Savages from the Past: The Butcher of Amritsar
The recent spate of protests about statues of historically controversial men across the West has proved one thing- that people do not forget and now more than ever, they will not forgive.
For me, the removal of statues of Edward Colston and Robert Milligan revived the dark memories of the colonial era.
Uncle and I recounted the events of one of the most controversial moments of the British Raj, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
Baba Raihan,
Perhaps you will be surprised to hear that plenty of historians have undervalued the far reaching impact of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre on India’s freedom movement.
This macabre incident was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The Freedom Movement gathered such momentum as to put the wheel of struggle for freedom on the road to independence in 1947.
It was down to one man, Brigadier General Reginald Dyer.
The Congress Party under the leadership of its first woman President Annie Besant launched the Home Rule Movement in 1917. It triggered mass agitation in the Punjab as well as other parts of undivided India. Protests continued against the trial and deportation of two national leaders, Saifuddin Kitchlew and Satyapal. A huge crowd gathered in Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, Punjab on the day of Baisakhi, 13 April 1919 — an important religious festival in Sikhism and Hinduism.
The Military commander of the area, Brig-Gen Reginald Dyer ordered his troops to fire on the unarmed and peaceful crowd without any warning. The official death count was 379 however, casualty estimates from the Congress Party was approximately 1,000 dead and more than 1,500 injured.
Dyer with disdainful arrogance said on the day after the massacre:
“I have heard that between 200 and 300 of the crowd were killed. My party fired 1,650 rounds.”
The outrage and tumult that followed was beyond the comprehension of most Indians. They were astonished to see the pathetic reaction of the British rulers particularly those who lived in India. Some British women offered jewellery and other valuable items to Dyer in appreciation of his ‘heroic deeds’ in a display of callousness that aroused abomination in the length and breadth of India.
The British press lauded Dyer and he was lauded by some prominent members of the House of Lords.
Whereas a military court should have been instituted, the Hunter Commission report merely censured Dyer and let him off the hook. To put salt into the wound, the eminent poet and author, Rudyard Kipling declared that “Dyer did his duty as he saw it.”
This should not be a surprise. You have experienced and will continue to experience such acts of remorselessness worldwide as we have lost sense and sensibility but acquired pride and prejudice!
The Bengali author, Pramatha Chaudhuri brilliantly remarked: “Byadhi sankramok shyastha noi — Only disease is contagious, health is not.”
The Bengali poet, author and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore with righteous anger in his heart decided to return his Knighthood which was only conferred on him four years earlier in 1915. I shall share passages from his letter to the Viceroy , Lord Chelmsford which not only contains his personal anguish but also captures the mood of the nation: disillusionment, denunciation and indignation.
“The enormity of the measures taken by the Government in the Punjab for quelling some local disturbances has, with a rude shock, revealed to our minds the helplessness of our position as British subjects in India.
The disproportionate severity of the punishments inflicted upon the unfortunate people and the methods of carrying them out, we are convinced, are without parallel in the history of civilised governments, barring some conspicuous exceptions, recent and remote.
The very least I can do for my country is to take all consequences upon myself in giving voice to the protest of millions of my countrymen, surprised into a dumb anguish of terror.
The time has come when 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 degradation not fit for human beings.”
By the side of his countrymen he stood sure enough; and Mahatma Gandhi who called Tagore ‘Gurudev’; lost no time in launching the non-violent civil disobedience movement which catapulted him into the role of the supreme leader of the independence struggle. It has immortalised him into the annals of history. He fought against barbarism with humanism, he fought the violence of the tyrannical rulers with his methods of non-violence.
10 June 2020
Edward Colston and Robert Milligan were able to disguise their sins with their tainted fortunes unlike Brig-Gen Reginald Dyer who faced the rebuke of the British Parliament. We might now be campaigning for the removal of Dyer’s statue if he had the connections and means to cover up his shortcomings.
