19. The Massacre at Amritsar
Protests had been fueled in Amritsar in April of 1919, when two popular Indian nationalists, adherents of Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha nonviolent resistance movement, were arrested. In the days preceding the 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.
Jallianwala Bagh
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.