Jallianwala Bagh Massacre - Prelude To The Massacre

Prelude To The Massacre

Ever since the Rebellion of 1857 British officials in India lived in fear of native conspiracies and revolts; they warned each other that the natives were most suspicious when they seemed superficially innocent. Investigators at the time and historians since have found no conspiratorial links whatever to the events in Amritsar, but the British fears animated their responses—General Dyer believed a violent thrashing would dampen conspiracies—and afterwards he was hailed in Britain for having preempted a terrorist attack. The events that ensued from the passage of the Rowlatt Act in 1919 were also influenced by activities associated with the Ghadar conspiracy. British Indian Army troops were returning from Europe and Mesopotamia to an economic depression in India.

The attempts at mutiny during 1915 and the Lahore conspiracy trials were still causing fear among the British. Rumours of young Mohajirs who fought on behalf of the Turkish Caliphate, and later, in the ranks of the Red Army during the Russian Civil War, were circulated in Army circles. The Russian Revolution had also begun to influence Indians. Ominously for the British, in 1919, the third Anglo-Afghan war began and in India, Gandhi's call for protest against the Rowlatt act achieved an unprecedented response of furious unrest and protests. The situation especially in Punjab was deteriorating rapidly, with disruptions of rail, telegraph and communication systems.

Revolt was in the air, many Army officers believed, and they prepared for the worst. In Amritsar, more than 15,000 people gathered at Jallianwala Bagh. This situation deteriorated perceptibly during the next few days. Michael O'Dwyer is said to have believed that these were the early and ill-concealed signs of a conspiracy for a coordinated revolt around May, at a time when British troops would have withdrawn to the hills for the summer. The Amritsar massacre, as well as responses preceding and succeeding it, contrary to being an isolated incident, was the end result of a concerted plan of response from the Punjab administration to suppress such a conspiracy. James Houssemayne Du Boulay is said to have ascribed a direct relationship between the fear of a Ghadarite uprising in the midst of an increasingly tense situation in Punjab, and the British response that ended in the massacre.

On April 10, 1919, there was a protest at the residence of the Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar, a city in Punjab, a large province in the northwestern part of India. The demonstration was to demand the release of two popular leaders of the Indian Independence Movement, Satya Pal and Saifuddin Kitchlew, who had been earlier arrested by the government and removed to a secret location. Both were proponents of the Satyagraha movement led by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. The crowd was shot at by a military picket, killing several protesters. The shooting set off a series of violent events. Later the same day, several banks and other government buildings, including the Town Hall and the railway station, were attacked and set afire. The violence continued to escalate, culminating in the deaths of at least five Europeans, including government employees and civilians. There was retaliatory shooting at crowds from the military several times during the day, and between eight and twenty people were killed.

For the next two days, the city of Amritsar was quiet, but violence continued in other parts of the Punjab. Railway lines were cut, telegraph posts destroyed, and government buildings burnt. Three Europeans were murdered. By April 13, the British government had decided to put most of the Punjab under martial law. The legislation restricted a number of civil liberties, including freedom of assembly. Gatherings of more than four people were banned.