Gandhi and the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre and Beyond.

Before the 1919 Jallianwalla Bagh tragedy, Gandhi had not at all visited Punjab. The mass murder,however, changed him everlastingly. It transformed him from a British Empire loyalist to arelentless opponent of British rule.The first major national campaign organised by Mahatma Gandhi was in opposition to the RowlattAct, which harshly limited civil liberties. This movement began with an all-India hartal, observed onSunday, April 6, 1919. Although he had once been an admirer of the British Empire, the political andsocial campaigner, Mahatma Gandhi, was moved to express his complete estrangement from ‘thepresent Government’ by the ‘wanton cruelty’ and ‘inhumanity’ shown by Dyer and others in thePunjab. Amritsar polarised British and Indian opinion and created a sore that still has the power tocause controversy and embarrassment over 60 years since British power in India finally came to anend. During a visit in 2005 the then British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, expressed his shame andsorrow for the ‘slaughter of innocents’ at Jallianwala The Amritsar massacre has become, in some ways, a necessary myth in Indian nationalism, providinglegitimacy to those who would inherit the Raj, while at the same time undermining those attempts toportray British rule in a sympathetic and progressive light. It came with a stellar cast of heroes andvillains, and a long list of ‘martyrs’ who, it was claimed, died to free India from imperial rule.Furthermore, it was not just the events in Amritsar that have become part of this storySince 1920 at least 14 books and a handful of articles have been written on the Amritsar massacre. Thebiographies of the key actors, from Brigadier General Dyer to Mahatma Gandhi, also discuss theincident at length. Although the factual details have generally been accepted, their interpretation hasbeen fiercely contested and there has been extensive discussion on two main questions: why Dyerordered the firing and whether he was justified in doing so. Views have been polarised, often reflectingthe ideological position of the writer, with Indian nationalists criticising Dyer for his brutality, butthose sympathetic to the Raj, such as Ian Colvin and Arthur Swinson, defending Dyer and claimingthat by the firing he saved India from a repeat of 1857, and that his actions were necessary andjustified. As is perhaps to be expected, most writers have taken a dim view of Dyer. Althoughdisagreeing on his exact motives, all stress both the extreme violence of the shooting and theinnocence of those at Jallianwala Bagh.In 2005 Nigel Collett published The Butcher of Amritsar, the first biography of Dyer since 1929.Collett argued that understanding the massacre was dependent upon appreciating Dyer’s difficult andcomplex personality. He believed that Dyer ordered firing at Jallianwala Bagh ‘not because he wascallous or bloodthirsty’, but because he interpreted the violence in Amritsar and the gathering of theassembly in the Bagh as a ‘challenge to his way of life and everything he thought it stood for’. Hebelieved that he was facing a violent revolt, perhaps a repeat of 1857, and that he must fire to ‘save’India and the European community.