On 13 April 1919 — Vaisakhi — troops of the British Indian Army under Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer opened fire without warning on an unarmed crowd penned inside an enclosed garden, the Jallianwala Bagh, in Amritsar, a few minutes' walk from the Harmandir Sahib. Hundreds were killed. That the massacre happened, and how, is Well-established — Dyer himself described his actions to the official inquiry. Only the death toll is disputed, and this article gives both ranges.

A preserved brick wall at the Jallianwala Bagh memorial with bullet strikes marked in white.
The bullet-marked wall preserved at the Jallianwala Bagh memorial, Amritsar. Photograph via Wikimedia Commons (Creative Commons — author and licence at the file page).

Context

Anger was already high over the Rowlatt Act — wartime-style emergency powers, extended into peacetime, that allowed detention without trial. Protests in Amritsar had turned violent on 10 April, with attacks on banks and Europeans, and the city was placed under the control of Dyer, who banned public gatherings. Many in the crowd that Vaisakhi afternoon — including villagers in town for the festival fair near the Golden Temple — had not heard the proclamation.

The massacre

The Bagh was walled on all sides, with only narrow exits. Dyer positioned his fifty riflemen at the main passage and ordered them to fire into the crowd without warning; the shooting continued for about ten minutes, roughly 1,650 rounds, until ammunition ran low. Trapped people were crushed at the exits or died in a well inside the compound. Dyer withdrew without aid to the wounded, and the city's curfew left many where they fell until morning.

March 1919

The Rowlatt Act

Emergency powers extended into peacetime spark protest across India.

10 April 1919

Amritsar erupts

Arrests of local leaders trigger riots; the city passes to military control under Dyer.

13 April 1919

Vaisakhi — the massacre

Dyer's troops fire for ten minutes into the walled garden; hundreds die.

1920 · 1940

Censure, and a long shadow

The Hunter Commission censures Dyer; in 1940 Udham Singh assassinates Michael O'Dwyer in London.

Aftermath

The official inquiry — the Hunter Commission — censured Dyer, and he was relieved of command; yet sections of the British press and public lionised him, raising a large fund in his honour. The contrast radicalised opinion in India: Rabindranath Tagore returned his knighthood, and the killing shaped Mahatma Gandhi's turn to non-cooperation. In 1940 Udham Singh, who had witnessed the events as a young man, assassinated Michael O'Dwyer — the former Punjab lieutenant-governor who had endorsed Dyer's action — in London, and was hanged.

Modern place-names

Amritsar, Punjab, India. The Bagh is now a national memorial; the bullet-marked walls and the Martyrs' Well are preserved within it.