THE DARK SECRET OF A GORKHA BATTALION
It was a century ago. 400 innocent Indians including a few young boys were massacred at Amritsar on 13 April 1919. “General” Dyer, whose villainy marks the nadir of British rule in India, ordered his troops to fire upon the crowd thus heralding the beginning of the end of the British Empire in India.
One question has long intrigued me– who were these soldiers who actually fired upon a mass of their own countrymen?
The prelude to the events of the 13th began a few days earlier. Amritsar had observed a hartal on 6 April heeding Gandhiji’s call for Satyagraha to protest against the draconian Rowlatt Act. The violence had escalated due to the arrests of the two leaders of the Satyagraha movement in Amritsar as well as the administration’s refusal to allow Gandhiji to visit the city. The exact sequence of subsequent events is unclear but Colonel (Temporary Brigadier General) Reginald Dyer came to Amritsar on 11 April (perhaps of his own accord) and believing that the civil administration was unable to cope with the mounting violence seems to have arrogated to himself full authority, taken command of Amritsar, and proclaimed martial law on 15 April.
On the afternoon of 13 April a peaceful public meeting was held at Jallianwala Bagh, a 7-acre courtyard enclosed by the high walls of the peripheral buildings and a stone’s throw away from the Golden Temple. The meeting was held in defiance of the order promulgated by the administration banning such gatherings but the participants were largely unaware of it. Dyer, determined to make an example of this group, marched there with two armoured cars and 50 armed soldiers (25 Gurkhas and 25 Baluchis). Stationing the armoured cars outside the narrow entrance, he took his troops into the ground and ordered them to open fire at the crowd without giving them any warning. The ten minutes of continuous firing saw 1600 bullets being fired, over 400 dead and 1500 injured.
An inconspicuous report in Lahore’s newspaper, The Civil and Military Gazette of 17 April 1919, carried the news of the incident. It reported, “Illegal Meeting Dispersed — At Amritsar all meetings were prohibited, but in spite of this prohibition one was announced to take place in the afternoon. About 6,000 people attended. This meeting, held in defiance of the law, was dispersed by a small force of Indian troops consisting of detachments of the 2–9th Gurkhas, the 54th Sikhs and the 59th Sind Rifles. The casualties were heavy but quiet has since prevailed in the city, and it is expected that shops will open on the 16th.”
That gave me the answer I was looking for.
The 9th Gorkha Rifles was first raised in 1817. It comprised soldiers of Nepalese origin. The 2nd battalion of the 9th Gorkhas was raised in 1904. The 54 Sikhs and the 59 Scinde Rifles (Frontier Force) were infantry regiments of the British Indian Army and were raised in 1846 and 1903 respectively.
While the 54 Sikhs and 59 Scinde in general comprised Sikhs, Baluchis, Pathans, Punjabi Muslims and Dogras, Dyer had ensured that the troops which accompanied him to Jallianwala Bagh consisted of men who were of nationalities foreign to India or recruited from its fringes. Baluchis were Muslims from the area bordering Iran and the 9th Gorkhas consisted entirely of Nepalese troops. No British troops or officers, except for a few NCOs, accompanied Dyer.
On India becoming independent in 1947, 54 Sikhs and 59 Scinde were allocated to the Pakistan Army, where they continue to exist as 6th Battalion and 1st Battalion of The Frontier Force Regiment respectively. Of the ten Gorkha regiments in the British-Indian army, six regiments (including the 9th Gorkha Rifles) were allocated to the Indian Army as part of the agreement between Britain, India and Nepal. 2/9 Gorkhas continues to exist to this day in the Indian Army with the same designation.
Ever since the shooting of 1919, there has been a demand from India that the British Government apologise for the mass murder. These become shriller every time a member of the British Royal family or a British Prime Minister visits India. There is now a renewed demand for the apology to be given at the centenary of the event this April. However, let alone an apology, the then British Government rubbed Indian salt into Indian wounds by not even punishing Dyer for his gruesome action; he was merely censured and was allowed to voluntarily retire with his pension, rank and honours intact. And in an egregious act of imperial arrogance, the British Government cocked a snook at Indian sensibilities by giving him a grand funeral when he died in 1927 with his cortege being taken around the streets of London.
If the report of The Civil and Military Gazette is indeed true, it is baffling and inexplicable that a contingent of the battalion that took part in this most dastardly act against its own countrymen continues to be part of our armed forces even today. The Government of Independent India ought to have demobilised an outfit that carried out the worst excess of the British Empire in India under the direct command of Dyer. 2/9 Gorkhas should have been disbanded and its personnel transferred to other units. As an attempt to set right historical wrongs, this may have served the purpose better than waiting interminably for an inconsequential sorry from the Brits.
Epilogue:
Expectedly, on 9 April 2019, in a debate in the House of Commons, the British Government (represented by Mark Field, the junior foreign minister) refused to apologise for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
