Jallianwala Bagg Massacre Analysis

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre (also known as the Amritsar massacre), took place in the Jallianwala Bagh public garden in the northern Indian city of Amritsar on 13 April 1919. The shooting that took place was ordered by Brigadier-General Reginald E.H. Dyer. On Sunday 13 April 1919, Dyer was convinced of a major insurrection and thus he banned all meetings. On hearing that a meeting of 15,000 to 20,000 people including women, senior citizens and children had assembled at Jallianwala Bagh, Dyer went with fifty riflemen to a raised bank and ordered them to shoot at the crowd. Dyer kept the firing up till the ammunition supply was almost exhausted for about ten minutes with approximately 1,650

Jallianwala Bagh massacre 2 rounds fired.[1] Official

About 1.25 million Indian soldiers and labourers served in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, while both the Indian administration and the princes sent large supplies of food, money, and ammunition. However, Bengal and Punjab remained sources of anticolonial activities. Revolutionary attacks in Bengal, associated increasingly with disturbances in Punjab, were significant enough to nearly paralyse the regional administration.[6][7]

After the war In the aftermath of World War I, high casualty rates, increasing inflation compounded by heavy taxation, the deadly 1918 flu pandemic, and the disruption of trade during the war escalated human suffering in India. The costs of the protracted war in both money and manpower were great. In India, long the "jewel in the crown" of the British Empire, Indians were restless for independence. More than 43,000 Indian soldiers had died fighting for Britain. Indian soldiers smuggled arms into India to fight British rule. The pre-war Indian nationalist sentiment revived as moderate and extremist groups of the Indian National Congress ended their differences in order to unify. In 1916, the Congress succeeded in establishing the Lucknow Pact, a temporary alliance with the All-India Muslim

In Amritsar, more than 15,000 people gathered at Jallianwala Bagh. This situation deteriorated perceptibly during the next few days. Michael O 'Dwyer is said to have believed that these were the early and ill-concealed signs of a conspiracy for a coordinated revolt around May, at a time when British troops would have withdrawn to the hills for the summer. The Amritsar massacre, as well as responses preceding and succeeding it, contrary to being an isolated incident, was the end result of a concerted plan of response from the Punjab administration to suppress such a conspiracy.[11] James Houssemayne Du Boulay is said to have ascribed a direct relationship between the fear of a Ghadarite uprising in the midst of an increasingly tense situation in Punjab, and the British response that ended in the massacre.[12] On April 10, 1919, there was a protest at the residence of the Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar, a city in Punjab, a large province in the northwestern part of India. The demonstration was to demand the release of two popular leaders of the Indian Independence Movement, Satya Pal and Saifuddin Kitchlew, who had been earlier arrested by the government and removed to a secret location. Both were proponents of the Satyagraha movement led by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. The crowd was shot at by a military picket, killing several protesters. The shooting set off a series of violent events. Later