Da Tiwana
Inspector Sa'ab ;)
[FONT="]On April 13, thousands of people gathered in the Jallianwala Bagh (garden) near the Golden Temple in Amritsar, on Baisakhi, both a harvest and the Sikh religious new year. It was in 1699 during this festival that the tenth Sikh Guru, Guru Gobind Singh created the Khalsa adding the name Singh or Kaur to every Sikh's name. For more than two hundred years, this annual festival had drawn thousands from all over India. People had travelled for days, before the ban on assembly.
[/FONT] [FONT="]A group of 90 Indian Army soldiers mostly Gurkha, Punjab rifles, Pathans infantry, Dogra regiment and Baluchi regiment, marched to the park accompanied by two armoured cars. The vehicles were unable to enter the Bagh through the narrow entrance.
[/FONT] [FONT="]The Jallianwala Bagh was bounded on all sides by houses and buildings and had few narrow entrances, most of which were kept permanently locked. A plaque in the monument says that 120 bodies were plucked out of the well.
[/FONT] [FONT="]As a result of the firing, hundreds of people were killed and thousands were injured. Official records put the figures at 379 killed (337 men, 41 boys and a six-week-old baby) and 200 injured, though the actual figure is hotly disputed to this day. The wounded could not be moved from where they had fallen, as a curfew had been declared.
[/FONT] [FONT="]Back in his headquarters, Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer reported to his superiors that he had been "confronted by a revolutionary army".
[/FONT] [FONT="]In a telegram sent to Dyer, British Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab, Sir Michael O'Dwyer wrote: "Your action is correct. Lieutenant Governor approves."
[/FONT] [FONT="]O'Dwyer requested that martial law be imposed upon Amritsar and other areas; this was granted by the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, after the massacre.
[/FONT] [FONT="]Dyer was called to appear before the Hunter Commission, a commission of inquiry into the massacre that was ordered to convene by Secretary of State for India Edwin Montagu, in late 1919. Dyer admitted before the commission that he came to know about the meeting at the Jallianwala Bagh at 12:40 hours that day but took no steps to prevent it. He stated that he had gone to the Bagh with the deliberate intention of opening fire if he found a crowd assembled there.
[/FONT] [FONT="] "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." — Dyer's response to the Hunter Commission Enquiry.
[/FONT] [FONT="]Dyer said he would have used his machine guns if he could have got them into the enclosure, but these were mounted on armoured cars. He said he did not stop firing when the crowd began to disperse because he thought it was his duty to keep firing until the crowd dispersed, and that a little firing would do no good.
[/FONT] [FONT="]He confessed that he did not take any steps to tend to the wounded after the firing. "Certainly not. It was not my job. Hospitals were open and they could have gone there," was his response.
[/FONT] [FONT="]In India, the massacre evoked feelings of deep anguish and anger. It catalysed the freedom movement in the Punjab against British. It was also motivation for a number of other revolutionaries, including Bhagat Singh. The Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore returned his knighthood to the King-Emperor in protest. S. Srinivasa Iyengar resigned as Advocate-General of Madras Presidency and returned his Order of the Indian Empire. The massacre ultimately became an important catalyst of the Indian independence movement.
[/FONT] [FONT="]On 13 March 1940, an Indian revolutionary from Sunam, named Udham Singh, who had witnessed the events in Amritsar and was himself wounded, shot dead Michael O'Dwyer, believed to be the chief planner of the massacre (Dyer having died years earlier in 1927) at Caxton Hall in London.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Singh had told the court at his trial:[/FONT]
[FONT="] "I did it because I had a grudge against him. He deserved it. He was the real culprit. He wanted to crush the spirit of my people, so I have crushed him. For full 21 years, I have been trying to wreak vengeance. I am happy that I have done the job. I am not scared of death. I am dying for my country. I have seen my people starving in India under the British rule. I have protested against this, it was my duty. What a greater honour could be bestowed on me than death for the sake of my motherland?"[/FONT]
[FONT="]Singh was hanged for the murder on July 31, 1940. At that time, many, including Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi, condemned the action of Udham as senseless. However, later in 1952, Nehru applauded Udham Singh with the following statement which had appeared in the daily Partap: "I salute Shaheed-i-Azam Udham Singh with reverence who had kissed the noose so that we may be free." Having said this, Udham Singh received the title of Shaheed, a name given to someone who has attained martyrdom or done something heroic in the name of their country or religion.[/FONT]
Nigel Collett, the author of a new biography of Reginald Dyer, The Butcher of Amritsar said of Dyer: "As an Englishman, I cannot help but feel sorrow and shame at what he did...The massacre was the worst atrocity by a British officer ever recorded".
So, let us all remember those Shaheeds, who lost their lives on the eve of Visakhi, due to the cruelity of Britishers..........................
[/FONT] [FONT="]A group of 90 Indian Army soldiers mostly Gurkha, Punjab rifles, Pathans infantry, Dogra regiment and Baluchi regiment, marched to the park accompanied by two armoured cars. The vehicles were unable to enter the Bagh through the narrow entrance.
[/FONT] [FONT="]The Jallianwala Bagh was bounded on all sides by houses and buildings and had few narrow entrances, most of which were kept permanently locked. A plaque in the monument says that 120 bodies were plucked out of the well.
[/FONT] [FONT="]As a result of the firing, hundreds of people were killed and thousands were injured. Official records put the figures at 379 killed (337 men, 41 boys and a six-week-old baby) and 200 injured, though the actual figure is hotly disputed to this day. The wounded could not be moved from where they had fallen, as a curfew had been declared.
[/FONT] [FONT="]Back in his headquarters, Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer reported to his superiors that he had been "confronted by a revolutionary army".
[/FONT] [FONT="]In a telegram sent to Dyer, British Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab, Sir Michael O'Dwyer wrote: "Your action is correct. Lieutenant Governor approves."
[/FONT] [FONT="]O'Dwyer requested that martial law be imposed upon Amritsar and other areas; this was granted by the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, after the massacre.
[/FONT] [FONT="]Dyer was called to appear before the Hunter Commission, a commission of inquiry into the massacre that was ordered to convene by Secretary of State for India Edwin Montagu, in late 1919. Dyer admitted before the commission that he came to know about the meeting at the Jallianwala Bagh at 12:40 hours that day but took no steps to prevent it. He stated that he had gone to the Bagh with the deliberate intention of opening fire if he found a crowd assembled there.
[/FONT] [FONT="] "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." — Dyer's response to the Hunter Commission Enquiry.
[/FONT] [FONT="]Dyer said he would have used his machine guns if he could have got them into the enclosure, but these were mounted on armoured cars. He said he did not stop firing when the crowd began to disperse because he thought it was his duty to keep firing until the crowd dispersed, and that a little firing would do no good.
[/FONT] [FONT="]He confessed that he did not take any steps to tend to the wounded after the firing. "Certainly not. It was not my job. Hospitals were open and they could have gone there," was his response.
[/FONT] [FONT="]In India, the massacre evoked feelings of deep anguish and anger. It catalysed the freedom movement in the Punjab against British. It was also motivation for a number of other revolutionaries, including Bhagat Singh. The Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore returned his knighthood to the King-Emperor in protest. S. Srinivasa Iyengar resigned as Advocate-General of Madras Presidency and returned his Order of the Indian Empire. The massacre ultimately became an important catalyst of the Indian independence movement.
[/FONT] [FONT="]On 13 March 1940, an Indian revolutionary from Sunam, named Udham Singh, who had witnessed the events in Amritsar and was himself wounded, shot dead Michael O'Dwyer, believed to be the chief planner of the massacre (Dyer having died years earlier in 1927) at Caxton Hall in London.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Singh had told the court at his trial:[/FONT]
[FONT="] "I did it because I had a grudge against him. He deserved it. He was the real culprit. He wanted to crush the spirit of my people, so I have crushed him. For full 21 years, I have been trying to wreak vengeance. I am happy that I have done the job. I am not scared of death. I am dying for my country. I have seen my people starving in India under the British rule. I have protested against this, it was my duty. What a greater honour could be bestowed on me than death for the sake of my motherland?"[/FONT]
[FONT="]Singh was hanged for the murder on July 31, 1940. At that time, many, including Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi, condemned the action of Udham as senseless. However, later in 1952, Nehru applauded Udham Singh with the following statement which had appeared in the daily Partap: "I salute Shaheed-i-Azam Udham Singh with reverence who had kissed the noose so that we may be free." Having said this, Udham Singh received the title of Shaheed, a name given to someone who has attained martyrdom or done something heroic in the name of their country or religion.[/FONT]
Nigel Collett, the author of a new biography of Reginald Dyer, The Butcher of Amritsar said of Dyer: "As an Englishman, I cannot help but feel sorrow and shame at what he did...The massacre was the worst atrocity by a British officer ever recorded".
So, let us all remember those Shaheeds, who lost their lives on the eve of Visakhi, due to the cruelity of Britishers..........................
