Butcher of Amritsar - General Reginald Dyer

Butcher of Amritsar - General Reginald Dyer

by Nigel Collett

Bloomsbury Publishing. London. 2007.

Publisher's description:

"On 13 April 1919, General Reginald Dyer marched a squad of Indian soldiers into the Jallianwala Bagh, a large enclosed public space in the holy city of Amritsar, and opened fire without warning on a crowd gathered to hear political speeches, leaving over 200 dead.

To some, Dyer was the saviour of India, responding decisively to threatened insurrection, but to many in India, including Gandhi and Nehru, his action proved the moral bankruptcy of the British Empire.

The bitter debate that followed the shootings, the worst atrocity perpetrated by the British in the twentieth century, almost brought down the Liberal Government and was a decisive turning point in India's march to independence.

"The Butcher of Amritsar" is a definitive account of the massacre set in the context of a biography of Reginald Dyer, a man whose attitudes reflected many of the views common in the Raj."

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Wikipedia informs us (extracts only):

Dyer is infamous for the orders that he gave on 13 April 1919 in Amritsar. It was by his command that 50 troops, including 25 Gurkhas of 1/9 Gurkha Rifles (1st battalion, 9th Gurkha Rifles), 25 Pathans and Baluch and 59th Sindh Rifles, all armed with .303 Lee–Enfield rifles, opened fire on a non-violent gathering of unarmed civilians, men, women, elderlies and children, at the Jallianwalla Bagh, in what later came to be known as the Amritsar massacre.

The civilians had assembled at Jallianwala Bagh to participate in the annual Baisakhi celebrations which are both a religious and a cultural festival of the Punjabis. Coming from outside the city, they may have been unaware of the martial law that had been imposed.

The Bagh-space comprised 6 to 7 acres (2 to 3 ha) and was walled on all sides, except for five entrances. Four of the entrances were very narrow, admitting only a few people at a time. The fifth entrance was blocked by the armed soldiers, as well as by two armoured cars with machine guns. The vehicles were unable to pass through the entrance.

Upon entering the park, the general ordered the troops to shoot directly into the gathering. The shooting continued unabated for about 10 minutes, and the soldiers' supply of 1,650 rounds of ammunition was almost exhausted.

Dyer is reported to have, from time to time, "checked his fire and directed it upon places where the crowd was thickest", not because the crowd was slow to disperse, but because he "had made up his mind to punish them for having assembled there."

Some of the soldiers initially shot into the air, at which Dyer shouted: "Fire low. What have you been brought here for?"

Later, Dyer's own testimony revealed that the crowd was not given any warning to disperse and he was not remorseful for having ordered his troops to shoot.

The worst part of the whole thing was that the firing was directed towards the exit gates through which the people were running out. There were 3 or 4 small outlets in all and bullets were actually rained over the people at all these gates… and many got trampled under the feet of the rushing crowds and thus lost their lives… even those who lay flat on the ground were fired upon.

Image (Wikipedia) of narrow passage between tall walls which leads to the entrance of Jallianwala Bagh

The Hunter Commission report on the incident, published the following year by the Government of India, criticised both Dyer, and the Government of the Punjab for failing to compile a casualty count, so quoted a figure offered by the Sewa Samati (A Social Services Society) of 379 identified dead, comprising 337 men, 41 boys and a six-week old baby, with approximately 1,100 wounded, of which 192 were seriously injured.

However other estimates, from government civil servants in the city (commissioned by the Punjab Sub-committee of Indian National Congress), as well as counts from the Home Political, cite numbers of well over a thousand dead.

According to a Home Political Deposit report, the number was more than 1,000, with more than 1,200 wounded. Dr Smith, a British civil surgeon at Amritsar, estimated that there were over 1,800 casualties. In India, the deliberate infliction of these casualties earned Dyer the epithet of the "Butcher of Amritsar".