Udham Singh the Brave heart who avenged Jallianwala Bagh Massacre

Anupama Nair

Our great Prime Minister Modi inaugurated the Amrit Mahotsav or celebration of  India’s 75^th year of Independence. We will be celebrating this event till 2022. I am going to write a feature on all those great men and women who fought against foreign invasion not just against the British. Today I am going to write about the great but unknown Shaheed Udham Singh, who shot the cruel General Dyer who was responsible of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

To understand the story of, Udham Singh, I need to take you back many centuries before. India was ruled by the cruel Mughals. It is a credit to the British, how the merchants who came to do trade with India, within 300 years became the masters of the entire land from Khyber to Chittagong and from Kashmir to Comorin (now Kanya Kumari), i.e., entire Sub-Continent. The English East India Company was formed by merchants of England to trade with Asia and India the “golden bird” in particular and America. It was formed by Royal Charter on New Year’s Eve on 1600. They landed in the Indian subcontinent on August 24, 1608, in Surat (Gujarat).

The Battle of Plassey (1757) and Battle of Buxar (1764) , smoothened their path to conquer the sub-continent. Robert Clive became the first Governor General of British India. By spinning a web of deceit, and many laws like Subsidiary Alliance (Lord Wellesley) and Doctrine of Lapse (Lord Dalhousie), they succeeded in ruling the entire sub-continent by 19^th century. Jawaharlal Nehru in his book Discovery of India quoted “British rule in India had an unsavory beginning and something of that bitter taste has clung to it ever since”.

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre, also known as the Amritsar massacre, took place on the Baisakhi Day i.e., 13 April 1919, when General Reginald Dyer ordered troops of the British Indian Army to fire their rifles into a crowd of unarmed Indian civilians, in Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar killing thousands and injuring many more. A visit of Jallianwala Bagh after all these years still leaves me in disbelief how a human being can order the killing of thousands of innocent men, women and children. It is said the Shaheed-e- azam Bhagat Singh visited Jallianwala Bagh as a young boy and swore to free his motherland from the British rule. Even after 102 years my mind is filled with sorrow when I see in my mind’s eye the innocents trying to save their lives from the bullets of the British soldiers, majority of whom where surprisingly Indians.

This British Government was also no better than the East India Company. Freedom of the Indians was brutally suppressed. The government forced the Indian soldiers to fight the First World War (1914-1918). Many soldiers lost their lives. After the War, Indians expected some ease of strict laws. The Montagu-Chelmsford Report, in 1919, recommend limited local self-government. However, the government of India passed a repressive act called Rowlett Act in early 1919, which essentially extended the war-time restrictions. The Act was met by widespread anger and discontent among Indians, notably in the Punjab. General Reginald Dyer was given the responsibility to maintain law and order in Punjab by the Governor of Punjab Michael O Dwyer.

On April 13, 1919, thousands of innocent men, women and children met in Jallianwala Bagh to protest against Rowlett Act and the arrest of local leaders Kitchlew and Satyapal. General Dyer banned all public meetings in Punjab. People ignored his orders and by 3 pm around 15,000 people assembled in Jallianwala Bagh — a mix of speakers, listeners, and picnic makers. An enraged General Dyer went with his army and fired at the innocents. Without any warning, the troops opened fire on the crowd, reportedly shooting hundreds of rounds until they ran out of bullets. It is not certain how many died in the bloodbath, but, according to one official report, more than 1,000s died and about 1,200 more were wounded. After they ceased firing, the troops immediately withdrew from the place, leaving behind the dead and wounded. During the massacre, there were no escape routes. The narrow passage was blocked by the army and people either ran towards the walls or jumped in the well called “martyr’s well”.

The shooting was followed by the proclamation of martial law in the Punjab that included public floggings and other humiliations. Indian outrage grew as news of the shooting and subsequent British actions spread throughout the world. The great Bengali poet and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, renounced the knighthood that he had received in 1915. The Hunter Commission set up for inquiry in 1920 heard Dyer’s own damning testimony. He admitted he could have dispersed the crowd without firing, but chose not to do so because “they would have come back and laughed”. He said he would have used machine guns to kill even more if he could have, and that he saw no reason to help the wounded. By July 1920, Dyer’s support had diminished to such a level that only few imperialist enthusiasts and hardline officials, like Sir Michael O’Dwyer supported him. Even Sir Winston Churchill condemned General Dyer in the House of Commons. But he was supported and seen as the “savior of the British empire” in The House of Lords.

(to be continued….)