Eternal India Encyclopedia

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FREEDOM MOVEMENT

PHASE IV - 1918-1950 AGE OF GANDHI , SUBHAS, NEHRU, PATEL

Khilafat Movement

1919

Government of India Act

1919

Non-co-operation Movement

1920

Dandi March

1930

Round Table Conference

1930-31

Quit India Struggle

1942

INA Trials

1945

Freedom and Partition

1947

Birth of Indian Republic

1950

One of the worst political crimes of the twentieth century was committed in Punjab during 1919. Gandhiji's call for a country- wide hartal to protest against the Black Acts received a tremendous response on 30th March and 6th April. The agitated mood of the people and Hindu-Muslim solidarity demon- strated on the hartal days and on the 9th April celebration of the Ramnavami festival made the Lt. Governor Michael O'Dwyer's admini- stration panicky. Gandhi was banned from entering Punjab. Two popular leaders, Kitch- lew and Sathyapal from Amritsar, were ar- rested. All these provocations led to hartals and mass demonstrations in Lahore, Kasur, Gujranwala and Amritsar. In Amritsar, the police firing on demonstrators provoked some of them to commit acts of violence. The next day the city was handed over to Brigadier- General Dyer. He carried out a number of in- discriminate arrests and banned meetings and gatherings. On 13th April-the day of the Baisakhi festival- a meeting was called in the afternoon at the Jallianwala Bagh, a ground enclosed on all sides. Thousands of people, from sur- rounding villages who came to the fairs in Amritsar and were unaware of the ban order, gathered at the meeting. Suddenly General Dyer appeared there with troops and without any warning to the people, ordered firing on the completely peaceful and defenceless crowd. The fusillade continued till Dyer's ammunition ran out. About a thousand people are estimated to have been killed. The cold- blood carnage, Dyer admitted, was perpe- trated ‘ to strike terror into the whole of Punjab.’ The horror of Jallianwala Bagh is re- flected in the account given by Valentine Chirol before the Hunter Commission of In- quiry which investigated the disturbances in the Punjab.

Gen. Dyer

Jallianwala Bagh site map

PUNJAB HORRORS !! GALLOWS IN PUBLIC! RAIDS ON VILLAGES! WHIPPING OF SCHOOL CHILDREN

(Bombay Cronicle, Monday, December, 1919)

PUNJAB 1919 How shall one love console thee or assuage Thy piteous wounds? How shall our grief requite The hate that-scourges and the hands that smite Thy loveliness with rods of bitter rage? Lo! let thine anguish be our battle-gage To wreck the terror of the tyrant's might That mocks with ruthless scorn thy tragic plight, and mars with shame thine ancient heritage: O beautiful ! O broken and betrayed! Endure thou still, unconquered, unafraid, O mournful queen! O martyred Draupadi! The sacred rivers of thy stricken blood Shall prove the five-fold stream of Freedom's flood. and guard the watch-towers of our Liberty!

SAROJINI NAIDU

more but practically unarmed and all quite defenceless. The panic stricken multitude broke at once but for ten consecutive minutes he kept up a merciless fusillade, in all 1,500 rounds, on that seething mass of humanity, caught like rats in a trap, vainly rushing for the few narrow exits or lying flat on the ground to escape the rain of bullets which he personally directed to the points where the crowd was the thickest. The ‘targets’ to use his own words, were good and then at the end of those ten min- utes, having almost exhausted his ammuni- tion, he marched his men off by the way he came.'' Dyer does not stand alone. The Govern- ment of India, a section of the British people - men and women - both in India and Britain, endorsed his action and rewarded him for it. Lala Nathuram, one of the eye witnesses to the massacre said before the Congress in- quiry committee : I went to the top storey of my house to find what it was... a boy came