Amritsar 1919: An Empire of Fear and the Making of a Massacre

"The famous depiction of Amritsar is in the film Gandhi, where you have Colonel Dyer simply coming into Jallianwala Bagh, the park at Amritsar, taking a brief look, and then opening fire on what’s clearly a peaceful crowd for no apparent reason. The British then icily carry on killing people, long after there could be any possible threat, and many people were shot in the back. “You get massacres when a colonial mentality develops or the authorities simply refuse to believe that the protesters are about what they claim to be about.” That contains an important element of truth, something like that did happen. But what Wagner points out is that this was not just some incomprehensible atrocity. He demonstrates that Colonel Dyer, as well as the governor and those around him, all had a profound fear of Indian uprisings, dating back to the Indian Mutiny of 1857. This was a view of the Indians as natives, an uncontrollable mob. The only thing they could understand was firepower, fear and terror—and you just had to use enough of it, quickly enough, to stop the whole thing in its tracks. Wagner demonstrates in great detail how this appalling, imperial mentality operated in 1919. Wagner also shows that this isn’t just something that happens in one day. The unrest in Amritsar was related to Gandhi’s campaign against British rule. The protesters wanted to stage a shutdown of the city in protest against restrictions on the ordinary lives of Indians. There was a peaceful protest campaign going on, because of the restrictions on movement and on trade and so on. The British were making life intolerable for people who were working inside the walled city of Amritsar. Gandhi ’s supporters were developing his methods of peaceful, nonviolent resistance. So people in Amritsar had declared a day when factories would close down, when nobody would work, when shops would be closed and so on, in protest, just to show that the effect of these British regulations would be to make business and trade unworkable. As part of that protest, there was a march. The march was fired on by the British when it reached a bridge, because the British had this idea that the natives were dangerous and just need to be taught a lesson with gunfire. Then there were Indian retaliations because of that, one of which involved the ill treatment and near murder of a white woman. That really did press British colonial buttons, because of its similarity to some of the atrocities of the Indian Mutiny. From that point onwards, the British simply perceived it as the beginnings of another Indian Mutiny, another 1857 Rebellion, which could only be dealt with by firepower. There was a festival going on, there were gatherings going on. But as part of their security measures in response to the events of a few days before, the British had banned people from travelling, from moving in and out of the city and they had banned all gatherings. But the gathering for the religious festival carried on, because to the people in Amritsar it made no sense at all. They couldn’t understand it. And they simply didn’t believe they would actually be fired on. It just seemed so fantastic. And that’s why there was so much shock when it happened. Yes, I think it is. You certainly get that at Peterloo. The protesters are trying to demonstrate that they are peaceful, that they are citizens with families, that they are a community, but the authorities simply read the opposite into it and use force. Yes. In Amritsar the death toll was something approaching 400, it could be 600, and figures of a thousand might be credible. But it’s not the exact numbers that matter so much, it’s what Amritsar stands for: pointless, intolerable, imperial atrocities. As Wagner points out, extra myths then get added to it: that a hundred people died in a well, for example—that’s still commemorated on the site—and that the British opened fire with machine guns. Neither is actually true. The atrocity was bad enough , but those myths play to Amritsar as a symbol of the violent exercise of imperial power, which was certainly very widespread. People fasten on this particular incident and it then gets invested with all the qualities of imperial power generally. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . I don’t think it’s wrong that that one set of atrocities comes to stand for all. In fact, it’s probably the only way we will ever, on a large scale, understand and be able to remember these things. But I do think it’s important to understand what the event really was and why it happened, without excusing it. The People’s Army turned on the people that day, that was the symbolism there. But perhaps the Chinese government wants people to remember that, to discourage similar protests in Hong Kong and elsewhere. Is memory always on the side of democracy? We’ll probably find out soon."