Jallianwala Bagh

Jallianwala Bagh Review

Outside the temple's clock-tower entrance, about 500 yards north, a small plaque and narrow gateway mark the entrance to Jallianwala Bagh. Here, on April 13, 1919, occurred one of the defining moments in India's struggle for independence. The day was Baisakhi, celebrated by Sikhs as both the first day of the new year and the day that Guru Gobind Singh consolidated the faith under the leadership of the Khalsa ("God's own"; a fraternity of the pious) in 1699. The city was under curfew after reported attacks on some British residents, yet some 20,000 people had gathered here to protest the arrest of Indian nationalist leaders under the Rowlatt Act, a British legislation that allowed for detention without trial. Seeing this crowd, British Brigadier General Reginald E. H. Dyer positioned his troops just inside the narrow entrance to the small garden (which is surrounded on all sides by residential buildings) and ordered them to open fire. Some 1,200 people were wounded, and several hundred died. This massacre, chillingly reenacted in Richard Attenborough's film Gandhi, caused widespread outrage and contributed to the launch of Mahatma Gandhi's noncooperation movement. The British attempted to suppress news of the incident, and when an inquiry was finally held, such comments as "It was no longer a question of merely dispersing the crowd, but one of producing a sufficient moral effect" (Dyer) did nothing to assuage the worldwide response. Nobel Laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore renounced his English knighthood, and even Winston Churchill, himself no enemy of the empire, raised an uproar in Parliament (though a majority in the House of Lords approved of Dyer's actions). Jallianwala Bagh was subsequently purchased by Indian nationalists to prevent its being turned into a covered market, and it remains one of the most moving monuments to India's 20th-century history. Queen Elizabeth visited in 1997, after much negotiation over whether or not she should make a formal apology (she didn't, but she and Prince Philip did remove their shoes before entering the grounds). Today the garden is planted with a few rosebushes, but the bullet holes from the British fusillade remain. The well, into which some dove in a vain attempt to save themselves, is on the north side. A modern memorial occupies the east end, and a small display to the left as you enter the garden features contemporary newspaper accounts of the incident.