Amritsar 1919

The book begins with a scene from Richard Attenborough’s 1982 film Gandhi, what Wagner cites as the most popular depiction of the Jallianwalla Bagh Massacre and “how many people today think of what was arguably the bloodiest massacre in the history of the British Empire”.[5]

According to Wagner, understanding the massacre requires beginning with the Indian rebellion of 1857. In 1919, the continuing fear of a revolution led to the proposal of the suppressive Rowlatt Act which would give the British powers to quash any political agitation, and contradicted the simultaneous British promises with the Indian National Congress to give greater involvement to Indians in government. Mahatma Gandhi responded by proposing that all Indians oppose the Act and make a Satyagraha pledge, a promise to resist without using violence. The subsequent call for general strikes in late March 1919 then led to the arrest of two local Indian leaders. On 10 April 1919, upon hearing of the arrests, a crowd of Indians issued a petition for the release of their leaders. When British officials panicked and fired in reaction to seeing the approaching crowd, riots erupted. On that day, Wagner explained, “European civilians had been killed by Indian rioters, and white women had been attacked by brown men”,[5] for the first time since 1857. The British subsequently banned all future gatherings. However, the ban was not widely acknowledged and “many either unaware of the proclamation or not believing that the British would actually resort to violence, proceeded to announce a meeting at the Jallianwala Bagh that would take place on April 13, 1919”.[5]

The crowd at Jallianwalla Bagh was composed of mainly men and many from out of town, making up to 20,000 people, who had mostly come to celebrate a religious festival. Speeches focussed on the Rowlatt Act, the call to release the two arrested local Indian leaders, and effects on Indians of the First World War. In Wagner's words "on the 13th of April, 1919, there was nobody in Jallianwala Bagh who thought about independence. They were not heroic freedom fighters. They still had an abiding belief in the ultimate justice of the Raj, and they still thought of the British government as being the arbiter of justice".[5] When General Dyer arrived "he was overwhelmed by the sheer size of the gathering that he had walked in on"[5] and assumed it was a rebellion. Wagner explains that the British response was of "racialized fear and violent suppression".[5] Afterwards, there was no British help with removing the dead or medical assistance for the injured. Instead, the British authorities imposed curfews, a crawling order and martial law and those suspected of being involved in the 10 April riots were arrested and tortured. British censorship ensured suppression of the details of the Amritsar troubles and the massacre, until October 1919. In July 1920, the matter was discussed in the House of Commons. Some noted the “un-English”[5] nature of what happened and took his actions as a "blemish on an otherwise untarnished British rule".[5] Others saw Dyer's actions as necessary.[5]

Using primary sources to gather evidence, Wagner has clarified that the book aims to dispel a number of myths surrounding the events of the massacre in Amritsar on 13 April 1919.[6] Contrary to a number of widely held beliefs, Wagner's research reveals 500 to 600 is a more likely “plausible estimate”[5] of the number killed at the Bagh on 13 April 1919, and that “eyewitness accounts recall only one or two bodies as having been recovered from the well inside the park”.[5] That number, however, he says, does not "actually change the enormity of what happened".[5]