Picture this: thousands of innocent people, all in one place, celebrating and enjoying themselves. Men, women, children, the elderly too. And then bullets start flying out of nowhere.
This is exactly what happened on the evening of April 13, 1919 in the public garden, Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar.
The Indian city of Amritsar is known worldwide as a cultural centre for Sikhs. As it’s the site of the Golden Temple, many Sikhs visit annually for pilgrimage. One of the religious festivals celebrated is called Vaisakhi and is considered the Sikh New Year. During this sacred occasion, which many Sikhs were celebrating near the Golden Temple, the massacre took place.
At around 17:00, Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer marched into the Jallianwala Bagh garden with 50 Gurkha and Indian soldiers armed with rifles. The public garden was filled with many Sikh pilgrims as well as Muslims, Hindus and many farmers and traders from surrounding villages that had also gathered for the annual Baisakhi horse and cattle fair. Indian nationalists had gathered there too, unarmed, to protest the large war tax imposed on India and the forced conscription of Indian soldiers by the British government.
Upon arriving to the garden, Dyer’s troops surrounded it and blocked all exits. Without warning, the troops began to fire at the 20,000 innocent people for over ten minutes, until most of the ammunition had ran out. Approximately 1,650 rounds of bullets were spent, with over 1,000 casualties. A well in the park was the pit of where many people jumped into to save themselves from the bullets, including mothers and their children. Eventually, Dyer withdrew his soldiers and the dying and wounded were left as they were. Large pits of blood were left around the park, and children lay with their mothers in their laps. Figures of how many dead are unknown, with the British inquiry stating approximately 379 deaths, whereas the Indian National Congress estimated more than 1,000 dead in regards to the size of the crowd.
A few days earlier, Amritsar had been put under martial law due to an increase in Indian nationalist protests, and had been given to Dyer to fix the situation. Dyer banned all nationalist meetings and gatherings in the city. However, word of the ban didn’t make its way to many people, and the protest at Jallianwala Bagh went ahead. The British government had tried to keep the details of the attack quiet, but information had spread throughout outraged India. Full details of the attack were not known in England until December later that year.
The attack was described as “a monstrous event” by Winston Churchill, however some British politicians and the British public were in favour of Dyer’s actions, praising him for trying to “preserve” British rule in India. Dyer was eventually removed from his post by British authorities, but the blood of over 1,000 innocent people was still on his hands. The park is visited often and many tourists offer their respects to the martyrs.
