The British Responded to a Peaceful Protest by Shooting Thousands in the Amritsar Massacre
On April 13th, 1919, a crowd of about 10,000 Indian civilians gathered in Amritsar, Punjab, to protest the colonial authorities’ recent arrest and deportation of two Indian nationalist leaders. In response, Brigadier General Reginald Dyer of the British Indian Army ordered his troops to open fire on the unarmed protesters. An estimated 1,000 were killed in the ensuing massacre, and an additional 1,500 were wounded.
During World War I, British India made significant contributions to the British war effort, and millions of Indians served their colonial overlords as soldiers or laborers in the war’s various theaters. Even as the Indians fought and toiled on Britain’s behalf, the British authorities in India enacted a series of repressive laws to counteract potential subversion, and gave the military and police broad emergency powers. When the war ended in 1918, Indians expected that the emergency powers would be repealed, now that the emergency was over, and that India would be granted more autonomy. They were sorely disappointed when the colonial authorities, rather than ease up, enacted new laws in early 1919 that not only cemented the repressive wartime measures, but expanded them even further.
That was not the reward many Indians had expected for their wartime patience and sacrifices in what had essentially been an intra-European conflict. Protests erupted throughout India, and the Punjab in particular became a hotbed of anti-colonial activity. Indians poured into the streets in massive protest rallies, strikes erupted, rail, telegraph, and communications systems were disrupted, and the local colonial administration was nearly paralyzed. Many officers in the British Indian Army believed that the protests were a prelude to an uprising, along the lines of the 1857 Indian Mutiny, or Revolt.
In Amritsar, protests were further fueled in April of 1919 when two popular Indian nationalists, adherents of Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha nonviolent resistance movement, were arrested. In the days leading up to the Amritsar Massacre, troops had fired on protesters, killing several. Mobs retaliated by attacking Europeans in the streets, which led to yet more retaliatory fire from colonial troops, and a steady escalation of violence.
Brigadier Dyer was ordered to restore order, and he ordered a ban on public gatherings. On the afternoon of April 13th, 1919, about 10,000 Indian men, women, and children, gathered in the Jallianwala Bagh, a seven acre public garden in Amritsar. It is unclear how many had gathered to protest, and how many were simply passing through after celebrating Baisakhi, a religious spring festival, at a nearby temple. What is clear is that they were unarmed civilians, and that their numbers included many women and children.
The Jallianwala Bagh, measuring about 200 yards by 200 yards, was enclosed by walls on all sides, with one main entrance, and some smaller gated exits. At 4:30 PM, Dyer arrived with about 90 troops, and without warning the crowds to disperse, blocked the main exits. He then ordered his men to open fire, and they kept firing for the next ten minutes, until their ammunition was exhausted. The troops then withdrew, leaving the carnage behind.
As Dyer later explained it, his goal “was not to disperse the meeting but to punish the Indians for disobedience“. A week later, an unrepentant Dyer issued an order to humiliate the locals and emphasize British racial supremacy. It required every Indian man using a street where a British missionary had been attacked to crawl its length on his hands and knees.