Jallianwala Bagh Massacre (1919): The Amritsar Shooting

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre, also known as the Amritsar massacre, took place on 13 April 1919, when troops under the command of Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer opened fire without warning on a large unarmed crowd in a walled garden in Amritsar, in the Punjab province of British India. By the official count 379 people were killed and about 1,200 wounded; Indian estimates were far higher. The massacre became a turning point in the movement for Indian independence.

Background: the Rowlatt Act and unrest in Punjab

India had supplied more than a million soldiers and labourers to the British war effort in the First World War, and many Indians expected political reform in return. The British government had promised in 1917 the gradual development of self-governing institutions, and the reforms that became the Government of India Act of 1919 gave Indians a limited share of power in the provinces. Many nationalists considered this far too little. Instead of reconciliation, in March 1919 the government also passed the Rowlatt Act, which extended wartime emergency powers allowing detention without trial. Mahatma Gandhi called for a nationwide hartal, a day of strikes and peaceful protest, and early April saw demonstrations across the country.

In Punjab, governed by the hardline Lieutenant-Governor Sir Michael O’Dwyer, tensions were especially high. On 10 April 1919 the authorities in Amritsar deported two popular local leaders, Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew and Dr Satyapal. When a crowd tried to march to the residence of the Deputy Commissioner, troops fired and several protesters were killed. Rioters then attacked banks and other buildings, killing five Europeans, and a British missionary teacher, Marcella Sherwood, was badly beaten in a street.

Dyer arrived in Amritsar on 11 April and took control of the city. On 12 April and on the morning of 13 April a proclamation banning public meetings was read out in parts of the city, but it was not announced in many areas and was unknown to many people.

The massacre

On the afternoon of 13 April, the day of the Baisakhi festival, a crowd usually estimated at between 10,000 and 20,000 people gathered in Jallianwala Bagh, an open space of several acres surrounded by walls and houses and reached through a few narrow passages. A political meeting was taking place, but the crowd also included pilgrims, families and villagers who had come for the festival.

Dyer arrived with about 90 Gurkha and Indian soldiers, 50 of them armed with rifles, and two armoured cars that could not pass through the entrance. He deployed his riflemen near the main entrance and, without issuing a warning or an order to disperse, ordered them to open fire. The shooting lasted around ten minutes. According to the official inquiry, 1,650 rounds were fired, and the soldiers stopped only when their ammunition was nearly exhausted. Many people were shot trying to climb the walls or escape through the narrow exits; others jumped into a well inside the garden.

Dyer then withdrew his troops without arranging help for the wounded, and a curfew prevented many families from reaching them during the night.

Martial law and the Hunter inquiry

Martial law was declared in Punjab days later. In Amritsar Dyer issued the so-called crawling order, forcing Indians to crawl on their bellies along the street where Marcella Sherwood had been attacked, and public floggings were carried out. Aircraft bombed and machine-gunned protesters at Gujranwala.

In October 1919 the Government of India appointed the Disorders Inquiry Committee, chaired by the Scottish judge Lord William Hunter. Questioned in public, Dyer admitted that he had fired to produce a moral effect across the Punjab and would have used machine guns had he been able to bring the armoured cars in. The committee’s majority report of 1920 criticised his failure to warn the crowd and the length of the firing; its Indian members went further in a minority report. Dyer was relieved of command and retired. In a House of Commons debate in July 1920, Winston Churchill described the massacre as “a monstrous event”, but the House of Lords passed a motion supporting Dyer, and a fund organised by the Morning Post newspaper raised around 26,000 pounds for him.

Reaction in India and Britain

News of the massacre spread slowly because of censorship under martial law, but its effect was profound. Rabindranath Tagore wrote to the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, on 30 May 1919 renouncing the knighthood he had received in 1915. The Indian National Congress set up its own Punjab inquiry, whose members included Gandhi and the lawyers Motilal Nehru and C. R. Das; it collected hundreds of statements from witnesses and published its report in 1920. Gandhi, who had earlier cooperated with the British war effort, returned his Kaisar-i-Hind medal and in 1920 launched the Non-cooperation Movement, calling on Indians to boycott British institutions, courts and goods.

In Britain opinion was divided. The government of India and the cabinet accepted that Dyer had acted wrongly, and the Secretary of State for India, Edwin Montagu, condemned him in Parliament. Many Conservatives, army officers and newspapers, however, praised him as the man who had saved Punjab from rebellion. The gap between official condemnation and public celebration of Dyer convinced many Indians that British promises of gradual self-government could not be trusted.

A memorial trust bought the site in 1920. The present memorial, designed by the American architect Benjamin Polk, was inaugurated by President Rajendra Prasad in 1961. Queen Elizabeth II visited the site in 1997.

Key people

• Reginald Dyer (1864–1927): the brigadier-general who gave the order to fire.
• Sir Michael O’Dwyer (1864–1940): Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab, who approved Dyer’s action.
• Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941): Nobel Prize-winning poet who renounced his knighthood in protest in May 1919.
• Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948): leader of the protests against the Rowlatt Act, who launched the Non-cooperation Movement in 1920.
• Udham Singh (1899–1940): revolutionary who assassinated O’Dwyer in London in 1940.

Myths and facts

A common belief is that Dyer acted entirely on his own initiative. He did make the decision to fire, but O’Dwyer endorsed it afterwards and the martial-law regime that followed was approved by the provincial government. Another persistent claim is that a precise number of bodies, often quoted as 120, was recovered from the well; such figures appear on memorial plaques but cannot be confirmed from contemporary records. The overall death toll is also uncertain: 379 is the official minimum, while the Congress inquiry estimated about 1,000.

Timeline

• 1919, 18 March: The Rowlatt Act is passed by the Imperial Legislative Council.
• 1919, 6 April: Nationwide hartal called by Gandhi.
• 1919, 10 April: Deportation of Kitchlew and Satyapal; shootings and riots in Amritsar.
• 1919, 13 April: Dyer’s troops fire on the crowd in Jallianwala Bagh.
• 1919, 15 April: Martial law is proclaimed in parts of Punjab.
• 1919, 30 May: Tagore writes to the Viceroy renouncing his knighthood.
• 1920, March-May: The Hunter Committee report is completed and published.
• 1940, 13 March: Udham Singh shoots Michael O’Dwyer in London.
• 1961, 13 April: The national memorial at Jallianwala Bagh is inaugurated.

Why it matters

The massacre destroyed the faith of many moderate Indians in British justice. It pushed Gandhi and the Indian National Congress towards mass non-cooperation and a demand for full self-government, a path that ended in Indian independence in 1947. The site in Amritsar, with its bullet-marked walls and the Martyrs’ Well, is now a national memorial visited by large numbers of people every year.