The Jallianwala Bagh massacre, which was meant to quash Indians’ quest for liberty, resulted in reverse. It inspired people to demand freedom with more vigour. That’s what makes the abhorrable event a worthy subject to study

Sir Michael O’Dwyer, Lt-Governor of Punjab

Miles Irving, DC of Amritsar

Brig-Gen Reginald Dyer

Kishwar Desai

When General Dyer ordered the troops to fire on an unarmed peaceful crowd in Jallianwala Bagh, in Amritsar, thinking he was ‘saving’ the British Empire, he actually changed the course of history in a way he could not ever imagine.  But the atrocities did not start or end on that day. The massacre was one part of much larger systemic colonial oppression in Punjab that lasted months, even years. The role of Punjab was crucial to the freedom struggle, which is why the British were compelled to use the most terrible means to suppress it, not realising that this was a flame that would burn brighter every time they tried to extinguish it.  Amritsar was already a hub of revolutionary activity at the time — for instance Rashbihari Bose relocated here, and Punjab had been infiltrated by the Ghadrites. Leaders like Lala Lajpat Rai and Ajit Singh had been externed in the early 1900s, but the rebellion refused to die down.  Gandhi’s call for Satyagraha against the Rowlatt Acts in 1919 saw enormous mass meetings which baffled the British. It forced the Lt Governor of Punjab Sir Michael O’Dwyer to advocate more and more repressive measures. But each turn of the screw only made the people of Punjab more determined to fight back. Partly responsible was the fact that Punjab had always been open to the world and was part of the important trade routes. Known for valuing their own independence, Punjabis in the 1800s had been at the centre of a very large and powerful empire under Maharaja Ranjit Singh. In the early 1900s, they were specially recruited to fight in the World War I — which instilled them with ideas of freedom. But ironically, when they returned to India, after the war, they found that they were deprived of their rights in their own country. By 1919, the recently demobilised soldiers in the villages were restless, so were the educated classes in the cities. A whole generation of professionals, particularly lawyers and doctors, who had gone abroad and studied in Western countries, where they were treated as equals, also returned home to find that the oppression in Punjab was growing.When I began working on my book Jallianwala Bagh, 1919—Before and After (to be published shortly), I came across such a wealth of material, both in India and the UK, that one feels there is still a huge need to write and discuss more about the contextual story of Jallianwala Bagh from the Indian perspective, not just in India but abroad as well. Partly, the problem has been that the huge amount of documentation that was done by the British, during colonial rule, is from their point of view. And much of the material continues to lie in archives abroad.However, the eponymous books centred around Brigadier General Dyer, or any other individual, do not bring to fore the real calamity that had struck Punjab in the early 20th century.  Many historians have spent a whole lifetime trying to psychoanalyse him in a myriad ways. Yet, it was actually O’Dwyer who pressed him to pull the trigger, through the atmosphere of animosity that he had built up. Dyer said he had been given a ‘horrible duty’ as he put it, and he would have failed his task if he did not execute it. He even feared that the crowds would have laughed at him had he not shot them. Similarly, the ‘crawling order’ he imposed on Indians who wanted to go through the street in Amritsar where Marcella Sherwood — a missionary — had been brutally beaten, was bizarre. But by making the narrative about Dyer, in fact, the British escaped a lot of ignominy. In the debate in the House of Commons, Winston Churchill condemned the massacre as an act of ‘frightfulness’ by an individual, and managed to deflect  attention towards Dyer, rather than towards the system, which was already beginning to rot. The British were desperate to hang on to their richest colony. The truth was that the powers given to the Lt-Governor Sir Michael O’Dwyer were so unlimited that he turned Punjab into a laboratory, in which he experimented in various ways to quash the quest for liberty. He was, unfortunately,  not the only one, as under him were many others who had unleashed a barbaric reign of terror in Punjab, and very little of this was known in the UK till the Hunter Committee report came out one year later in 1920. Alongside was the shocking evidence recorded by the Indian National Congress under Gandhi. And even then, as we go through the material today, we are horrified at what a huge number of atrocities had actually been committed under Martial Law in Punjab, starting from April 1919 onwards — where Indians were stripped, flogged, starved, jailed and humiliated in every way. There has been much to discover while working on the Jallianwala Bagh story and the curators, researchers and designers of the Partition Museum are putting up a new exhibition, Punjab under Siege — the Jallianwala Bagh Centenary (1919-2019), at the museum..The Partition Museum is a people’s museum, which narrates history through the voices of the people, and this is how we are launching first commemorative exhibition on the Jallianwala Bagh centenary in Amritsar. The story is largely told through the recollections of the witnesses and victims at the Bagh, and later, those who suffered under the ironclad rule of the Martial Law.But the exhibition is also the story of undivided India — examining protests by Indians from Amritsar to Lahore to Gujranwala and beyond — as well as the brutal repression, which was equally spread across. The symbiosis between the cities of that time is most visible in the relationship between the twin cities of Lahore and Amritsar, where events such as the arrests of Dr Satyapal and Dr Kitchlew in Amritsar on April 10 led to a hartal in Lahore that evening, and many of the local leaders of Amritsar, in fact, belonged to Lahore. We also hope to bring to the fore many of the lesser-known aspects of the protests against the Rowlatt Bills, such as the strong Hindu-Muslim unity of Gandhi’s Satyagraha, which greatly discomfited the British. There are newspaper reports stating the opening of many temples and mosques across India attended by people of different communities. In Amritsar, Ram Navmi celebrations on April 9, 1919, famously brought together Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims, who shared food and water, and shouted political slogans such as “Gandhi Maharaj ki jai!” and even “Hindu-Musalman ki jai”. These aspects are of particular importance to the Partition Museum, which traces how close-knit the communities were till they were separated by policies of ‘divide and rule.’ The exhibition, at the Partition Museum, will befittingly be just a few minutes walk from the Bagh itself. The part of the Town Hall, where the Museum is based, used to be the Kotwali — and it was here that many respectable citizens of Amritsar were incarcerated for their role in the freedom struggle, and later for so-called transgressions under the Martial Law. In fact, along with the innocents, Hans Raj, who was accused of betraying the Satyagrahis by turning approver, was also locked in here on April 22 and 23, 1919. There will be some special displays in the actual jails, which will be thrown open to visitors. The Partition Museum is honoured to be the first home for this exhibition, which travel across India and has also been invited to the UK to mark the centenary commemoration of the tragic events of 1919. A  commemoration committee of the Jallianwala Bagh centenary comprising Indians and NRIs has been formed for this, and the exhibition will be displayed in other parts of India, London, Manchester and Birmingham.(Note: Punjab Under siege: The Jallianwala Bagh Centenary (1919-1920)  is a special exhibition at the Partition Museum at Town Hall Amritsar, beginning on August 11, 2018 (10 am to 6 pm),  but the normal Partition Museum exhibition will be maintained throughout)

The Exhibition

• A special exhibition titled:Punjab Under Siege: A Commemorative Exhibition on the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre Centenary (1919-2019)
• Opens at the Partition Museum, Amritsar, On August 11, 2018.
• Location: Town Hall, Heritage Plaza near Darbar Sahib)
• Timings: 10 am-6 pm daily (closed Mondays)
• Entry ticket: Rs 10
• Contact: 0-81300-01947