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running to me with the news that many had been killed and wounded in the Jallianawal- lah Bagh. As I knew that my son and brother had gone to the bagh to attend the meeting I became very anxious and at once proceeded to the bagh. I found my son safe and entered to the bagh by climbing over the wall... we saw a very large heap of the dead and the wounded near the exits... all the exits were blocked by very large number of the dead and wounded... I found my brother lying dead under three or four dead bodies.... lots of kites were hovering very low over the dead and wounded, so much so that it was with great difficulty that one could keep his turban on his head...." One of the English news papers, "The Daily Heraldon" (reproduced by Amrita Ba- zaar Patrika 12-1-1920) wrote about the trag- edy in the following words: "The first detailed account of the April shootings at Amritsar, in the Punjab, shows it to have been one of the most bloody massacres of modern his- tory. Of the various stones of imperial oppression and the revolt against it by the subject races of the British empire which we print today, the most amazing and stupefying in its naked horror is that of the massacre of Amritsar. According to the report of General Dyer’s evidence, over 400 Indians were killed and 1,500 wounded by the deliberate firing on a crowd of 5,000 who were listening to a speech. No blacker or fouler story has ever been told. General Dyer is reported as admitting that the crowd might have gone away peacefully and without blood- shed, and that his motive for the slaugh- ter was merely that the crowd would in that case have come back again and laughed, and he would have made a fool of himself! ... with incredible indifference to hu- man suffering, the British authorities left the wounded unattended in the streets. This, we presume, was done in order to teach men and women, of a different civi- lization and a different religion, what a beautiful and merciful thing Christianity is, and how sacred we British hold the law of Him who said that we were to love our enemies." After the massacre, Martial law was declared and the administration was still at least nominally in the hands of civil authority.

Martial law was proclaimed at Amritsar on the 15th April 1919 and in the 5 districts of the Punjab between 15th and 24th April. The regime of martial law was a veritable reign of terror characterised by acts of brutal- ity and deliberate rascality unworthy of any civilised government. Dyer did not take any step to look after the wounded at Jallianwala Bagh. On that very day he issued a curfew order that all persons must be indoors after 8 p.m. and would go into the streets at the risk of being shot at sight. It was surprising that the wounded lay in their agony, the dead lay pu- trefying in the hot atmosphere of an Amritsar April night, that the vultures and jackals came to tear the flesh from the bod- ies of the innocent victims of this dreadful holocaust while the anxious relatives of. in- nocent victims remained terrified in their houses. The curfew order in Amritsar was maintained for weeks, and was admini- stered with the utmost vigour. Among General Dyer's inspirations was the cutting off of the water supply and the electric supply of the city. One of the most astounding inventions of Dyer's fertile brain was the crawling order. By his orders for several days, everyone passing through the street in which Miss Sherwood, the lady doc- tor, was assaulted was ordered to crawl with the belly to the ground. Floggings were a common feature of the administration of martial law in Amritsar as in other areas...A public platform for whippings was erected near the fort, and a number of triangles for floggings were erected in various parts of the city. There were other indignities too. Some people were made to touch the ground with their foreheads by way of making them ac- knowledge authority. Some persons were limewashed and made to stand in the sun. As many as 107 persons were kept in a public cage without any overhead covering. They were exposed to the burning sun. In India, the Englishmen regarded Dyer as the saviour of the British Empire. A fund was set up for General Dyer to organize a memorial of him. A collection was made by the English ladies in India who started a Dyer Apprecia- tion fund at Mussoorie. Dyer was presented with a sword and a purse of 20,000 pounds. 'Mahatma Gandhi returned the awards he had received, the Zulu War Medal and the Kaiser-I-Hind Medal, declaring that ‘co-op- eration in any shape or form with this satanic government is sinful.’

One of those who was injured at Jallianwallah Bagh, Udham Singh, shot dead Sir Michael O'Dwer, who was Governor of Punjab at the time of the tragedy, on 13th March 1940 at Caxton Hall, London. Udham Singh was sentenced to death and hanged on 12th June 1940. Justifying his action he exclaimed, "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 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 greater honour could be bestowed on me than death for the sake of my motherland? " As a strong reaction to the bloodshed in Punjab, Rabindranath Tagore turned the knighthood awarded by the British. He wrote a strong protest letter to the Viceroy on 31 st May 1919 which reads as: “The disproportionate seventy of the punishments inflicted upon the unfortu- nate people and the methods of carrying them out, we are convinced, are without parallel in the history of civilised gov- ernments.... The accounts of insults and sufferings undergone by our brothers in the Punjab have trickled through the gagged silence; reaching every comer of India and the universal agony of indignation roused in the hearts of our people has been ignored by our rulers, - possibly congratulating themselves for what they imagine as salutary les- sons ....the very least that I can do for my country is to take all consequences upon myself in giving voice to the pro- test of the millions of my countrymen, surprised into a dumb anguish of terror. The time has come when the badges of honour make our shame glaring in their incongruous context of humiliation, and I for my part wish to stand shorn of all special distinctions, by the side of those of my countrymen, who, for their so called insignificance, are liable-to suffer a degradation not fit for human beings... ”