“One hundred years on, the shooting, and the lack of an official apology by the British government, continues to court controversy.”

By Vanessa Holburn

ON APRIL 13, 1919, British army officer General Reginald Dyer marched his troops into the Jallianwala Bagh in the Punjab city of Amritsar and ordered them to open fire.

The crowd assembled before Dyer’s soldiers was not asked to disperse and no warning was issued before 1,650 rounds of ammunition were unloaded.

After ten minutes of constant and targeted shooting, Dyer’s men left. Officially 379 civilians were killed, with thousands wounded. Some were left at the scene of the massacre overnight as a curfew prevented their retrieval. The bullets killed Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims, pilgrims and political speakers, farmers, traders and merchants, men, women and children. The youngest victim was an infant of just six weeks.

The event shattered the relationship between India and its colonial rulers and galvanized the nationalist movement to push for full independence. And yet, the Amritsar Massacre remains a little-known part of British military history.

A centenary ignored

The tragedy was a key moment in the road to a free India and the creation of Pakistan, after a violent partition. The former Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab, Sir Michael O’Dwyer, was assassinated in 1940 for his role in the massacre and the event is blamed for the political and personal demise of Edwin Montagu, Britain’s Secretary of State for India at the time, and of the Liberal party he represented.

One hundred years on, the shooting, and the lack of an official apology by the British government, continues to court controversy, overshadowing state visits and souring relations with the British Punjabi community.

A campaign by Virendra Sharma, the Member of Parliament for Ealing Southall, currently seeks an apology and demands coverage of that colonialism be added to Britain’s national curriculum. And while the anniversary of the event regularly prompts questions in Parliament, last year’s centenary of Amritsar was overshadowed by Brexit negotiations. Will contrition now ever be expressed?

Oppression and rebellion

General Dyer’s order to open fire that fateful day was a reaction to ongoing political unrest in the area. Although the Punjab had supported the British war effort against Imperial Germany and the Central Powers in 1914, by 1919 Amritsar suffered, like the rest of the country. Rising living costs were taking a toll, along with ever-increasing taxes to cover war debt. The outbreak of Spanish flu only added to the sense of crisis.

The passing of the Rowlatt Act that March caused consternation. The legislation, which was designed to curb nationalism, empowered colonial officials to invoke press censorship, and imprison agitators by way of juryless hearings. O’Dwyer, the lieutenant governor, used the law to close local media and silence politicians. Frustrated citizens took up Gandhi’s call for hartals (strikes) and attended mass meetings with political figures such as Saifuddin Kitchlew and Satya Pal.

When O’Dwyer arrested Gandhi as he travelled to Amritsar and deported Kitchlew and Satya Pal, the city rose up.

On April 10, an angry mob surged towards the Amritsar’s British quarter; government soldiers opened fire. The rioters destroyed buildings and property, killing and attacking several Europeans. Rebels outside the city even cut telegraph wires and pulled up railway tracks. The city’s civil administration, called on the military to take control.

With the arrival of troops, arrests made and services cut off, the violence died down. By April 12, Dyer had assumed control in Amritsar. When he heard that crowds were gathering again, he took his troops and successfully dispersed the demonstrators. Dyer also issued a proclamation to make it clear the military was in charge and assembly was forbidden. On the 13^th, he toured the city, and the proclamation was read aloud and distributed. However, when it became clear that a political meeting would go ahead in the popular public rest space, the Jallianwala Bagh, Dyer marched there with his soldiers. This time no one was given the opportunity to leave.

Why should the British say sorry?

To modern eyes, firing into a mass of peaceful, unarmed civilians participating in a political rally is unacceptable. Add to this the fact that many of the people gathered at the Jallianwala Bagh were innocent bystanders.

The physical layout of the space – a roughly six-acre public square enclosed by walls and buildings – also meant a rapid exit from the area once the shooting began would be virtually impossible.

Dyer waited six hours afterwards to send a minimal report of what had happened to his superiors; O’Dwyer did not push for further details. At first, the general was cast as the saviour of the hour, putting down rebels to spare further bloodshed in the region.

It took six months before British authorities in India even launched a probe into the incident. The Hunter Commission, named for former Solicitor-General for Scotland William Lord Hunter, began its investigation in late October 1919, and only after much pressure both in India and back at home.

This slowness to react, and the fact that the committee then failed to reach a majority verdict did nothing to heal the rift between British authorities and the inhabitants of India.

The Viceroy’s Legislative Council and the English Parliament also failed to agree on appropriate action.

In the end, Dyer escaped punishment. And although he was asked to resign his post — knowing he would not be given another — he kept his pension and returned to England, where he still had many supporters. When he died in 1927 his funeral was a grand affair.

A dramatization of the massacre appeared in the 1982 film Gandhi.

But do governments apologize?

Despite the passage of time, many in Britain today feel an apology for the shooting, as well as the poor handling of massacre’s aftermath, is entirely appropriate.

After all, it’s not unheard of for governments to offer official remorse for historic wrongs. The British have apologized for the slave trade, the indifference to the Irish potato famine of the 1840s and more recently the ‘Bloody Sunday’ massacre of 1972. German Chancellor Willy Brandt knelt before a Holocaust memorial in Warsaw in 1970. F.W. de Klerk showed contrition for Apartheid. Both Canadian and Australian governments have likewise apologized for their countries’ historic mistreatment of indigenous populations, while statements of remorse have come from the French, the Russians, and the Japanese for past wrongs.

Many are uncomfortable with the idea of saying sorry for an event in the past. Tony Blair’s above apology was criticized for ‘moral vacuousness’ and a sense of nationalism may explain why some feel saying sorry for events you cannot be held accountable for is “virtue signalling.”

Although it’s fair to say that some influential Britons did criticize Dyer at the time, including former Prime Minister H. H. Asquith and Secretary of State for the War at the time Winston Churchill who called Dyer’s actions “unutterably monstrous,” an apology is perhaps overdue; not just for the murders, but for the British government’s bungling of the investigation.

The inaction is indicative to many of the institutionalized prejudices of the Raj itself, a factor rarely addressed in the history books, but one that is perhaps overdue a dispassionate revaluation. Finally, it pays to consider that an apology is made for the benefit of the victims, and not the perpetrator.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Vanessa Holburn is the author of the new book The Amritsar Massacre: The British Empire’s Worst Atrocity. A journalist with over two decades of experience, she has worked and travelled extensively in Asia, with some of that time spent in India. Her work has appeared in national consumer and trade press and digital outlets, her consumer press credits include The Mirror, The Independent on Sunday, The Sun, Private Eye, Yours and Woman’s Own. Holburn’s latest book, How To Be An Activist, follows her involvement in the #LucysLaw campaign. It was released earlier this year. A third is in pre-production.