The military
authorities in Jalandhar had sent an aeroplane to Amritsar, a BE2c biplane,
known as First World War pilots as ‘the flying bird cage’ or, more ominously,
as ‘Fokker fodder’. It was flown by Captain D.H.M. Carberry, of 31 Squadron
RAF, who had seen more than his fair share of action in the skies over France. First
thing in the morning of Saturday, 12 April, Dyer sent him up to fly a
reconnaissance mission over the city, he returned to report that he had seen
crowds gathering at various points.
At 10:00 a.m., Dyer
paraded his force of 474 British and 710 Indian and Gorkha soldiers for review.
He also had two armoured cars equipped with machine guns, which gave him a
considerable edge against the civilians armed only with sticks and knives.
At 10:30 a.m., with
the city already sweltering in the heat, the column marched in. it was led by
an Indian police inspector on a white horse, with his sub-inspector riding alongside,
followed by the Indian town crier, the ‘naib tahsildhar’, sitting in a bamboo
cart with a Punjabi translator and a man beating a large drum.
By 2:00 p.m., the
heat in the city had become unbearable even for the iron-willed general, and he
reluctantly conceded that the troops had had enough and should return to the
base. Most of the people who had heard it were contemptuous, crowding round to
clap their hands (a sign of disrespect in the Punjab) and to laugh and catcall.
There were cries of ‘The British Raj is ended!’ ‘We will hold a meeting’, some
of them shouted at police sub-inspector Obaidullah. ‘Lets us be fired on!’
A second, Indian,
procession led by a boy banging an empty kerosene can trailed the official one,
with speakers announcing defiantly that there would be a meeting that afternoon
in an open space known as the Jallianwala Bagh.
The densest part of
the crowd was gathered around a wooden platform erected near a well, from which
an assortment of politicians and poets were addressing the assembled multitude
on the most recent iniquities of British rule. Durga Dass, editor of Lahore
Urdu newspaper Waqt, was in full flow when the aeroplane flew over. Though the
plane soon disappeared, others were alarmed, and started trying to leave,
anticipating trouble. Getting out was not easy for such a crowd as there were
only three narrow exits, one of which was closed. The remaining two were a side
gate, the Hasaligate, only 4 feet 5 inches wide, leading from the south-eastern
corner of the bagh into the Bazar Burj Meva Singh, and a seven foot wide
alleyway on the western side, leading to the main gate of the Bazar
Jallianwala.
Dyer arrived shortly
before 5:15 p.m., in an open car with his personal bodyguard Sergeant William
Anderson and Captain Briggs following a column of 90 men (25 from the I/9
Gorkhas and 25 from the 54th Sikhs Frontier Force and 59th
Rifles Frontier Force) all armed with .303 Lee Enfield rifles plus 40 Gurkhas
armed only with kukris, their traditional curved fighting knives. Behind Dyer
came the two police officers Rehill and Plomer, in a second open car and
bringing up the rear were the two armoured cars. A further 50 riflemen had been
dropped off at strategic points along the route as pickets.
Dyer deployed his
troops on the high ground, the Gurkha riflemen to the left, the Sikhs and
Baluchis of the 54th and 59th to the right, giving them a
clear field of fire over the entire area. Seeing the soldiers, some of the
crowd began shouting ‘Agaye! Agaye!’ and started to run as the riflemen knelt
and raised their weapons to take aim. On the platform, Durga Dass stopped in
mid-sentence and tried to calm the people, telling them not to worry, the
soldiers would not fire and even if they did they would only fire blanks.
Dyer gave the crowd
no warning, no order to disperse. Even as Dass was reassuring the people, he barked
the order to his men and 50 rifles rattled out the first volley. The first
shots were fired high and the general ordered to sire straight and low. At the
second volley people began to fall. These were no blanks. Horrified, Dass dived
for cover behind the platform. His audience panicked and began to run in all
directions, seeking some way out of the killing ground and they jammed the one
remaining gateway. In the crush, the steel jacketed bullets, fired at close
range, tore through flesh and bone and muscle, often passing through one body
to strike the one behind. Dyer directed his men to fire at those trying to
escape as well as aiming where the crowd was thickest. Even people in the
surrounding houses were not safe.
The shooting was as
calm, deliberate and carefully aimed as target practice at the butts, with
every bullet made to count. It was broken only when the troops paused to reload
their magazines. When he finally ordered his men to cease firing, they had used
1650 rounds of .303 mark VI ammunition, killing an estimated 379 men, women,
and children and wounding some 1200 more. The shooting at Jallianwala Bagh
lasted just ten minutes from beginning to end, but in those ten minutes Dyer
had destroyed the trust in British justice and fair play that had been built up
over one and half centuries.
‘I fired and
continued to fire’, Dyer later told the government’s official committee of
inquiry, ‘until the crowd dispersed, and I consider this is the least amount of
firing which would produce the necessary moral and widespread effect… If more
troops had been at hand, the casualties would have been greater in proportion.’
General Dyer was firmly convinced that he had saved the British Empire in India.
In fact, he had signed its death warrant. Britain’s time in India was up. From
that moment, for Indian nationalists, the only question was how soon they could
get rid of their British rulers.
