BY HIMANGI SINGH

"Now the people were made aware about the brutal face of colonialism, with reference to the Jallianwala Bagh [massacre] which revealed the real face of the colonial rule in India," Dr Jasbir Singh, historian and professor at Punjab University.

BACKGROUND

The first great war had just ended in 1918 and the British-Indian Army fought against the German Empire on the Western Front. 

During World War I more than one million Indian troops served overseas and contributed to a large number of divisions and independent brigades.

Modern Indian historian and professor at Punjab University, Dr Jasbir Singh, said that India and especially Punjab had heavily contributed to the war recruitments and efforts.

"It was in Punjab that the [Great War] recruitment drive was maximum and it was again in Punjab where the British were facing a revolutionary situation,” Dr Singh said.

“During the war period, the British Government - in an attempt to tackle the situation and to contain or control the revolutionary activities - made promises that once the war was over, they would grant certain constitutional concessions to the Indians. But what happened was completely opposite to that," Dr Singh said.

Britain won World War I with the support of Indian soldiers. Instead of rewarding self-government as promised, the British imposed the Rowlatt Act or the Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act 1919. 

The Rowlatt Act silenced and censored the press and allowed the detaining of political activists, without trial, and the arrest of any individual suspected of treason against the Colonial Empire, without a warrant.

Historian and professor at Guru Nanak Dev (GDP) University Dr Sukhdev Singh Sohal said the massacre was the beginning of the end of British rule in India and significant for the national movement in the Indian freedom struggle.

"The wrath of the British's justice had been outed,” Dr Sohal said.

“The British in the earlier stages said that their vision was in civilising [Indian people] but now after the massacre it was clear that they weren't civilising, rather - suppressing."

WHAT IS THE JALLIANWALA BAGH MASSACRE?

Men, women and children of all ages in India gathered at the historic garden of Punjab, Jallianwala Bagh, after offering prayers on the hot afternoon of April 13, 1919 at the Golden Temple in Amritsar to celebrate the auspicious festival of harvest Vaisakhi. They were also peacefully protesting the arrest of two freedom fighters who were Dr Satyapal and Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew.  

The acting Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer of the British Army was informed that a mass gathering had assembled against his orders prohibiting public gatherings. An order that didn't reach Amritsar.

Infuriated that his orders had been crossed, Dyer ordered 90 of his British troops to open fire on unarmed civilians, including women, children as young as six months, and seniors as old as 80 years. 

1650 rounds were fired, with the violent onslaught lasting about 11 minutes, until ammunition ran out. 

Dyer and his troops sealed the only entrance and exit of the concrete-walled assembly area as they fired without warning. As he ordered fire on the densest parts of the crowd, mothers threw their infants across tall walls in an attempt to save their children’s lives. 

In a panic, people jumped into the well at the Jallianwala Bagh, where 120 dead bodies were later recovered.

While original claims were that 350 people were killed, the Congress party believes that number to be as high as 1,000.

HISTORY MIRRORS TODAY

The General Maharashtra State Secretary of the Indian Youth Congress and member of the Sikh community, Hargun Singh, said the massacre was a way to curb the voices that were fighting for their freedom.

"Seven days before the Jallianwala Bagh massacre happened, the city of Amritsar was in turmoil, because dissent voices and dissent protests were being organised," Mr Singh said.

"I see today's India, I won't say it is similar, but today's government is trying to curb all dissent voices. There are such laws on sedition where the people who are not responsible for certain acts are being picked up, blamed and framed for the things they have not done," Mr Singh said.

The highly criticised colonial-era law (the sedition law) is supposed to be applied in rare instances where the security and sovereignty of the country are threatened. 

Yet the National Crime Records Bureau data indicates that sedition law cases against civilians have risen -  96 per cent of the sedition cases filed against 405 Indians over the past decade were registered after 2014.

In 2021, an American democracy research non-profit known as The Freedom House degraded India from a 'free' country to a 'partly free' country while Sweden's V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) Institute classified India as an 'electoral autocracy’.

Dr Jasbir Singh says the Indian State should learn from the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and address all political questions and complaints.

"A lesson for the establishment, the state or the authority [from the Jallianwala Bagh massacre] is that you cannot kill the voice of the people by any action or violence," Dr Singh said.

The massacre was an attempt to teach a lesson to those who were fighting for their rights.

The killings that happened 103 years ago have taught us to fight for our voices to be heard, stand up for our rights against authorities who dictate the citizenry and defend the democracy for which our martyrs and founders fought and died. 

To quote Mahatma Gandhi: "Force, violence, pressure, or compulsion with a view to conformity, are both uncivilised and undemocratic."