History Spotlight, 4/13

Today is the 90th anniversary of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre in Amritsar, India. At the time, Amritsar was right in the middle of Northern India - in these post-partition days, it's on the border of Pakistan and India.

General Reginald Dyer (who my Dungeons and Dragons character - a disgraced former nobleman who killed a bunch of people through his own incompetence and corruption - is named after, but that's not important right now) ordered his soldiers to open fire on a peaceful gathering of men, women and children. For ten minutes and 1650 rounds the firing continued until all were down. The British Raj estimated 379 deaths, other sources say it was close to 2,000.

Tensions on the subcontinent were already running high. Despite a massive outpouring of support for Britain's war effort in both men and material by the Indian government and the various princes of India, there were still some areas that weren't 100 percent with the program. What we would call terrorist attacks continued to pop up in the Indian provinces of Punjab and Bengal, crippling the regional administration and making the British even more distrusting of their native charges. During the war, the German and Turkish governments enacted plans to foment insurrection in India by trying to go for a repeat of the 1857 revolt, which nearly toppled Britain's hold on India.

In addition to all this mess, there was post-war inflation, high taxes on dirt-poor people to pay for a war they never gave a damn about and the 1919 Spanish Flu pandemic. The Indians were disappointed that the 1.3 million men who served the Crown in the war didn't mean an ounce more freedom or home rule from the British. Combine an irritated, subjugated underclass who aren't feeling appreciated for all the blood they've shed for the mother country and a jumpy, nervous, trigger-happy over class who feel that the underclass are a bunch of ungrateful wretches and you've got a recipe for trouble.

During the week of April 10, 1919, over 5000 people had gathered at the marketplace of Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar to protest the taxation and crushing anti-conspiracy laws that had been passed. Over the next few days, the protests got more and more unruly with isolated outbreaks in violence on both sides. On April 13, the protest inadvertently combined with celebrations of the Sikh new year at the marketplace. 90 soldiers, along with two armored cars commanded by General Dyer arrived to restore order. The marketplace was basically a closed courtyard, bounded on all sides by houses. The armored cars were unable to fit through the narrow openings and settled for blocking them off.

At 12:40 pm, General Dyer ordered his troops to open fire. With the exits to the marketplace either blocked by the armored cars or locked, the Indians had nowhere to go and were cut down. 120 bodies alone were found in the well at the center of the market. Even as the crowd dispersed, Dyer ordered his troops to keep firing, contending later that he thought those were his orders. Dyer's cold-blooded defense of his actions in ordering his troops to fire, "I think it quite possible that I could have dispersed the crowd without firing but they would have come back again and laughed, and I would have made, what I consider, a fool of myself." and in not providing medical assistance to the wounded, "Certainly not. It was not my job. Hospitals were open and they could have gone there," made him reviled not only amongst the Indians, but by many British citizens as well.

While some in Britain defended him for suppressing "another Mutiny" the inquest afterward found him stripped of his command, stripped of his rank and formally censured by the British Government. Dyer, for his part, never felt the slightest bit sorry for his actions and, in fact, felt that he had been overly merciful.