  The '''1919 Amritsar massacre''', known alternately as the '''Jallianwala Bagh massacre''' (Punjabi: ਜਲ੍ਹਿਆਂਵਾਲਾ ਬਾਗ਼ ਹਤਿਆਕਾਂਡ, Hindi: जलियांवाला बाग़ हत्याकांड, Urdu: جليانوالہ باغ قتلِ عام Jallianwala Bāġa Hatyākāṇḍ)  after the Jallianwala Bagh (Garden) in the northern Indian city of Amritsar, was ordered by General R.E.H. Dyer. On Sunday April 13, 1919, which happened to be 'Baisakhi', one of Punjab's largest religious festivals, fifty British Indian Army soldiers, commanded by Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, began shooting at an unarmed gathering of men, women, and children without warning. Dyer marched his fifty riflemen to a raised bank and ordered them to kneel and fire. End of Empire, Brian Lapping, p. 38, Granada Publishing, 1985  ISBN 0-246-11969-1  Dyer ordered soldiers to reload their rifles several times and they were ordered to shoot to kill.1920 [Cmd. 681] East India (disturbances in the Punjab, etc.). &quot;Report of the committee appointed by the government of India to investigate the disturbances in the Punjab, etc.&quot; pp. 111-112. (Hereafter referred to as the &quot;Hunter Report&quot;.) Official British Raj sources estimated the fatalities at 379, and with 1,100 wounded.Home Political Deposit, September, 1920, No 23, National Archives of India, New Delhi; Report of Commissioners, Vol 1, New Delhi Civil Surgeon Dr Williams DeeMeddy indicated that there were 1,526 casualties.Report of Commissioners, Vol 1, New Delhi, p 105 However, the casualty number quoted by the Indian National Congress was more than 1,500, with roughly 1,000 killed.  ==Background== ===India during World War I===  World War I began with loyalty and goodwill towards the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from mainstream politicians of India, contrary to initial British fears of a revolt while they were committed militarily to a European war. British India contributed massively to the British war effort by providing men and resources. About 1.3 million Indian soldiers and labourers served in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, while both the Indian administration and the princes sent large supplies of food, money, and ammunition. However, Bengal and Punjab remained sources of anticolonial activities. Revolutionary attacks in Bengal, associated increasingly with disturbances in Punjab, were significant enough to nearly paralyse the regional administration. Also from the beginning of the war, the expatriate Indian population, notably in the United States, Canada, and Germany, managed by the Berlin Committee and the Ghadar Party, attempted to initiate insurrections in India, with Irish republican, German and Turkish help in a massive conspiracy that has since come to be termed the Hindu-German conspiracy. This conspiracy also attempted to rally Afghanistan against British India.  A number of failed attempts were made at mutiny, of which the February mutiny plan and the Singapore mutiny are the most notable. This movement was suppressed by means of a massive international counterintelligence operation and strict political acts (including the draconian Defence of India act 1915) that lasted nearly ten years.  ===After the war=== During the aftermath of World War I, high casualty rates, increasing inflation compounded by heavy taxation, a widespread influenza epidemic, and the disruption of trade during the war escalated human suffering in India. The costs of the protracted war in both money and manpower were great. In India, long the &quot;jewel in the crown&quot; of the British Empire, Indians were restless for independence. More than 43,000 Indian soldiers had died fighting for Britain.  Indian soldiers smuggled arms into India to fight British rule.  The pre-war Indian nationalist sentiment revived as moderate and extremist groups of the Indian National Congress ended their differences in order to unify. During 1916, the Congress succeeded in establishing the Lucknow Pact, a temporary alliance with the All-India Muslim League.  ==Prelude to the massacre== The events that ensued after the passage of the Rowlatt Act during 1919 were also influenced by the events associated with the Ghadar conspiracy. At the time, British Indian Army troops were returning from Europe and Mesopotamia to an economic depression in India. The attempts at mutiny during 1915 and the Lahore conspiracy trials were still in public attention. News of young Mohajirs who fought on behalf of the Turkish Caliphate and later fought in the ranks of the Red Army during the Russian Civil War was also beginning to reach India. The Russian Revolution had also begun to influence  Indians. It was at this time that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, until then relatively unknown to Indians, began to be known as a mass leader.  Ominously, during 1919, the third Anglo-Afghan war began after Amir Habibullah Khan's assassination and institution of Amanullah Khan in a system influenced by the Kabul mission. In addition, in India, Gandhi's call for protest against the Rowlatt act achieved an unprecedented response of furious unrest and protests. The situation especially in Punjab was deteriorating rapidly, with disruptions of rail, telegraph and communication systems.  In Amritsar, more than 5,000 people gathered at Jallianwala Bagh. This situation deteriorated perceptibly during the next few days. Michael O'Dwyer is said to have believed that these were the early and ill-concealed signs of a conspiracy for a coordinated revolt around May, at a time when British troops would have withdrawn to the hills for the summer.  The Amritsar massacre, as well as responses preceding and succeeding it, contrary to being an isolated incident, was the end result of a concerted plan of response from the Punjab administration to suppress such a conspiracy. James Houssemayne Du Boulay is said to have ascribed a direct relationship between the fear of a Ghadarite uprising in the midst of an increasingly tense situation in Punjab, and the British response that ended in the massacre.  On April 10, 1919, there was a protest at the residence of the Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar, a city in Punjab, a large province in the northwestern part of the then unpartitioned India. The demonstration was  to demand the release of two popular leaders of the Indian Independence Movement, Satya Pal and Saifuddin Kitchlew, who had been earlier arrested by the government and removed to a secret location. Both were proponents of the Satyagraha movement directed by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. The crowd was shot at by a military picket, killing several protesters. The shooting set off a series of violent events. Later the same day, several banks and other government buildings, including the Town Hall and the railway station were attacked and set afire. The violence continued to escalate, culminating in the deaths of at least five Europeans, including government employees and civilians. There was retaliatory shooting at crowds from the military several times during the day, and between eight and twenty people were killed.  For the next two days, the city of Amritsar was quiet, but violence continued in other parts of the Punjab. Railway lines were cut, telegraph posts destroyed, government buildings burnt, and three Europeans were murdered. By April 13, the British government had decided restrict most of the Punjab by martial law. The legislation  restricted a number of civil liberties, including freedom of assembly, banning gatherings of more than four people.Townshend, Britains Civil Wars. p137  ==The massacre== On April 13, the holiday of Baisakhi, thousands of Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims gathered in the Jallianwala Bagh (garden) near the Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar. Baisakhi is a Sikh festival, commemorating the day that Guru Gobind Singh founded the Khalsa Panth in 1699, and also known as the 'Birth of Khalsa.' During this time people celebrate by congregating in religious and community fairs, and there may have been a large number who were unaware of the political meeting. .]]  Punch 14 July 1920, on the occasion of Montagu labelling as &quot;frightful&quot; General Dyer for his role in the Amritsar massacre]]  An hour after the meeting began as scheduled at 4:30 pm, Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer marched a group of sixty-five Gurkha and twenty-five Baluchi soldiers into the Bagh, fifty of whom were armed with rifles.''Hunter Report'', p29 Dyer had also brought two armoured cars armed with machine guns, however the vehicles were stationed outside the main gate as they were unable to enter the Bagh through the narrow entrance.  The Jallianwala Bagh was bounded on all sides by houses and buildings and had few narrow entrances, most of which were kept permanently locked. The main entrance was relatively wider, but was guarded by the troops backed by the armoured vehicles. General Dyer ordered troops to begin shooting without warning or any order to disperse, and to direct shooting towards the densest sections of the crowd. He continued the shooting, approximately 1,650 rounds in all, until ammunition was almost exhausted.  Apart from the many deaths directly from the shooting, a number of people died in stampedes at the narrow gates or by jumping into the solitary well on the compound to escape the shooting. A plaque in the monument at the site, set up after independence, says that 120 bodies were pulled out of the well.  The wounded could not be moved from where they had fallen, as a curfew had been declared - many more died during the night.  The number of deaths caused by the shooting is disputed. While the official figure given by the British inquiry into the massacre is 379 deaths, the method used by the inquiry has been subject to criticism. Officials were tasked with finding who had been killed during July 1919, three months after the massacre, by inviting inhabitants of the city to volunteer information about those who had died.''Hunter Report'', p116-117. This information was likely incomplete due to fear that those who participated would be identified as having been present at the meeting, and some of the dead may not have had close relations in the area. Additionally, a senior civil servant in the Punjab interviewed by the members of the committee admitted that the actual figure could be higher.''Hunter Report'', p117  Since the official figures were likely flawed considering the size of the crowd (15,000-20,000), number of rounds shot and period of shooting, the politically interested Indian National Congress instituted a separate inquiry of its own, with conclusions that differed considerably from the Government's. The casualty number quoted by the INC was more than 1,500, with approximately 1,000 killed. Despite the Government's best efforts to suppress information of the massacre, news spread elsewhere in India and widespread outrage ensued; however, the details of the massacre did not become known in Britain until December 1919.  As per regimental diaries kept by the Gorkha Battalion adjutants in the British Indian Army, the plan to attack the gathering in Amritsar was claimed to have been triggered by the news of a mob attack on a British school teacher Sherwood on April 9, which was later shown to be merely an excuse used by an incensed Dyer who commanded a brigade in nearby Jalandhar and the Lt Governor of Punjab Michael O'Dwyer who were convinced that they faced an imminent threat of mutiny in Punjab on the scale of  1857.  Back in his headquarters, General Dyer reported to his superiors that he had been &quot;confronted by a revolutionary army&quot;.  In a telegram sent to Dyer, British Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab, Sir Michael O'Dwyer wrote: &quot;Your action is correct. Lieutenant Governor approves.&quot;Disorder Inquiry Committee Report, Vol II, p 197  O'Dwyer requested that martial law be imposed upon Amritsar and other areas; this was granted by the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, after the massacre. The &quot;crawling order&quot; was posted on Aug 19 under the auspices of martial law.   Dyer was messaged to appear before the Hunter Commission, a commission of inquiry into the massacre that was ordered to convene by Secretary of State for India, Edwin Montagu, during late 1919. Dyer said before the commission that he came to know about the meeting at the Jallianwala Bagh at 12:40 hours that day but did not attempt to prevent it. He stated that he had gone to the Bagh with the deliberate intention of opening fire if he found a crowd assembled there.  :&quot;I think it quite possible that I could have dispersed the crowd without firing but they would have come back again and laughed, and I would have made, what I consider, a fool of myself.&quot; — Dyer's response to the Hunter Commission Enquiry.  Dyer said he would have used his machine guns if he could have got them into the enclosure, but these were mounted on armoured cars. He said he did not stop the shooting when the crowd began to disperse because he thought it was his duty to keep shooting until the crowd dispersed, and that a little shooting would not do any good. In fact he continued the shooting till the ammunition was almost exhausted.  He stated that he did not make any effort to tend to the wounded after the shooting: &quot;Certainly not. It was not my job. Hospitals were open and they could have gone there.&quot;  The Hunter Commission did not award any penal nor disciplinary action because Dyer's actions were condoned by various superiors (later upheld by the Army Council). Retrieved on 14 Sep 2010. However, he was finally found guilty of a mistaken notion of duty and relieved of his command.  ==Demonstration at Gujranwala== Two days later on April 15, demonstrations occurred in Gujranwala protesting the killings at Amritsar.  Police and aircraft were used against the demonstrators, resulting in 12 deaths and 27 injuries.  The Officer Commanding the Royal Air Force in India, Brigadier General N D K MacEwen stated later that:  :&quot;I think we can fairly claim to have been of great use in the late riots, particularly at Gujranwala, where the crowd when looking at its nastiest was absolutely dispersed by a machine using bombs and Lewis guns.&quot;  ==Monument and legacy==  memorial]] .]]   A trust was formed later 1920 to build a memorial at the site after a resolution passed by the Indian National Congress. During 1923, the trust purchased land for the project. A memorial, designed by American architect Benjamin Polk, was built on the site and inaugurated by the President of India, Dr Rajendra Prasad on April 13, 1961, in the presence of Jawaharlal Nehru and other leaders. A flame was later added to the site.  The bullet holes can be seen on the walls and adjoining buildings to this day. The well into which many people jumped and drowned attempting to save themselves from the bullets is also a protected monument inside the park.  ===Formation of Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee=== The most glaring incident followed the massacre. Shortly after, the official Sikh clergy of Golden Temple conferred upon General Dyer the &quot;Saropa&quot; (the mark of distinguished service to the Sikh faith or, in general, humanity), sending shock waves among the Sikh masses.Ajit Singh Sarhadi, &quot;Punjabi Suba: The Story of the Struggle&quot;, Kapur Printing Press, Delhi, 1970, p. 19 On October 12 1920, students and faculty of the Amritsar Khalsa College called a meeting to immediately liberate the Gurudwaras from the control of corrupt Mahants. The natural result of this action was the formation of Shiromani Gurudwara Prabhandak Committee on November 15, 1920 to manage and reform Sikh shrines.  ===Artistic portrayals=== *1982: The massacre is depicted in Richard Attenborough's film ''Gandhi'' with the role of General Dyer played by Edward Fox. The film depicts most of the details of the massacre as well as the subsequent inquiry by the Montague commission. *1984: The story of the massacre also occurs in the 7th episode of Granada TV's 1984 series The Jewel in the Crown, recounted by the fictional widow of a British officer who is haunted by the inhumanity of it and who tells how she came to be reviled because she defied the honoring of Dyer and instead donated money to the Indian victims. *2002: In the Hindi movie ''The Legend of Bhagat Singh'' directed by Rajkumar Santoshi, the massacre is reconstructed with the child Bhagat Singh as a witness, eventually inspiring him to become a revolutionary in the Indian independence movement. *2006: Portions of the Hindi movie ''Rang De Basanti'' nonlinearly depict the massacre and the influence it had on the freedom fighters.  ===Prince Philip Controversy=== During 1997, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, participating with an already controversial British visit to the Monument, provoked outrage in India with an offhand comment. Having observed a plaque claiming &quot;This place is saturated with the blood of about two thousand Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims who were martyred in a non-violent struggle&quot;, Prince Philip observed, &quot;That's a bit exaggerated, it must include the wounded&quot;. (Official British Raj sources estimated the fatalities at 379, and with 1,100 wounded. Civil Surgeon Dr Smith indicated that there were 1,526 casualties, which might account for the Prince's opinion.) When asked how he had concluded this, Prince Philip said &quot;I was told about the killings by General Dyer's son. I'd met him while I was in the Navy.&quot;[ The Queen in Amritsar]  ===Apology=== Although she had not made any comments on the incident during her state visits later 1961 and 1983, Queen Elizabeth II spoke about the events at a state banquet in India on October 13, 1997:    On October 14, 1997 Queen Elizabeth II visited Jallianwala Bagh and paid her respects with a 30‑second moment of silence. During the visit, she wore a dress of a color described as pink apricot or saffron, which was of religious significance to Hindus and Sikhs. She removed her shoes while visiting the monument and laid a wreath at the monument.  While some Indians welcomed the expression of regret and sadness in the Queen's statement, others criticised it for being less than an apology. The then-Prime Minister of India Inder Kumar Gujral defended the Queen, stating that the Queen herself had played no part in the events and should not be required to apologize.  ==Assassination of Michael O'Dwyer==   ca. 1912]]  memorial]]  On March 13, 1940, at Caxton Hall in London, Udham Singh, an Indian independence activist from Sunam who had witnessed the events in Amritsar and was himself wounded, shot and killed Michael O'Dwyer, the British Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab at the time of the massacre, who had approved Dyer's action and was believed to be the main planner.  (Dyer himself had died in 1927.)   The action by Singh was condemned generally, but some press, like nationalist newspaper ''Amrita Bazar Patrika'', also made positive statements. The common people and revolutionaries glorified the action of Udham Singh. Much of the press worldwide recalled the story of Jallianwala Bagh and alleged Michael O'Dwyer to have been responsible for the massacre. Singh was termed a &quot;fighter for freedom&quot; and his action was referred to in the ''Times'' newspaper as &quot;an expression of the pent-up fury of the down-trodden Indian People&quot;.''The Times'', London, March 16, 1940 In Fascist countries, the incident was used for anti-British propaganda: ''Bergeret'', published in large scale from Rome at that time, while commenting upon the Caxton Hall assassination, ascribed the greatest significance to the circumstance and praised the action of Udham Singh as courageous.Public and Judicial Department, File No L/P + J/7/3822, Caxton Hall outrage, India Office Library and Records, London, pp 13-14 The ''Berliner Börsen Zeitung'' termed the event &quot;The torch of Indian freedom&quot;. German radio reportedly broadcast: &quot;The cry of tormented people spoke with shots.&quot;  At a public meeting in Kanpur, a spokesman had stated that &quot;at last an insult and humiliation of the nation had been avenged&quot;. Similar sentiments were expressed in numerous other places countrywide.Government of India, Home Department, Political File No 18/3/1940, National Archives of India, New Delhi, p40 Fortnightly reports of the political situation in Bihar mentioned: &quot;It is true that we had no love lost for Sir Michael. The indignities he heaped upon our countrymen in Punjab have not been forgotten.&quot; In its March 18, 1940 issue, ''Amrita Bazar Patrika wrote'': &quot;O'Dwyer's name is connected with Punjab incidents which India will never forget.&quot; The ''New Statesman'' observed: &quot;British conservativism has not discovered how to deal with Ireland after two centuries of rule. Similar comment may be made on British rule in India. Will the historians of the future have to record that it was not the Nazis but the British ruling class which destroyed the British Empire?&quot;  Singh had told the court at his trial:  :&quot;I did it because I had a grudge against him. He deserved it. He was the real culprit. He wanted to crush the spirit of my people, so I have crushed him. For full 21 years, I have been trying to wreak vengeance. I am happy that I have done the job. I am not scared of death. I am dying for my country. I have seen my people starving in India under the British rule. I have protested against this, it was my duty. What a greater honour could be bestowed on me than death for the sake of my motherland?&quot;CRIM 1/1177, Public Record Office, London, p 64  Singh was hanged for the murder on July 31, 1940. At that time, many, including Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi, condemned the action of Udham as senseless but courageous. In 1952, Nehru (by then, Prime Minister) honored Udham Singh with the following statement which had appeared in the daily Partap: &quot;I salute Shaheed-i-Azam Udham Singh with reverence who had kissed the noose so that we may be free.&quot;  Soon after this recognition by the Prime Minister, Udham Singh received the title of Shaheed, a name given to someone who has attained martyrdom or done something heroic on behalf of their country or religion.  