Even after 103 years, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre remains one of the “darkest days” in India’s history. The bloodshed took place on April 13, 1919, during the festival of Baisakhi that killed hundreds of Indians fighting for freedom of the country.
British General Reginald Dyer had ordered his troops to open fire on thousands of unarmed men, women, and children who had gathered in Amritsar on April 13, 1919, to peacefully protest against the arrest and deportation of two nationalists – Satya Pal and Saifuddin Kitchlew. The two leaders were arrested under the notorious Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act of 1919, popularly known as the Rowlatt Act, which gave the British government enormous powers to suppress political activities and allowed the detention of political prisoners without trial for two years.
General Dyer stormed his troops inside the Jallianwala Bagh and ordered his troops to open fire without any warning killing 379 people, according to the British records. However, the eyewitnesses who saw the massacre recounted several thousand were killed during the firing.
The horrors of the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre provoked Indians and traumatised them. The killings turned out to be a catalyst in the history of India’s independence movement, consolidating the Indian opinion.
Not just General Dyer, who was the chief perpetrator of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, but the entire British Empire became an object of hatred among Indians. It was not the first time the Indians had witnessed such brutal killings ever since the British colonised India, but the Jallianwala Bagh came as a shock as it had exposed entirely the barbarity perpetrated by the British Empire.
Even as the common Indians suffered pain, agony and despair after General Dyer’s action at the Jallianwala Bagh, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi – the conscience keeper of the Congress party, strangely forgave the British General.
Mahatma Gandhi’s writings reveal how he found it was morally right to forgive Dyer for the heinous crimes he committed in Amritsar by killing innocent and unarmed people. In an article titled “Religious Authority for Non-cooperation”, authored by him and published in Young India on August 25 1920, Mohandas wrote, “It would be sin for me to serve General Dyer and co-operate with him to shoot innocent men. But it will be an exercise of forgiveness or love for me to nurse him back to life if he is suffering from a physical malady”.
For Gandhi, Dyer merely destroyed a few bodies, while the others tried to kill the soul of a nation. Further, condemning the outrage against the British General and defending General Dyer, Gandhi wrote, “the fury that has been spent upon General Dyer is, I am sure, largely misdirected”.
A few years later, a friend wrote to Gandhi to inform him about Dyer’s deteriorating health condition. In the letter, he blamed the Jallianwala Bagh massacre for his ill health. However, Gandhi did not approve of this attack on Dyer.
“I do not think that his paralysis has any necessary connection with his action in Jallianwala Bagh. Have you considered the implications of such beliefs?… My dysentery, appendicitis and this time, a mild attack of paralysis must have been known to you. I should be very sorry if some good Englishmen were to think that these diseases were due to my fierce opposition, as it must appear in their estimation, to the English government,” Mohandas Gandhi said in response.
Finally, nearly two decades after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, Mohandas forgave Dyer one more time.
“Who could be more cruel or blood-thirsty than the late General Dyer?” wrote Gandhi, “Yet the Jallianwala Bagh Congress Inquiry Committee, on my advice, had refused to ask for his prosecution. I had no trace of ill will against him in my heart. I would have also liked to meet him personally and reach his heart, but that was to remain a mere aspiration.”
