Amritsar, 1919
Amritsar, 1919
On 13 April 1919 in Amritsar, British troops opened fire on a gathering of unarmed civilians, including women and children, at the Jallianwalla Bagh in Amritsar. This bloody event, which came to be known as the Amritsar massacre, killed approximately 379 people and injured 1,200 others. The civilians had assembled at Jallianwala Bagh to celebrate the annual Baisakhi festival, which also attracted peasants from surrounding villages for a visit to the Golden Temple. The troops fired at them on orders by Brigadier-General Reginald Edward Harry Dyer. The people were not aware that martial law had been imposed. On 15 April, martial law was declared in several other towns in the Punjab. The Punjab government, headed by Sir Michael O’Dwyer, believed that there was a conspiracy to overthrow the British Raj. The Amritsar massacre precipitated Mahatma Gandhi’s alienation from the Raj and had a profound impact on Indian politics. What angered Gandhi and nationalist India was Britain’s reaction to them after the massacre.
Keywords: Amritsar massacre, Jallianwalla Bagh, Baisakhi, Reginald Edward Harry Dyer, Michael O’Dwyer, Punjab
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
