Vinod C Dixit
On 13th April 1919 thousands of innocent Indians lost their lives at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, Punjab. This year marked the 103rd anniversary of the massacre that took place on April 13, 1919. It all started with the 1915 Defence of India Act and the 1919 Rowlett Act. Both acts were pressed in by the British government to curb the civil liberties of Indians. This was done fearing an 1857 mutiny like organized uprising once again by the Indian extremist groups and political parties. The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre is one of the most brutal and gory events in India's history that resulted in the death of about 1,000 people. Mahatma Gandhi called on all Indians to take sacred vows to disobey the Rowlatt Acts and launched a nationwide movement for the repeal of those repressive measures. Gandhi's appeal received the strongest popular response in the Punjab, where the nationalist leaders Kichloo and Satyapal addressed mass protest rallies both from the provincial capital of Lahore and from Amritsar, sacred capital of the Sikhs. Gandhi himself had taken a train to the Punjab early in April 1919 to address one of those rallies, but he was arrested at the border station and taken back to Bombay by orders of Punjab's lieutenant governor, Sir Michael O'Dwyer.
The Rowlett Act initiated huge political unrest in India. People came down to streets protesting against the Act. The situation was particularly worst in Punjab, where thousands of protesters gathered at the Amritsar's Deputy Commissioner's residence on 1st April 1919. Prior to the incident, an English missionary was attacked by angry mobs, protesting the arrest of two leaders of the independence movement. This led General Dyer to impose Martian Law on April 12, 1919.General Reginald Dyer got the information of this huge public gathering and started charting out a plan to handle it. Sometime around the evening after 18:30 Hrs, general Dyer came to the Bagh with ninety soldiers and blocking the only main entrance, ordered the shooting. British Indian troops on the orders of Brigadier Gen Reginald Dyer had opened fire on a large group of people who had gathered at Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar to celebrate Baisakhi, the harvest festival. At least 400 people were killed and a thousand were injured. Dyer's actions showed that the empire was fearful; an authoritarian regime was being challenged and people were asking for their rights. Dyer thought that his message would send shivers and no one would dare to talk about autonomy and freedom.
Rabindranath Tagore renounced his knighthood in protest against the Punjab tragedy. Congress boycotted the special committee headed by Lord Hunter to enquire into the killings. When Gandhi came to know about the atrocities in Punjab, he decided to break off his relations with the British, and started a non-violent campaign of non-cooperation against the British government.
Dyer was killed on March 13, 1940, by a man called Uddham Singh, a member of Gadar party seeking revenge for the massacre. The Jallianwala Bagh massacre was the most barbaric and well thought out cold blood mass murder of innocent Indians on Indian soil. Nothing could have ever justified such atrocity on innocent and unarmed civilians and the day is the darkest day in India's freedom struggle.
