide on the auspicious day of Baisakhi, killing hundreds and seriously injuring thousands in an unprovoked act of genocide. Is there an explanation for this great contradiction between the August Declaration of 1917 and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919? Why did Jallianwala happen? What is its legacy today? 

There is a generic explanation. There was a clear ambivalence in the British self-image vis-à-vis the rest of the world. There were broadly two different and mutually opposite facets of this self-image. There was a liberal-democratic dimension. The British — politicians, administrators, scholars, civil society members — genuinely believed that Britain was the laboratory for the democratic experiment for the world, and it was, in some measure, their responsibility to spread the democratic idea and ideal to the rest of the world.

‘White Man’s Burden’

At the same time, there was also a conservative-imperialist self-image. In this self-image, colonies were considered very important for the very survival of the Empire. The same set of people, who nurtured the democratic liberal ideals, also believed that minus India and other colonies, Great Britain would be simply reduced to a little Britain, an extremely small country. Both the liberal ideas and the imperialist ideas co-existed in the minds and hearts of many British people. Sometimes they combined in ideas such as the ‘White Man’s Burden’, according to which imperial connection was necessary precisely to spread ideas of liberalism and democracy to countries of Asia and Africa. It should thus be clear that whereas the August declaration was inspired by the ideas of democracy and liberalism, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre was a manifestation of imperialist fears and insecurities.

There was, perhaps, another reason for the Jallianwala massacre. It had something to do with Punjab and how the British looked at it. Punjab was truly a colonial heartland. The army from Punjab had played a major role in suppressing the First War of Independence in 1857 and constituted a sizeable component of the total India army. Prior to World War I, nearly 60 per cent of the entire Indian army came from Punjab. The province was needed by the British not just to protect the frontiers of British India but also to maintain peace within. 

High stakes in Punjab

Punjab had experienced visible prosperity compared to other regions. There had been considerable expansion of rail, road and the canal networks since the 19th century. Punjab was clearly British imperialism’s best face in India. It came very close to the British imagination of a good colonial society. The province figured prominently in the creation of the support system for the British imperialism. The British hoped that, when other parts of the country would rise in rebellion, Punjab would come to their rescue. It was, therefore, nothing short of a big shock to discover murmurs of protest and resentment emanating from Punjab. 

The Ghadar party, even though it was active outside India, in USA and Canada, consisted of overseas Punjabis, disgruntled with the British. The Ghadar movement was suppressed by the British. But more protest began to develop within Punjab. The British panicked at this and were all set to put it down before the flames of protest spread further. The British could not simply afford to lose Punjab as their major bastion. The stakes were too high. Any piece was worth paying.

What was the chain of events that led up to the Jallianwala massacre? In order to deal effectively with the violent activities that followed the Swadeshi movement, the British created an Act through the Legislative Assembly, under which many war-time restrictions were to be extended even after the War. In particular, it facilitated the trial of offenders without any jury or right to appeal. The Act (popularly known as the Rowlatt Act, named after Justice Rowlatt who framed it) also authorised the government to arrest any Indian without warrant and confine suspects without trial for up to one year. The Act was passed in spite of unanimous opposition by the Indian members of the Assembly. As one protesting slogan from Punjab said: The Act meant no appeal, no daleel, no vakil (no appeal, no legal proceedings, no lawyer). Gandhi was offended by the Rowlatt Act and launched a Satyagraha against it. There was an appeal for boycott on April 6, 1913. The Satyagraha was most intense in Punjab and a violent confrontation happened on April 10 in Amritsar between the police and the protesters in which around 20 persons lost their lives in police firing. In retaliation, the irate crowd set fire to may government buildings and killed five Europeans. The crowd also attacked and injured an English lady Ms Sherwood.

This was a completely spontaneous and leaderless act without any planning or preparation. However, the British saw this as a prelude to the unfolding of a great conspiracy to overthrow the British rule from India with help from Afghanistan. It was all the more startling for the British that the nerve centre of the conspiracy was Punjab, their favourite province and a colonial heartland. This was nothing short of a nightmare for the British and created the justification for the massacre of April 13. The city of Amritsar was handed over to the army on April 11 and all assemblies were declared illegal by Brigadier General Dyer, who took over the administration of the city. 

The day that brought doom

April 13, 1919, was the day of Baisakhi, a sacred day for Sikhs. Around 20,000 persons assembled at Jallianwala Bagh, close to the Golden Temple. Many of the people gathered had come from outside and may not have known that curfew had been clamped in the city. General Dyer came with his army and immediately ordered firing directly at the people. The firing went on for 10 minutes killing hundreds of people (378 by British and close to 1,800 by a general estimate) and injuring thousands. The firing ended after 1,650 rounds had been fired and the entire ammunition was exhausted. After the firing, Dyer ordered his troops to withdraw leaving all the dead and the injured.

The event of April 13 shocked all Indians, including those who had in the past supported the British. Gandhi made an appeal to the British to enquire into the events of Amritsar. The British set up the Hunter Commission of Enquiry, which also included three Indians. Gandhi was, however, not happy with the terms of reference of the British enquiry and decided to boycott it. He set up a separate Congress Committee of enquiry with Motilal Nehru as the Chair.

The official enquiry exonerated Michael O’Dwyer, the Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab. Indian members of the Official Commission, who consisted of the loyalist elements, disagreed with the major recommendations of the official report and submitted their minority report holding both O’Dwyer and General Dyer guilty. 

A separate enquiry was held in London on Dyer. He was made to retire with only half his pension. However, there was support for him among the conservative sections of the British population. They collected an amount of £26,000 and donated it to him for having saved the British Empire. Some part of the raised money also came from the Europeans living in India who thought that Dyer’s action had saved them. 

The unrepentant General  

There is evidence that till his death in 1927, Dyer remained unrepentant for his act. He had clearly told the Hunter Commission: “It was no longer a question of merely dispersing the crowd but one of producing a sufficient moral effect, from a military point of view not only on those who were present, but more specially throughout the Punjab.” 

Dyer took great pride in being an army man and looked upon the society as a battlefield in which war and peace were the only two options. The Lieutenant-Governor Michael O’Dwyer too retired from active service and settled down in the British countryside. 

Unfortunately for him, there was a teenager boy by the name of Udham Singh present at the Jallianwala Bagh on 13 April. The young Udham Singh witnessed the genocide and carried the scars of the massacre with him. He took revenge for Jallianwala 20 years later. As a 40-year-old man, he went to England and shot dead O’Dwyer. Udham Singh was tried and hanged in 1940. Gandhi strongly disapproved of O’Dwyer’s killing. True to his conviction, he remained opposed to any form of retribution or retaliatory justice. As he had said during the course of enquiry on the massacre: “We do not want to punish Dyer. We have no desire for revenge. We want to change the system that produced Dyer.” Gandhi spent the remaining years of his life struggling not against any individuals, but against systems of injustice and tyranny.

The story of Jallianwala Bagh ended here. But it became an important part of the collective psyche of a whole generation of Indians both in Punjab and elsewhere. It fed into how the Indian people understood the British rule. Before the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, there were two different shades of anti-British politics. The newly created middle class, concentrated mainly in the big cities, practiced a politics that was liberal, constitutionalist and non-violent in character. The lower classes — peasants, artisans and workers — were more spontaneous and often violent. These two strands maintained their separate and parallel existence prior to Jallianwala. The British often made the mistake of overlooking these distinctions and failed to treat the two politics separately. Gandhi fully understood this distinction and tried to bring the two together into a composite anti-imperialist politics that was non-constitutional and non-violent at the same time and involved both the middle and the lower classes in a seamless, multi-class grid of nationalist politics. The episode of Jallianwala, more than any other event, became the catalyst for this anti-imperialist nationalist politics. It became clear that although there were many strands internal to British politics and likewise to Indian politics. But the most important political faultline lay between British imperialism on the one hand and Indian nationalism on the other. This created the foundations for a powerful liberation struggle of Indian people against British imperialism under the leadership of Gandhi. Jallianwala Bagh was in many ways the starting point of this process.

Jallianwala Bagh has left behind an important legacy. Under modern conditions, only those state systems carry legitimacy which seek to represent the energies and aspirations of the people. The British state in India was alien and, therefore, completely unrepresentative. It had no grip on the pulse of the people and generally over-reacted to all perceived threats and dangers. 

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre was one such reaction. It completely eroded whatever legitimacy the British may have exercised while ruling India. In a single episode, the moral authority passed from the hands of the British to those of Indian nationalism. The British legitimacy was gone and gone forever, even though they were able to carry on till 1947. The event of Jallianwala Bagh carries this important lesson for all rulers and state systems — whether democratic or authoritarian.

— The writer is a historian at the Ambedkar University Delhi and currently its pro vice-chancellor