HUNTER COMMITTEE ON AMRITSAR SHOOTING.

GENERAL DYER CRITICISED.

The India Office issued last night the report of Lord Hunter’s Committee on the disturbances which occurred in March and April, 1919, in the Punjab, at Delhi, and in the Bombay Presidency. In the Punjab especially the disorders assumed a grave character, and at various places the police and military came into collision with the mob. But the main centre of disturbance, and the one to which public attention has been chiefly directed by reason of the tragic events which accompanied the suppression of the outbreak, was Amritsar, a town of 150,000 inhabitants.

It was here that the troops, under the command of Brigadiergeneral R. E. Dyer, fired on the crowd, with the result that approximately 379 persons were killed. General Dyer’s action has been fiercely assailed and as strongly defended both in this country and in India, and interest centres mainly in the findings of the Committee under this head.

On this, and on various other aspects of the inquiry, the Committee failed to reach agreement, and the five British members and the three Indian members have presented separate reports. Briefly, Lord Hunter and his British colleagues find:

That General Dyer’s action in firing on the crowd at Jallianwala Bagh is open to criticism in two respects. He started firing without warning the people to disperse; and that he continued firing for a substantial period after the crowd had commenced to disperse.

They do not share the view that General Dyer’s action saved the situation in the Punjab and arrested a rebellion on a scale similar to the Mutiny, holding that it is not proved that a conspiracy to overthrow British power had been formed prior to the outbreaks.

The Indian members unreservedly condemn the shooting at Amritsar, stigmatising General Dyer’s action as “inhuman and un-british.”

In a despatch to his Majesty’s Government, issued concurrently with the report, the Government of India comment as follows: We can arrive at no other conclusion than that at Jallianwala Bagh General Dyer acted beyond the necessity of the case, beyond what any reasonable man could have thought to be necessary, and that he did not act with as much humanity as the case permitted.

Condemnation is also passed on General Dyer’s action by the Secretary for India on behalf of his Majesty’s Government. In the course of a despatch to the Viceroy, bearing yesterday’s date, Mr. Montagu states: In discharging this responsibility with the small force at his disposal, Brigadier-general Dyer naturally could not dismiss from his mind conditions in the Punjab generally, and he was entitled to lay his plans with reference to those conditions. But he was not entitled to select for condign punishment an unarmed crowd, which, when he inflicted that punishment, had committed no act of violence, had made no attempt to oppose him by force, and many members of which must have been unaware that they were disobeying his commands.

Mr. Montagu approves of the decision to supersede General Dyer and not to re-employ him in India.

CAUSES OF THE DISORDERS.

The Committee’s report is a document of nearly 200 pages, in which the causes of the outbreak and the course of the disturbances in each area are exhaustively reviewed. Both British and Indian members broadly agree as to the outstanding causes of the outbreak. They consider that the civil disobedience movement of Mr. Gandhi was responsible for undermining the law-abiding instincts of the population at a time when these instincts were strained to the utmost by economic distress, war weariness, anxiety as to the political future of India, apprehension as to the Turkish peace terms, and agitation against the policy of the Government in pressing forward and passing the Rowlatt Act. They do not consider that the recruiting methods employed in the Punjab had anything to do with the unrest.

With the exception of the Amritsar shooting and certain minor incidents, both the majority and the minority justify generally the firing carried out by the police and the military. They agree also in exonerating the Government of India from all blame. They differ as to the precise nature of the disorders and as to the wisdom of introducing and continuing martial law.