8When the massacre of innocent people, including children and women at the Jallianwala Bagh,
Amritsar, Punjab was committed on
April 13, 1919, by trigger-happy
Brigadier General Dyer on orders from
Michael O' Dwyer, the
Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab, the whole of India was in in rage about the heinous crime. The British people did not know the true story of this massacre because of media-gag. When details were leaked out of
Raj by some honest
British journalists, the sympathetic British and the western countries came to know about the hidden dark chapters of
British rule in India. Gen. Dyer trespassed the norms of human tolerance and military discipline and his action had excuses..
Above image Bullet holes on the walls of Jallianwala Bagh, Punjab.......
The day the mass murder was committed by Dyer and his cronies, it was a religious holiday, for the Sikhs and others were celebrating - Baisakhi Day at a park surrounded by building with a few gates called Jallianwall Bagh in Amritsar city. There were about more than 10,000 innocent people, unharmed in the gathering. It was a religious meeting, not a political one. the people had no idea about 144 that was in force at that time. Around 5 pm a powerful automatic rifle was placed near the only exit gate. In a jiff, the entire ground looked like a battle ground with piles of dead and seriously injured people fighting for their lives. The premeditated firing lasted for just 10 minutes till the army ran out of ammunition (1650 rounds had been fired at the people). Brig. Gen Reginald Dyer's men on his order used powerful .303 Lee–Enfield rifles and committed the massacre. without any mercy.
Countless panic-stricken people died due to stampede near the exit gate and equally a large number of people inside the park faced death by jumping into the wells there. As bullets were raining on them they faced enormous mental stress and in the melee did not know what they were doing. Despite trampling they moved to the gate and faced the flying bullets. Their wailing and cry vented the air with no one around to help them. No first aid was available to the injured people, not even ambulance services. Relatives of the victims were not allowed to enter the bagh.
To add more insults to the natives Brig. gen Dyer gave a "Crawling Order" an act of vigilantism and wanted the Indian to crawl. He did it with a view to revenging the Indians who assaulted a Christian worker a few days prior to this incident. From 19 April until 25 a curfew was in force in a particular place /street where Ms. Marcella was assaulted. Dyer also had day-time pickets placed on either side of the street.
The most disgusting thing was a section of British in London headed by local Tory's pro-imperialistic News Paper Morning Post collected a benefit fund over £26,000 to be given as reward for Brig Gen Dyer for saving the British Lady Ms. Marcella and extolled him as a hero and a savior of British women's honor.
The Hunter commission (1920 report) found his action unacceptable, and later he was removed from the British military. The unacceptable fact is he was not given any serious punishment for the massacre he committed on the unarmed innocent people of Punjab,
Gen. Dyer died in 1927 after a series of strokes.
The (Liberal) Westminster Gazette gave a different opinion: "No British action, during the whole course of our history in India, has struck a severer blow to Indian faith in British justice than the massacre at Amritsar." The Jallianwalla Bagh massacre changed the perception of Indian leaders and impacted their aspiration for ''free India''. Indian leaders' trust in the British government got a big blow and they began to think in terms of Poorna swaraj - complete independence from the British yoke and their oppressive rule and double game. The only solution was free India, nothing but free India. This horrific incident changed the course British Indian history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre
