April 13, 2021, marks the completion of 102 years of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, in which hundreds of unarmed Punjabis were shot down and more than 1,100 were injured during ten minutes of rifle fire from British Indian troops.
The firing was ordered by Colonel Reginald Dyer who came to be known as ‘the butcher of Amritsar’ and was relieved of military duties the year after the massacre.
At the time, Winston Churchill said in parliament, “it is an extraordinary event, a monstrous event, an event which stands out in singular and sinister isolation.”
In Australia it was reported as the day of “India’s Re-Birth”, describing the massacre as “Dyer’s dreadful mistake,” while it was later reported in 1927 that General Dyer died after suffering a stroke and being “five years an invalid.”
A young visitor in Amritsar on February 4, 2010, looks at a painting depicting the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre of April 13, 1919. Source: NARINDER NANU/AFP/Getty Images
We take a look at how this entire episode was reported by Australian newspapers over a century ago, despite complete press and mail censorship imposed in Punjab at the time.
By the time Australians heard of the carnage at Amritsar’s Jallianwala Bagh, almost a year had passed**, but it still made headlines.
Page 17 of The Australian Worker published on 25 March 1920 Source: Trove
Sydney’s The Australian Worker called it an “an orgy of frightfulness in India” which was “disgracing the British name”. The Daily News of Perth reported it as “Dyer’s Dreadful mistake”, and in Melbourne, The Age said the impact of the riot and massacre was “the Re-Birth of India”.
Jallianwala massacre: “Grave and unnecessary slaughter”
1919 was a turbulent time in British India, and nowhere was India’s freedom movement more visible than in Punjab.
The British Raj sought to introduce a draconian set of laws named the Rowlatt Act. To muzzle any protest, two senior leaders of the Indian freedom movement Satya Pal and Saifuddin Kitchlew were arrested on April 10 and sent “100 miles away” from Punjab. Protests erupted, and in the ensuing riots, banks were burnt down, while some British people were assaulted and even killed.
Colonel Reginald Edward Harry Dyer was sent from Jalandhar to Amritsar to restore peace. Though ranked as a Colonel, Dyer had the honorary rank of Brigadier-General and is referred to as General Dyer.
Dyer imposed martial law in Punjab and when a few thousand people gathered at a large park named Jallianwala Bagh on April 13, he ordered his troops to open fire on the unarmed civilians.
Page 7 of Perth's The Daily News published on 16 August 1920 Source: Trove
Official British records state that 379 people were killed, including 44 boys and a six-month-old baby, but the number of casualties was estimated at 1,500 by others. Over 100 bodies were found in a well situated in the park precinct, into which people had jumped, to protect themselves from the relentless firing.
Despite martial law in Punjab and strict censorship on the press, word about the massacre eventually got out and perhaps the first detailed report in an Australian newspaper appeared on 25 March 1920, when The Australian Worker published an article three weeks before the anniversary of the massacre.
The well inside Jallianwala Bagh, from which more than 100 dead bodies were recovered after the massacre Source: Wikimedia/Amitoj911 – Public Domain
The article described “acts of military frightfulness, which must make every decent-minded person ashamed to belong to the nation which is responsible for the government of India.”
The report talked about 5,000 people gathered at the park “which had very few exits” and Dyer arrived there with “25 British and 25 Indian rifles and two armoured cars.”
It went on to say: “He looked on the crowd as rebels and he considered it his duty to fire strong and fire well. He continued firing until he ran out of ammunition: 1650 rounds were fired, 400 to 500 were killed and 1500 wounded. Since the natives had disobeyed his order, he thought it his duty to punish them and give them a lesson.”
“Asked if he had taken any steps to attend to the wounded, General Dyer said: ‘No certainly not. It was not my job. My force was not in a position to render medical aid. Hospitals were open and they could have gone there.’”
A last look at some of the bullet holes on one of the surviving walls in the Jallianwala Bagh which stand as silent testimony to the senseless killing of innoce Source: Wikimedia/shankar
The Daily News of Perth republished an article on 16 August 1920 titled ‘More About Amritsar: Dyer’s Dreadful Mistake’ in which writer Lovat Fraser cited the Battle of Saragarhi and other historical events to acknowledge the long-standing relationship that the British enjoyed with Punjabis, especially Sikhs.
Fraser, the then-editor of Times of India, wrote, “General Dyer’s action at Jallianwala Bagh appears to have been entirely indefensible. He acted after open disorder had ceased in the city for two days; he gave no warning on the spot, but began firing within 30 seconds [of arriving]; and he was responsible for grave and unnecessary slaughter. His plea is that he wanted to produce ‘sufficient moral effect’ throughout the Punjab. Such was not his duty and the effect he has really produced is to create, not only in the Punjab, but throughout India, a bitterness that will take years to eradicate.”
Renowned Indian Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore renounced his knighthood protesting “the inhuman cruelty of the British Government to the people of Punjab", saying, “The time has come when badges of honour make our shame glaring in the incongruous context of humiliation.”
Bullet holes at Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar Source: Wikimedia/Parthapakray
Orders to crawl, public lashings, bombing and other excesses
Many Australian newspapers described the harsh cruelties dealt by General Dyer in the few days preceding the Jallainwala Bagh massacre, which also continued well after 13 April 1919.
The Freeman’s Journal published in Sydney on 16 September 1920 reported that Punjab, “although disturbed - and for good reason - but was not rebellious.” It drew attention to how Punjabis were treated by saying, “We do not exaggerate when we say that this province, a vital element in the British government of India, and the recruitment of it’s army, was simply trodden under foot.”
“A theory of collective crime was set up, and whole towns and villages were marked out for punitive treatment, mainly designed to establish the sacro-sanctity of the Anglo-Indian life.”
“Curfew lanes, and floggings for violating them; forced salaams of Indian passers-by to Europeans, however humble; compulsory parades of hundreds of schoolboys and students, coupled with floggings of the ‘biggest’ boys; tortures of prisoners, to extort confessions that were never made, or to get evidence of crimes that were never committed; crawlings of Indian citizens happening to live in General Dyer’s ‘via sacra’; confiscation and blackmail by the police; the lashing of a wedding party (this by ‘inadvertance’); a party of lawyers and notables led handcuffed through the streets of their town;
Indian visitors look at the bullet ridden wall at the historical site of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar on April 12, 2011. Source: Getty
"Arrests without charge and release without trial; sentences by the hundred, most of which failed to stand; rigorous confinement in stinking and crowded oubliettes; blows; insults; the erection of gallows and whipping posts in Indian towns; a child’s arm struck off at Gujranwala by a bomb from an aeroplane; two children admittedly killed in Jallianwala Bagh, the deaths of many others alleged – such was the lot of some thousands of Aryan and non-Aryan inhabitants of the Punjab.”
The crawling order enforced on Punjabis and public lashings were described in greater detail in The Age on 18 February 1921. It reported on the imposition of the Rowlatt Act, the arrest of the two leaders Satya Pal and Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew, the ‘hartal’, the protests, clashes with the authorities and attacks on white people in the lead up to the Jallianwala Bagh incident.
Page 7 of Freemans Journal published on 16 September 1920 Source: Trove
Describing what happened on April 10, The Age reported, “One of the most shocking occurrences of that day was the ill-treatment by the mob of Miss Sherwood, a lady missionary, who was knocked of her bicycle on the streets, and brutally beaten with sticks, ultimately being left half dead on the roadway.”
It was on that afternoon that General Dyer arrived in Amritsar with the power to “take whatever steps he thought necessary for the re-establishment of civil control.”
The article describes what transpired in Jallianwala Bagh on April 13 in macabre detail, quoting General Dyer as saying, “This was a horrible duty I had to perform” adding “there could be no question of undue severity.”
The Age article goes on to say, “At this time, martial law had not been proclaimed, and was not in fact brought into force until the 15th. Meantime there had been outbreaks in Lahore, Gujranwala and Kasur, with further murders and pillage, and by order of the Lieutenant Governor (Sir Michael O’Dwyer), aeroplanes were sent to Gujranwala, where they dropped eight bombs and used machine guns to disperse crowds that had assembled, many persons including women and children, being killed and wounded.”
“Following the proclamation of martial law at Amritsar, public floggings took place, the ‘curfew’ was instituted, numerous arrests were made, many natives were sentenced to death, and what were termed ‘minor punishments’ were inflicted. Some of these were of a ludicrous character, particularly the order which compelled every native who passed along the street in which Miss Sherwood had been assaulted, to crawl on his stomach.”
A copy of the front page of The Sun and New York Herald which shows the atrocities in Punjab Source: Supplied
“So great was the outburst of indignation throughout India, and, indeed in Great Britain also, that a Commission was appointed in October 1919, to investigate the occurrence.”
This was a reference to the Hunter Committee which conducted it’s investigations over a few months. It’s reported titled ‘Punjab Disturbances 1919-20’ found that General Dyer had made grave errors in not warning the public gathering to disperse before ordering his troops to fire, and disciplinary action was recommended against him for overstepping the bounds of his authority.
When the House of Commons met in Britain, Winston Churchill barely guised his condemnation of General Dyer’s actions when he recounted the atrocity that took place at Jallianwala Bagh.
Mr Churchill said, “The crowd was unarmed, except with bludgeons. It was not attacking anybody or anything. It was holding a seditious meeting. When the fire had been opened upon it to disperse it, it tried to run away. Pinned up in a narrow place considerably smaller than Trafalgar Square, with hardly any exits, and packed together so that one bullet would drive through three or four bodies, the people ran madly this way and the other.
"When the fire was directed upon the centre, they ran to the sides. The fire was then directed to the sides. Many threw themselves down on the ground, the fire was then directed down on the ground. This was continued for 8 to 10 minutes, and it stopped only when the ammunition had reached the point of exhaustion.
"If more troops had been available, says this officer, the casualties would have been greater in proportion. If the road had not been so narrow, the machine guns and the armoured cars would have joined in.”Naming it a “slaughter of nearly 400 persons”, Churchill called this “an episode which appears to me to be without precedent or parallel in the modern history of the British Empire.”
A last look at some of the bullet holes on one of the surviving walls in the Jallianwala Bagh which stand as silent testimony to the senseless killing of innoce Source: Wikimedia/shankar
Even so, General Dyer had a fair share of supporters and sympathisers, some of whom hailed him as a hero. Even after he was forced to leave the army, many donated funds which quickly reached £4,000, as reported by The Herald in Melbourne on 14 August 1920.
General Dyer “the doomed man”
The Hunter Commission report did not question “General Dyer’s honesty of purpose and unflinching adherence to his sense of duty,” but went on to add, “it is impossible to regard him as fitted to remain entrusted with the responsibilities which his rank and his position imposed on him.”
General Dyer was “deprived of his command, placed on half-pay preparatory to his retirement, and informed that he would not be given further employment.”
The Telegraph in Brisbane on 17 October 1927 described what happened to General Dyer thereafter. “The punishment inflicted on him as a result of the recommendations of the Hunter Committee was a serious one, as he was compelled to retire from the Army in 1920 and he was not confirmed to the rank of Brigadier General.”
Brigadier General Reginald Edward Harry Dyer (1864-1927), British Indian Army officer. He was responsible for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre (13 April 1919) Source: AAP Images/MARY EVANS/Robert Hunt Library
Calling him “a broken man”, the newspaper article said he was “partly a victim of his own temperamental defects, but mainly the victim of lamentable indecision and timidity at Simla (the capital of British Raj at the time), and of gross political expediency at White Hall.”
It added, “The controversy told on General Dyer’s health, and from the time he was officially punished, he was broken in health and a doomed man.”
He died eight years after the Jallianwala massacre on 24 July 1927. His death was reported in many Australian newspapers and Perth’s The Daily News on October 24 ran with the headline “The Broken-hearted man, 5 years an invalid.”
It reported that Dyer “suffered a stroke nearly five years ago and had been an invalid ever since. He had been”unconscious for the last few days".
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Page 6 of Perth's The Daily News on 24 October 1927 Source: Trove
Michael O’Dwyer and his assassination by Udham Singh
Another prominent figure in the Jallianwala Bagh saga was Sir Michael O’Dywer, the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab from 1912 till 1919. He was knighted within a year of assuming charge of Punjab and was known to have completely supported and justified General Dyer’s actions during the 1919 massacre.
O’Dwyer ordered the bombing of Gujranwala (another city in Punjab), days after the Jallianwala Bagh slaughter and was ultimately dismissed in 1920 for “cruel and barbarous actions.”
In 1922, a prominent Indian writer Sir Sankaran Nair openly condemned O’Dywer in his book, and in 1924, the latter won a libel suit against the Indian author, which was reported here in Australia.
In many British circles, it was regarded as an exoneration of Sir Michael O’Dwyer as well as General Dyer.
O’Dwyer was assassinated on 13 March 1940 by Udham Singh, an Indian freedom fighter, who sought to avenge the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. On 15 March 1940, The Newcastle Morning Herald and Miner’s Advocate reported, “Sir Michael O’Dwyer was shot through the heart during a meeting of East India Association at Caxton Hall, Westminster. Six shots were fired by a member of the audience.”
Source: Trove
The newspaper also reported that in the same incident, “The Secretary of State of India Lord Zetland, and two other former governors of India, Lord Lamington and Sir Louise Dane were wounded”. It led to the immediate “arrest of 37-year-old Mohamed Singh Azad (original name Udham Singh) who stated, 'I made a protest’.”
Udham Singh, was tried and found guilty of murder. It was reported that he said in court of O’Dwyer’s death, “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 seek vengeance. I am happy that I have done the job.”
Udham Singh, who went by the name Ram Mohamed Singh Azad, was hung to death on 31 July 1940. He is regarded as a hero of India's freedom movement and popularly referred to as Shaheed-e-Azam in India. His remains are preserved at the Jallianwala Bagh, in Amritsar.
** The author can not claim with certainty that this was the very first article on Jallianwala Bagh published in Australia, but it was the earliest one she found in the archives which gave a detailed account of the tragedy.
The entrance to Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar after the refurbishment of the adjoining Golden Temple precinct Source: Wikimedia/Jasbeer Singh
