The Jallianwala Bagh massacre remains a blot on world’s conscience
Of course, the Brits did not offer so much as a symbolic apology at the centenary of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre on April 13. They’d much sooner return the koh-i-noor diomand (which graces the royal crown), but everybody has come to understand in the last century and a half just how bright the chances are of that ever happening. Yet since we in the subcontinent have long demanded moral atonement for excesses of empire, reparations clearly being out of the question, perhaps some of our more grieved intellectuals/historians should also advocate a look in the mirror on our part, the victims of colonialism, to better understand just why the British could do what they wanted in India.
The Jallianwala Bagh massacre has been rightly dubbed the single worst atrocity committed by the British, though the number of natives killed has been much larger in certain other British adventures during the Raj, because this combines hope, betrayal, outright murder and miscarriage of justice. Hope because the Indians were promised dominion status, responsible self-governance like the white commonwealth, for taking part in the First World War. And, indeed, they contributed with men, money, material, pack animals, food, clothing, even railway tracks to aid the British war effort.
Betrayal because the promise was never honoured. Instead, war-time prohibition on freedom of speech, expression and assembly was re-introduced, which naturally caused a stir among Indians who thought sacrifices made in the great war would, at the very least, get them some say in running their own country.
Outright murder because General Reginald Dyer (colonel, actually, only acting brigadier general) did not give much thought to massacring thousands of unarmed, peaceful civilians, then keeping the gates shut so no help could reach the dead, dying and wounded, just because he wanted to teach the Indians a lesson. And miscarriage of justice because instead of a trial and exemplary punishment, Dyer was rewarded with a fortune and a bejeweled sword, and celebrated as the “man who saved India. (Rudyard Kipling)
Yet while we are right to fume at the blatant misuse of power, we also suffer from a collective partial amnesia of our own. For example, didn’t Dyer drive to the garden that fateful day in April a hundred years ago with a group of 90 Sikh, Gurkha, Baloch and Rajput soldiers? And didn’t these sons of the soil from the 2nd/9th Gurkha Rifles, 54th
Sikh and 59th Sindh Rifles have their fingers on the triggers of the fifty-odd .303 Lee Enfield bolt action rifles and didn’t stop shooting till they ran out of ammunition?
Hadn’t anybody learnt anything from the British response to the 1857 war of independence/sepoy mutiny which, according to author/historian William Dalrymple, makes Jallianwala look like a picnic? The firangi (foreigner) master could well have been thrown out had it not been for brave Pathan and Sikh soldiers riding with the British to “liberate” Delhi for their masters, bulldosing the city, lining up all local men above 16, and simply shooting them to the death. The British, with their superior artillery, better manners and fairer skin, could never have taken Delhi, much less killed hundreds of thousands in an orgy of blood and revenge, if locals had not willingly become the instrument of oppression of their fellow Indians.
Going further back, would the East India Company, which ran the Indian colonial project on behalf of the crown till 1857, have grown powerful without the sophisticated local money lending system, the Jagat Seth for example, and a huge army of locals ready to put down any show of discontent from their brothers with a heavy hand? It’s strange, surely, that a country which contributed 23 per cent to global GDP and stood out for its exports to Europe and beyond for centuries was taken over by a single corporation. And even as late as the 1760s, when the Company’s plunder of India made it a trade behemoth all the way from Chinese shores to Boston harbour, it was run from a “small office in London’s Leadenhall street, five windows wide, with a permanent staff of only 35.” (Dalrymple)
Along with all the loot also rose the Company’s stock price, making its office bearers and shareholders in parliament richer than the richest princes in Europe, enabling many to carve out political dynasties of their own. Would any of this have happened, especially to this degree, if there hadn’t been hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Mir Sadiqs for every Tipu Sultan that the land could throw up? If Indians had not volunteered to help subjugate Indians and pillage the Indian treasury for the British?
No doubt the British should answer for 200 years of oppression, exploitation and theft. And the least they can do is apologise. But there weren’t very many of them here when they did all those things to us. It was our own people that brought their dream to fruition. And it’s only fair to talk about those locals also, and all those they harmed, the next time we demand atonement
It’s strange that a country which contributed 23% to global GDP and stood out for its exports to Europe and beyond was taken over by a single corporation