Reginald Dyer

In 1919, the European population in Punjab feared the locals would overthrow British rule. A nationwide hartal (strike action), which was called on 30 March (later changed to 6 April) by Mahatma Gandhi, had turned violent in some areas. Authorities were also becoming concerned by displays of Hindu-Muslim unity.[29]^: 237 Michael O'Dwyer, the Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab, decided to deport major agitators from the province. One of those targeted was Dr. Satyapal,[29]^: 237 a Hindu who had served with the Royal Army Medical Corps during the First World War. He advocated non-violent civil disobedience and was forbidden by the authorities to speak publicly. Another agitator was Dr. Saifuddin Kitchlew,[29]^: 237 a Muslim barrister who wanted political change and also preached non-violence. The district magistrate, acting on orders from the Punjab government, had the two leaders arrested.[29]^: 237

The shooting of protesters resulted in a mob forming and returning to the city centre of Amritsar, setting fire to government buildings and attacking Europeans in the city. Three British bank employees were beaten to death, and Miss Marcella Sherwood, who supervised the Mission Day School for Girls, was cycling around the city to close her schools when she was assaulted by a mob in a narrow street called the Kucha Kurrichhan. Sherwood was rescued from the mob by locals.[29]^{: 237–239} They hid the teacher, who was hurt in the beating, before moving her to the fort. Dyer, who was the commandant of the infantry brigade in Jalandhar, decided to take action. He arrived on 11 April to assume command.[30]

Though authorities initially claimed that the massacre was triggered by the assault on Sherwood, regimental diaries reveal that this was merely a pretext. Instead, Dyer and O'Dwyer feared an imminent mutiny in Punjab similar to the Indian Rebellion of 1857.[31]

The event known historically as the Amritsar massacre occurred on 13 April 1919 in Amritsar. The date coincided with that of the annual Baisakhi celebrations which are both a religious and a cultural festival of the Punjabis, and would have attracted visitors from outside the city. On the morning of 13 April, Dyer issued a proclamation in English, Urdu and Punjabi at 19 locations around the city, and had handbills distributed, to the effect that a curfew was imposed, no processions were to take place, and that meetings of more than four individuals could be fired upon.[32] By 12:30 that day, Dyer was informed that in defiance of his orders, a meeting was to be held in the Jallianwala Bagh.[33]

Dyer was determined to bring the situation in Amritsar under control. He knew that fighting the rebels in the narrow streets would result in loss of innocent civilian lives, and was to be avoided. Likewise, it would be unwise to have a major confrontation with the rebels in the vicinity of the Golden Temple, for fear of causing wrath among the Sikh population, whose loyalties were not clearly known. The proposed meeting which was to take place in the Jallianwala Bagh in defiance of the proclamation, gave Dyer an opportunity to suppress the rebels, in isolation from the general populace.[34]

The meeting assembled at Jallianwala Bagh, a walled space of 6 to 7 acres (2 to 3 ha) with five entrances, four of which were narrow, admitting only a few people at a time. The fifth entrance was that used by Dyer and his troops. The organiser of the meeting was Dr Mohammed Bashir, who was later found guilty of inciting the attack on the National Bank.[35] Seven people had addressed the meeting before Dyer arrived, including Brij Gopi Nath who read a poem inciting people to war.[36]

Dyer had at his command 50 troops, including 25 Gurkhas of 1/9 Gurkha Rifles (1st battalion, 9th Gurkha Rifles), 25 Pathans and Baluch and 59th Sindh Rifles, armed with .303 Lee–Enfield rifles.[37] He also had two armoured cars with machine guns, which were unable to pass through the entrance. Upon entering the Bagh, the general ordered the troops to shoot directly into the gathering. The shooting continued unabated for about 10 minutes,[38] and the soldiers' supply of 1,650 rounds of ammunition was almost exhausted.[39]

Dyer is reported to have, from time to time, "checked his fire and directed it upon places where the crowd was thickest",[39] not because the crowd was slow to disperse, but because he "had made up his mind to punish them for having assembled there."[39] Some of the soldiers initially shot into the air, at which Dyer shouted: "Fire low. What have you been brought here for?"[40] 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.[41]

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.[42]

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,[4] with approximately 1,100 wounded, of which 192 were seriously injured.[43] However other estimates,[44] from government civil servants in the city (commissioned by the Punjab Sub-committee of Indian National Congress),[45] as well as counts from the Home Political,[44] 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.[44] Dr Smith, a British civil surgeon at Amritsar, estimated that there were over 1,800 casualties.[46] The deliberate infliction of these casualties earned Dyer the epithet of the "Butcher of Amritsar".[47]

The day after the massacre Dyer attempted to restore law and order. The following is the English translation of Dyer's Urdu statement directed at the local residents of Amritsar on the afternoon of 14 April 1919, a day after the Amritsar massacre:

You people know well that I am a Sepoy and soldier. Do you want war or peace? If you wish for a war, the Government is prepared for it, and if you want peace, then obey my orders and open all your shops; else I will shoot. For me the battlefield of France or Amritsar is the same. I am a military man and I will go straight. Neither shall I move to the right nor to the left. Speak up, if you want war? In case there is to be peace, my order is to open all shops at once. You people talk against the Government and persons educated in Germany and Bengal talk sedition. I shall report all these. Obey my orders. I do not wish to have anything else. I have served in the military for over 30 years. I understand the Indian Sepoy and Sikh people very well. You will have to obey my orders and observe peace. Otherwise the shops will be opened by force and rifles. You will have to report to me of the Badmash [criminals]. I will shoot them. Obey my orders and open shops. Speak up if you want war? You have committed a bad act in killing the English. The revenge will be taken upon you and upon your children.[48]

Dyer designated the spot as sacred where Marcella Sherwood was assaulted. Daytime pickets were placed at either end of the street. Anyone wishing to proceed in the street between 6am and 8pm was made to crawl the 200 yards (180 m) on all fours, lying flat on their bellies.[49][50] The order was not required at night due to a curfew. The order effectively closed the street. The houses did not have any back doors and the inhabitants could not go out without climbing down from their roofs. This order was in effect from 19 April until 25 April 1919.[51]

A committee of enquiry, chaired by Lord Hunter, was established to investigate the massacre. The committee's report criticised Dyer, arguing that in "continuing firing as long as he did, it appears to us that Colonel Dyer committed a grave error."[52] Dissenting members argued that the martial law regime's use of force was wholly unjustified. "Colonel Dyer thought he had crushed the rebellion and Michael O'Dwyer was of the same view," they wrote, "(but) there was no rebellion which required to be crushed."[53] The Morning Post claimed Dyer was "the man who saved India" and started a benefit fund which raised over £26,000 sterling.[54] Sources differ on how much, if anything Rudyard Kipling contributed to this fund and some sources claim that 'the man who saved India' line came from Kipling.[55][56] Michael O'Dwyer, Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab from 1913 to 1919, endorsed Dyer and called the massacre a "correct" action.[57] Some historians now believe he premeditated the massacre and set Dyer to work.[58][59][60][61] Many Indians blamed O'Dwyer, and while Dyer was never assaulted, O'Dwyer was assassinated in London in 1940 by an Indian revolutionary, Sardar Udham Singh in retaliation for his role in the massacre.[62]

Dyer was met by the Adjutant-General of India, Lieutenant-General Havelock Hudson, who told him that he was relieved of his command. He was told later by the Commander-in-Chief in India, General Charles Monro, to resign his post and that he would not be reemployed.[63] He was heavily criticised both in Britain and India. Several senior and influential British government officials and Indians spoke against him, including:

• Pandit Motilal Nehru, father of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, who called the massacre the "saddest and most revealing of all".[64]
• Rabindranath Tagore, the first Asian Nobel Laureate and distinguished Indian educator, who renounced his knighthood in protest against the massacre and said, "a great crime has been done in the name of law in the Punjab".[65]
• Shankaran Nair, who resigned his membership of the Viceroy's Executive Council in the Legislative Council of Punjab in protest at the massacre.[66]
• Punjab Legislative Council members Nawab Din Murad and Kartar Singh, who described the massacre as "neither just nor humane."[66]
• Charles Freer Andrews, an Anglican priest and friend of Gandhi, who termed the Jallianwala Bagh massacre as a "cold-blooded massacre and inhumane."[67]
• Brigadier-General Surtees, who stated in the Dyer debate that "we hold India by force – undoubtedly by force".[68]
• Edwin Samuel Montagu, the Secretary of State for India, who called it "a grave error in judgement". In a debate in the House of Commons, he asked, "Are you going to keep your hold on India by terrorism, racial humiliation, subordination and frightfulness, or are you going to rest it upon the goodwill and the growing goodwill of the people of your Indian Empire?"[67][7]^: 380
• Winston Churchill, at the time Britain's Secretary of State for War, who called the massacre "an episode without precedent or parallel in the modern history of the British Empire… an extraordinary event, a monstrous event, an event which stands in singular and sinister isolation... the crowd was neither armed nor attacking" during a debate in the House of Commons. In a letter to the leader of the Liberals and former Secretary of State for India, the Marquess of Crewe, he wrote, "My own opinion is that the offence amounted to murder, or alternatively manslaughter."[7]^{: 382–383}[69]
• Leader of the Liberal Party and former Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, who observed: "There has never been such an incident in the whole annals of Anglo-Indian history, nor, I believe, in the history of our empire since its very inception down to present day. It is one of the worst outrages in the whole of our history."[70]
• B. G. Horniman, who observed: "No event within living memory, probably, has made so deep and painful impression on the mind of the public in this country [Britain] as what came to be known as the Amritsar massacre."[71]

During the Dyer debates in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, there was both praise and condemnation of Dyer.[72] In 1920, the British Labour Party Conference at Scarborough unanimously passed a resolution denouncing the Amritsar massacre as a "cruel and barbarous action" of British officers in Punjab, and called for their trial, the recall of Michael O'Dwyer and the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, and the repealing of repressive legislation.[73]

Dyer made three conflicting sets of statements about his motives and actions. At first, immediately after he carried out the massacre, he made a series of partial but slightly varying explanations with the aim of exonerating himself from any blame. Later, after receiving approval for his actions from all his superiors in India, both civil and military, Dyer stated that his actions were a deliberate attempt to punish people he believed were rebels, and to make an example for the rest of the Punjab that would stop what he regarded as a rebellion. Finally, on Dyer's return to England in disgrace in 1920, his lawyers argued that his actions, though deliberate and premeditated, were justified because he was facing an insurrection and that, on those grounds, any amount of firing was permissible.[74]

Dyer wrote an article in the Globe of 21 January 1921, entitled, "The Peril to the Empire". It commenced with "India does not want self-government. She does not understand it." He wrote later that:[7]^{: 406–407}

• It is only to an enlightened people that free speech and a free press can be extended. The Indian people want no such enlightenment.
• There should be an eleventh commandment in India, "Thou shalt not agitate".
• The time will come to India when a strong hand will be exerted against malice and 'perversion' of good order.
• Gandhi will not lead India to capable self-government. The British Raj must continue, firm and unshaken in its administration of justice to all men.

In his official response to the Hunter commission that inquired into the shooting, Dyer was unremorseful and stated: "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."[75]

However, in his account of the massacre Nick Lloyd comments that although Dyer later claimed to have undertaken the massacre to "save" British India, he had had no such idea in his mind that fateful afternoon. As well as being "dazed and shaken up" – hardly the response of a soldier who had had murder in his mind – all the witnesses recall how Dyer "was unnerved and deeply upset about what had happened".[76]

Nigel Collett – author of the biography The Butcher of Amritsar – is convinced that the Amritsar massacre preyed on Dyer's mind from the very day he opened fire. "He spent the rest of his life trying to justify himself. He persuaded himself it had been his duty to act as he did, but he could not persuade his soul that he had done right. It rotted his mind and, I am guessing here, added to his sickness."[77]

Collett, in his book, portrays Dyer as a man who got on extremely well with his men and his juniors, while his contemporaries and seniors were always wary of him. When he approached a complex political problem, his one thought was to have order; his one tool to get it was the gun. He notes that, at the time of the Amritsar massacre, Dyer was wracked by ill-health and separated from his beloved family. Collett speculates that perhaps this encouraged Dyer's extreme view that the Punjab was on the brink of rebellion, with the empire about to collapse, and feared a mutiny like that of 1857. The solution, he decided, was not just to restore order but to show that the state was in charge. It was not enough to have shops and businesses reopen in Amritsar – an example was needed of the consequences of insubordination.[78]

Collett quotes Dyer on the motivations that drove him to act as he did: "It was no longer a question of merely dispersing the crowd but one of producing a sufficient moral effect, from a military point of view, not only on those who were present but more specially throughout the Punjab. There could be no question of undue severity. The mutineers had thrown out the challenge and the punishment, if administered at all, must be complete, unhesitating and immediate."[74]

Historian Gordon Johnson comments that "...Dyer's actions ran counter to Army regulations. These required that force should be constrained by what was reasonable to achieve an immediate objective; minimum, not maximum, force should be deployed. Moreover, proper warning had to be given. On 13 April 1919, as demonstrated by Collett, Dyer ignored this. While he may have believed the Raj was threatened, and may have thought the mob was out to attack him and his soldiers, this does not justify his cavalier abuse of procedure and his indifference to Indian suffering. In so behaving, he brought not only death to the innocent but also destroyed himself and undermined the empire in which he took so much pride."[78]