Jallianwala Bagh Massacre History - General Knowledge of Modern India
The Jallianwala Bagh massacre exposed the inhuman face of the British. The British soldiers opened fire on the unarmed crowd gathered at a public meeting in an almost closed ground, without warning, on the orders of General Dyer, as they were holding a public meeting despite the ban.
The crowd gathered here on April 13 was protesting against the arrest of two national leaders - Satyapal and Dr. Saifuddin Kitchlew. Suddenly the British military officer General Dyer ordered his army to fire at the unarmed crowd, without giving them a chance to disperse, and the shots continued for 10 minutes or until they were exhausted. In these 10 minutes, (according to Congress's calculations) a thousand people were killed and about two thousand people were injured. Bullet marks can still be seen in Jallianwala Bagh, which has now been declared a national monument.
The massacre was premeditated and General Dyer proudly declared that he had done this to teach a lesson and that he would have killed them all if they had continued the gathering. He was not ashamed of what he had done. When he went to England, some Britishers collected donations to welcome him. While some others were surprised by this heinous act of Dyer and demanded an inquiry. A British newspaper called it the bloodiest massacre in modern history.
21 years later, on March 13, 1940, a revolutionary Indian Udham Singh shot and killed Michael O'Dwyer as he was the lieutenant governor of Punjab at the time of the Jallianwala massacre. The massacre filled the anger of the Indian people, to which the government had to resort to barbarism again. The people of Punjab were subjected to atrocities, kept in open cages and flogged. Newspapers were banned and their editors were either imprisoned or exiled. An empire of terror, as it arose during the suppression of the revolt of 1857, was spread all over. Rabindranath Tagore returned the title of knighthood conferred on him by the British. This massacre proved to be a turning point in the history of Indian freedom struggle.
Congress session was held in Amritsar in December 1919. A large number of people including farmers participated in it. It is clear that this massacre added fuel to the fire and strengthened the people's resistance to oppression and the will for freedom.
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Modern India