INFORMATIVE :-   Today on this day i.e. on April 13, hundred years  ago i.e. in the  year 1919, a meeting of freedom fighters was scheduled at Jallianwala Bagh at Amritsar to protest against the Rowlatt Act. A large numbers of people estimated between 15000-20,000 had gathered to attend the meeting and to celebrate Baisakhi. Jallianwala Bagh derives its name from that of the owners of this piece of land. It was then the property of  the family of Sardar Himmat Singh (d.1829), a noble in the court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1780-1839), who originally came from the village of Jalla, now in Fatehgarh Sahib district of the Punjab.

            Brigadier General Regineld Edward Harry Dyer deployed 50 troopers  near the entrance of the Jallianwala Bagh and without warning or orders to disperse, he opened fire which continued 20 minutes. His contingent, comprising of 50 personnel of 29th Gurkhas, the 54th Sikhs and the 59th Sindh rifles,  fired 1650 rounds of 0.303 Lee Enfield rifles' mark VI ammunition. The Official figure given by the British was 379 killed and 1200 wounded from  1650 rounds fired. But the Indian National Congress said more than 1000 had died.  

            The Jallianwala Bagh  massacre  was a calculated move to strike terror among the masses because after 1857, the first war of Independence, the British imagined that unrest could take the shape of violence against British regime. Thus the Jallianwala Bagh massacre was accordingly both retributive and pre-emptive. Dyer also took revenge for the attacks on Europeans including  Miss Sherwood, a missionary attacked in Amritsar during the riots  three days earlier.  Instead of having  deterrent effect ,   the Jallianwala massacre de-facto culminated into       turning point in the Indian freedom struggle.

            Few know that Dyer was born & raised in Punjab and well-versed in Hindustani as well as in English. The youngest of six children, Reginald Dyer, fondly called Rex, was born at Murree now in Rawalpindi District Pakistan in 1864. His father  Edward Dyer, a master brewer who started his first venture at Kasauli in 1840, shifted to Shimla soon after Rex turned two so that he could set up another brewery named Dyer Meakin Breweries Ltd. at Solan. After Independence the nomenclature of the said brewery has been rechristened as Mohan Meakin Breweries Ltd. on account of the fact that the First Prime Minister of India Pandit Jawahahar Lal Nehru refused to visit the said brewery in 1960 on way to Shimla.  The refusal of  PM Nehru served as  the compelling reason for Narinder Nath Mohan, the owner of the Company  to remove  Dyer's name.

            General Dyer, the butcher of Jallianwala Bagh was an old student of Bishop Cotton School Shimla  who got admission in 1873 as an eight year old boy and has been known as "The Evil Cottonian."   General Dyer's stints in Burma and Persia, where the natives were brutally suppressed by the British, convinced  Dyer that the best way to deal with the revolutionaries was to strike swiftly and to strike hard to forestall  greater trouble. A year Before massacre,  General Dyer had come to  stay  in the House on Mall Road Jalandhar Cantonment as a temporary Brigadier General of the 45th infantry Brigade. A Silver Oak tree, planted by him in the said house still stands. It was from this house, General Dyer had moved toward Jallianwala Bagh with his troops, arms and ammunition on April 13,1919. Just two days before the massacre General Dyer had held a meeting with the then Lt. Governor of Punjab, Michael O Dwyer, who had stayed in the same said house. Earlier this house had his old plate too, which has now been removed.

            Dyer died of cerebral hemorrhage in 1927. On his death Bed he said, " So many people who  knew the condition of Amritsar say I did right------but so many other say I did wrong. I only want to die and know from my Maker whether I did right or wrong."

            Though Brigadier General Dyer was the man on the spot,  It was Sir Michael Francis O' Dwyer, the Lt. Governor of Punjab who ordered Jallianwala Massacre. Dwyer was shot  dead with the Smith and Wesson Revolver  by Indian Revolutionary Udham Singh at London's Caxton Hall on March 13,1940. At that time Michael O' Dwyer was the Speaker at Caxton Hall. Shaheed Udham Singh was hanged on July 31,1940.   As per popular belief, the Shaheed Udham Singh was present on the spot in Amritsar in April 13,1919. But he was actually abroad on the fateful day. He worked in the North Western Railway from 1917 to 1922 and received the India General Service Medal for the Waziristan campaign of 1919-20. He did return the Holy City Amritsar a few months after the Jallianwala incident, Which undoubtedly influenced him deeply and determined the course of his life.

            After the massacre, it was decided to build a memorial on the 6.5 acre land of Jallianwala Bagh. Consequently, a resolution for buying the Jallianwala Bagh was passed in 1919. Funds to the tune of Rs. 5,60,472 were collected and the Bagh was acquired on August 1920.  A trust named Jallianwala Bagh National Memorial Trust was set up on 1 May 1951. The cost of constructing the Flame of Liberty, designed by American Benjamin Polk,  amounted to Rs. 9.25 lac. The said Memorial was inaugurated on April 13,1961 by Dr. Rajinder Prashad the President of India in the presence of the then Prime Minister Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru.

               Very few respond to the call of duty when it is the most dangerous. Benjamin Guy Horniman (1873-1948), the British journalist who was the editor of The Bombay Chronicle, did in 1919. B.G. Horniman defied censorship imposed by the then Lt. Governor  of Punjab, General Michael O' Dwyer, by writing an article on Jallianwala Massacre in The Bombay Chronicle. B.G. Horniman was tried and sentenced to two years' rigorous imprisonment. The paper had to suspend its publication and Horniman was deported to Britain.

            It did not end here. Horniman successfully smuggled photographs of the massacre & its aftermath and broke stories in the Daily  Herald in Britain to tell the truth of the massacre to the British people, to implore them to question the justification given by General Reginald Dyer. In this book 'Amritsar and Our Duty to India,' which was published in 1920, he called out the 'Dyerarchy' of General Dyer in Punjab, a word that he used for the atrocities committed  under General Dyer. Comparing the massacre  to Congo atrocities and those perpetrated by Germany in France and Belgium, he calls it an 'indelible blot on British  rule in India. Through his reports and writings, Horniman indicated towards the responsibility and duty of the British people and demanded for investigation of official in power and of the clean chit given to the Dyer. Horniman wrote," after the revelations of the Hunter Committee, Great Britain cannot, if she is to maintain her honor  before the world, remain  quiescent.....she will have to see whether the intention to terrorize the people of Punjab was deliberate and prearranged."  Horniman has been called a friend of India and is an example for journalism in India. Though he was British, he defied  British  censorship to bring out the truth of Jallianwala Bagh Massacre. 

            Jallianwala Bagh Massacre  has been condemned   at different times by the British, the then Secretary of State for War Winston Churchill called it, ' a monstrous event...which stands in a singular and sinister isolation', during a visit to the memorial  in 1997, Queen Elizabeth and the then Prime Minister David Cameron in 2013 both have expressed deep regret to Jallianwala Bagh Massacre. Now the time has come for full apology. Such apologies  have previously been tendered  by the Prime Minister for Historical misdeeds. In the Centenary year of Jallianwala Bagh Massacre the British Parliament must tender a full apology to assuage the injured sentiments of India.

In the centenary year of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, I visited the place and paid homage to martyrs.

                                                                                                   Compiled and written by:

 

MANORANJAN KALIA

B.J.P. NATIONAL EXECUTIVE MEMBER

FORMER MINISTER PUNJAB

FORMER STATE PRESIDENT B.J.P. PUNJAB .