Amritsar Massacre: A WV Photo Error

(Letter)

December 23, 2006

To the editor:

I want to point out one small historical inaccuracy in your article, “The ‘War on Terror’ and the Imperialist World Order—Part Two” (WV, December 8, 2006). You caption the photo of mounted British troops clubbing defenseless Indian demonstrators as the infamous Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919. That is wrong. That atrocity was not photographed. Moreover, at Jallianwala Bagh, the troops were on foot, they were armed with rifles, and they shot to kill. However, this photo does capture what was happening in India in 1919, when the British brutally dispersed unarmed crowds of protestors. And though you don’t make the connection, the reason those Indians were protesting is directly related to the theme of your article—a “war on terrorism.”

In 1905 the British decided to partition the province of Bengal, a hotbed of nationalism, along Hindu-Muslim communal lines. The nationalists in Calcutta saw this as another attempt to “divide and rule.” Adopting a tactic of the Irish freedom fighters, the Indian nationalists called upon patriotic Bengalis to boycott British goods, burn their imported British cloth, and buy only Indian-made products. The government responded with an iron fist. Police whipped schoolboys who paraded in the streets singing Vande Mataram. Magistrates filled the jails. When their peaceful tactics failed to produce results, the radical youth concluded that violence was the only language the arrogant sahibs would understand. Before long, Bengali youth were tossing home-made bombs at police constables and shooting at judges. Thus was born the Indian terrorist movement. However, unlike today’s terrorists, they didn’t target innocent civilians. Their violence got results. In 1911 the British re-unified Bengal. But the young revolutionaries didn’t relent. The following year they lobbed a bomb at Viceroy Hardinge as he pompously (and foolishly) paraded atop a lumbering elephant through the narrow streets of Old Delhi.

During the First World War, the armed nationalists were the only political tendency in India to oppose the war. Like the Irish nationalists, the Indian revolutionaries sought arms from Germany, following the dictum, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” The future founder of the Indian Communist Party, M.N. Roy, got his start as a gun runner for one of the Bengali groups. Another group conspired to stage mutinies in several British colonies simultaneously. The British got wind of the elaborate plot and foiled the uprisings everywhere except Singapore. Nevertheless, that mutiny, the first since 1857, rattled the British. The British needed their Indian troops to fight their war in Europe and the Near East and to maintain their rule over India.

When the war ended, the British government in India adopted draconian measures (known as the Rowlatt Act) to combat the “terrorist threat.” The nationalists, with the newcomer Gandhi at the forefront, called for nationwide hartals (peaceful protests) to force the repeal of the “Black Acts.” The demonstrations went off without significant violence, except in the Punjab, where mobs burned government buildings in Amritsar and clashed with the police. The lieutenant governor declared martial law and banned all public gatherings. That was just before a traditional religious festival, Baisakhi, which took place in a large, walled garden-park in Amritsar, known as the Jallianwala Bagh. Defying the ban, thousands of people strolled into the Jallianwala Bagh on that fateful day, April 13, 1919.

The mood was festive. Children played on the grass. Then, without any warning, Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer marched his troops to the garden, blocked the exits, and ordered his men to open fire into the crowd. Men, women, and children were mowed down. There was no escape, no place to take cover in the open field. In panic many jumped into a well and drowned. When the shooting stopped ten minutes later, more than a thousand were dead and at least 1,200 wounded. The slaughter would have been even more horrific had Dyer been able to get his two armored cars with mounted machine guns through the narrow gateways of the park.

When news of the massacre finally seeped through the censorship, Indians were shocked. Dyer remained unrepentant. The British allowed him simply to resign. The House of Lords supported Dyer, and the Morning Post raised 18,000 pounds sterling to bestow on “the Savior of the Punjab.” He was a hero in their “war on terror.”

In retrospect, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre marked the beginning of the end of the British Raj. The British gave Gandhi what he needed to mobilize a powerful mass movement. The “terrorist” movement too, roared back to life and played a critical role in the freedom struggle that ultimately triumphed when the Union Jack was removed from the ramparts of the Red Fort in 1947. (I discuss the role of the Indian Trotskyists in that epic struggle, including their attitude towards the “terrorists,” in my book: Tomorrow is Ours: The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon, 1935-48, recently published by the Social Scientists Association of Sri Lanka.)

Perhaps there is a lesson here. When a world power has to resort to a “war on terror,” then the days of that empire may already be numbered.

Charles Wesley Ervin

WV replies:

WV thanks the writer for his thoughtful letter correcting our error.