It has been 104 years since the horrific and brutal Jallianwala Bagh massacre. There is no denying that in the list of colonial atrocities unleashed by the colonial rule of the British on Indians, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre continues to haunt the people of India as one of the darkest days in Indian history.
I can comprehend that an evil man of foreign descent had the audacity to give the order to kill our unarmed and innocent people, even though I am astounded and angry by it. But I cannot wrap my head around the brutal truth that it was our own people serving the colonial power and its masters that pulled the trigger and fired at our people who were celebrating one of our own religious festivals peacefully.
On April 13th, 1919, India saw a face of evil but it was not only Brigadier-General Dyer but every single soldier of Indian descent that followed the order of Dyer and ruthlessly killed innocent children, women, and men at Jallianwala Bagh while the people celebrating Baisakhi. It takes a certain kind of character or lack of it to kill your own people on the orders of a foreigner in a cold-blooded manner.
Brigadier-General Dyer was a fiend. In spite of General Dyer’s orders prohibiting unlawful assembly, people gathered at Jallianwala Bagh, where two resolutions were to be discussed, one condemning the firing on April 10 and the other requesting the authorities to release their leaders.
When the news reached him Brigadier-General Dyer, headed to the Bagh with his troops. He entered the Bagh, deployed his troops, and ordered them to open fire without giving any warning. People rushed to the exits but Dyer directed his soldiers to fire at the exit.
The firing continued for 10-15 minutes. 1650 rounds were fired. The firing ceased only after the ammunition had run out. The total estimated figure of the dead as given by General Dyer and Mr. Irving was 291. However, other reports including that of a committee headed by Madan Mohan Malviya put the figure of the dead at over 500.
General Dyer’s actions on the day of the Massacre received a prompt acknowledgment from Sir Michael O’ Dwyer who at once wired to him: “Your action correct. Lieutenant-Governor approves”.
The evidence General Dyer presented before the Hunter Committee stood as a confession of the brutal act he committed. The Committee indicated the massacre as one of the darkest episodes of the British Administration. The Hunter Commission in 1920 censured Dyer for his actions. The Commander-in-Chief directed Brigadier-Dyer to resign from his appointment as Brigade Commander and informed him that he would receive no further employment in India as mentioned in the letter by Montagu to His Excellency.
History is a great teacher. The Jallianwala Bagh massacre is a lesson for every Indian. We must open our eyes to the simple yet brutal truth about the incident. Our people were killed by our own people on orders given by a foreigner.
I have often mooted in my articles or in my conversations that India does not need external enemies, it has enough internal enemies to take forward the intentions and plans of a foreign enemy. Even today we witness that it is foreign terrorist-sympathizing nations like Pakistan and China and economic terrorists like George Soros who give the orders and provide the economic resources for people from India to come on the streets to protest against the CAA and Farm Laws. Their modus operandi is to get some greedy and over-ambitious Indians to create strife and unrest in India and for the Indians. Even now, it is our own Indians who target other innocent Indians while dancing to the dictates of their foreign masters.
The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre is a brutal act of inhumanity. But beyond the act of ego. There was also the act of submission of our Indians in Brigadier-General Dyer’s troops who turned a blind eye to the innocent children, women, and men in the crowd and fired at will. Such was the fear in the eyes of our Indians who served the British colonial rule that even killing innocent people, people of your own race and blood did not deter them to participate in the madness and vicious murders of innocent people. The mindset was that of a slave who merely obeys without any rationality.
The slave mentality is not dead in India. It persists in some nooks and corners, especially amongst the left-liberal cabal and certain sections of media, society, politics, and bureaucracy. The slave mindset teaches us Indians to forget our other Indians or India, even to the point of creating a socio-economic crisis in the country.
The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre should remind us that were are Indians first above political parties, religions, or castes. We cannot be controlled or dominated to hate and kill our own kind. We must always see the Indian in us and most of all the humanness in each one of us.
India will never witness a Jallianwala Bagh Massacre if we rise up as Indians putting the nation first and self last. But the question is whether we will rise up as Indians or will we be like those Indians who were soldiers in the British troop of Brigadier-General Dyer waiting in the wings to attack our fellow Indians on grounds of religion, caste, or political differences because we continue to remain slaves of new masters and not sons and daughters of Mother India.
