The Garhwal Rifles - Link To The Indian Nationalist Movement

Link To The Indian Nationalist Movement

Against the backdrop of growing civil unrest and Indian nationalism in the 1930s, some historians have asserted that the Regiment fell into disfavour with the British following an incident at Peshawar on 23 April 1930, when a detachment of the 2/18 Garhwal Rifles apparently refused to obey an order to open fire on an unruly crowd that was causing a disturbance. Following the controversial arrest of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the Khudai Khidmatgar (nationalist satyagrahis) gathered to protest, and the troops were called out in response to the demonstration. What followed next is disputed — some historians have claimed that the crowd was peaceful and unarmed, and that the members of the Regiment were ordered to open fire by their British officers but, under the leadership of Veer Chandra Singh Garhwali refused to do so against unarmed civilians. It has been asserted that the whole incident galvanised the entire freedom movement. Other accounts, however, have painted a different picture. At the time, it was felt that the Garhwalis had failed in their duty, however, the official report following the incident cited evidence that the crowd had turned violent and that the regiment did in fact open fire, as per their orders, and that the crowd then dispersed.

The aftermath, however, seems clearer. Following the incident at Peshawar the Regiment received a black mark against its name, and the loyalty of its members was called into question. Matters were made worse when, the following day, two platoons refused to fall in, and several men declared that they wished to be discharged. Because of this, higher command believed that the battalion was disaffected and, as a result, the disaffected men were ordered to return their weapons and dismiss. Later the entire battalion was disarmed. A Court of Inquiry afterwards found that the men of the Regiment had acted properly according to the confused orders that they had received on the day of the incident in Peshawar, but on the subject of the incident the following day it was quite swift in handing out the punishments. The riflemen of the two platoons that had refused to fall in were all dismissed from the service, whilst of the seventeen non-commissioned officers, one received transportation for life, another was sentenced to fourteen years imprisonment and the other fifteen also received various smaller terms of imprisonment.

These punishments seem quite harsh in the circumstances, but probably serve to highlight the concern that the British had surrounding the incident at the time, when it was felt on both sides, not without reason, that British rule in India was coming to an end. This did not turn out to be completely correct, of course, for the Raj still had another seventeen years to run, but it almost certainly served as a portent of the future.