And the aftermath of the
Jalianwalla Bagh massacre
If one person had to be picked as a main cause for the
British Empire’s collapse in India, that would be none other than the irascible
Col Dyer. Strange is fact that he is popularly known as General Dyer, when he
was nothing more than a Colonel (he held a temporary Brigadier Gen rank though)
and was a person born and bred in India (spending only 12 years of his early
life abroad), not England. Reginald Edward Harry Dyer will always be listed in
the history of the peoples of the world as the butcher of Amritsar, never as
the savior of Punjab as the so called enlightened lot in the blighty felt in
those days. But then again in the large scheme of things, one will also recall
that he reported to Michael O'Dwyer, the governor general of Punjab. And after
the story unfolded, one person took up the cudgels to wage a legal battle
against O'Dwyer, fighting it in the lion’s den, i.e. the hallowed British
courts. He was doomed to fail and that person was none other than our esteemed
Chettur Sankaran Nair. Let us try and figure out the curious entanglement that
these three characters from India’s history, got into and in the course of
retelling that story, get a little deeper into their lives.
Most Malayalees visit the Gururvayoor temple every year, and
as usual, I could not miss noticing the 30’ tall Deepasthambham (tower lamp) at
its entrance, donated by Sankaran Nair. To condense his life into a few paras
is tough, to say the least, but I will make an attempt to be concise, for after
all, we have to know a man to understand his actions. We shall continue on to
do the same with the other two villains before they all converge to a fateful
day and later flare out in separation, to a conclusion.
How Dyer found his way into the British Indian army is
itself a curiosity, for he had originally joined up to study and become a
surgeon. Perhaps that would have been better in posterity, but then again, he
must have decided to go with his mother’s wishes, since his father would have
wanted him to become a brewer and look after their many breweries in the hills.
The Dyer family had started with the EIC as early as the 1820’s and spent most
of their lives in India. They had certainly done well in business and Reginald
or Rex as he was called at home was the 6th and youngest of Edward’s
and Mary Passmore’s (Mini) sons. Their lives traversed Simla, Solan in the
hills and locales such as Muree in the Punjab. The large family was brought up
under Mini’s iron rule and Rex was born in 1864, a few years after the mutiny
of 1857 which had drawn taut lines between the natives and the ruling British
moving the administrative powers from the EIC to the British crown.
 |
| Col Reginald Dyer |
Dyer was fluent in Hindustani and was brought up like a
pukka sahib of India, learning hunting, riding and all those things the upper
crest British had time to partake in. It is said that he hated hunting after
seeing a monkey he had shot suffer. He studied at the Bishop Cotton School in Shimla,
and was motoring on, quite happy in India when his father for some inexplicable
reason decided to send him and his brother Walter, not to England, but to
Ireland in 1875 for continuing studies at the Middleton College. Life proved
tough and the two brothers who landed up like bumpkins wearing sola topis and
kukris, were bullied by the local boys. Reggi or Rags as he was then known,
settled down quickly with his brother, though in the midst of a virtual civil
war in Ireland. Both brothers later joined the medical college and Rex took up
boxing to excel at it, though hating dissection. Eventually he appeared for the
army entrance examination, passing it with high marks on the second attempt (falling
ill the day before the initial attempt). All records show that Rex had a tough
time in England, never fitting into the formalities required for the life there
and missing India.
He was continuously faulted for his inability to pronounce
words with the right accent and being unfocussed. After graduating from the RMC
Sandhurst in 1885, he joined the Queen’s corps and was deputed to Burma to
fight in the 3rd Burma war, after a stint in Belfast. Perhaps he
picked up the methods of employing extra force from his C in C Gen Roberts who
commanded the forces. His return from Rangoon to India on a steamer, resulted
in his involvement in a mysterious fist fight which left a number of Burmese
battered by this powerful boxer. Dyer stated that it was in support of one of
the Burmese who was being picked on by the others, and indicated a good amount
of pent up anger and frustration in the man. The case which followed, was
referred to military headquarters. Dyer went back home at long last and his
father helped him write a proper report about the event after which the whole file
got quashed. But it was a pointer to things to come. Dyer’s rise continued but
he ended up getting estranged from his family, especially his mother who was a
somewhat haughty upper class type of person, when he chose to get married to
his commanding officer’s daughter Annie Ommaney in 1889. Annie and Dyer were to
remain steadfast partners till the very end of his life. He was in that way
quite different, quite complex perhaps, sticking out like a sore thumb in
British parties, but a great supporter of equality, once even resigning from a
club which refused entry to a native officer. By 1915, he had become a colonel
and the next year an acting Brigadier general.
Events and days were moving rapidly against the British, the
native population was becoming restive, so were the small numbers of British
ruling the masses. It was clear that a large scale uprising would happen
sometime, and the officers could only imagine what could happen to them when
the natives in massive numbers rebelled. A whole lot of them noted in their
memoirs of this gnawing fear coursing through their veins, making them
irritable, restless and at times, terrified. All they needed to look at were
the days in Kanpur and the Sepoy mutiny when their lot were strung up or
crucified, and women violated. For them it was difficult to accept that their
superior race would have to face such an eventuality. And they spent years
after year living through that nerve jangling period, thinking about it, Rex
Dyer included.
Chettur Sankaran Nair on the other hand, was born in 1857,
the year of the mutiny or one of the first wars of Independence. He belonged to
Mankara in Palghat and his ancestors had been through difficult times, having
to flee the marauding Mysore armies of Tipu Sultan. The event always crossed
the minds of succeeding generations, and colored his feelings against the methods
used on the sometimes rebellious Moplahs of Malabar. Much later he was to
confirm it by professing tough action against them in 1921 and totally
disagreeing with the INC support for Khilafat. His father was a Tehsildar and
his uncles also worked in administrative positions of British local governance.
In fact his father Ramunny Panikkar was initially a clerk working for H V
Conolly at Calicut, before becoming a Tehsildar. Nair lived a structured and
charmed life, rising rapidly through the system to positions never held by
another Indian.
When he was appointed as advocate general, the British made it
clear that he was the ablest man the British can ever find in all of India.
After a brilliant career in law, he rose to the advocate general position, he became
the INC president, later authoring the Malabar marriage act thereby bringing an
end to Marumakkathayam or the matrilineal society of Malabar, even though he
himself was the karanavar or titular head of his Chettur thrawad. He presided
as one of the Judges on the much talked about Ashe murder case, became a member
of the Viceroys council and had no qualms writing occasional notes of dissent
against British policy, which you may be surprised to note, the British had to
accept due to the soundness of his legal and practical arguments. On a lighter
note, he was one of those rare persons the caustic tonged VK Krishna Menon
admired and respected. As a statesman, he found fault with what was wrong, and
did not differentiate with either the British or Gandhi, and his book Gandhi
and Anarchy, detailing his qualms against Gandhian methods of non-cooperation
and support for Khilafat was to prove an end to his relationship with the
Congress and scuttle further presence in the upper echelons of a soon to-be
independent India. But he was a patriot to boot and a brilliant lawyer, a
person on whom a few books have been written, which I perused but cannot be
reproduced in brief here.
Sankaran Nair studied initially at Angadipuram and
Cannanore, before graduating from the
He presided over the INC meeting in Madras in 1887 and was
an active congressman becoming its president soon after. Between 1900 and 1921,
he was mainly a political worker, sporadically working in the courts. But by
then, he had moved to his well-known Palms Bungalow on Poonamalee road, and his
group of lawyers were known as the Egmore clique. Bashyam and Mani Iyer headed
the Mylapore clique whereas Ramarao and Parthasarathy formed the Triplicane clique.
These three constituted what was informally known as the three inns of the
Madras court! He also found time to join the Madras artillery corps. Sankaran
Nair was to make a name finding fault with the commonly accepted practice of
ICS governance and the preference for upper castes, particularly Brahmins in
administration. He writes quite a bit about this in his autobiography, as to
how the early North Indian congress councils were full of chaste Brahmins who would
always drift off to eat sitting apart from people of lower castes, during
meetings.
There is so much more in the story of Sanakaran Nair, but I
guess now Is not the time for such matters, for it is time to go to the Punjab,
a province which was annexed by the EIC only in April 1849 after the second Anglo
Sikh war. Incidentally did you know that until the third decade of the 20th
century, if one had to go from Madras to Delhi by train, they had to transit
Calcutta? This GT express originally started running in 1929 between Peshawar
and Mangalore and took about 104 hours, one of the longest train routes. The
route was later altered to connect Lahore to Mettupalayam, which was the
alighting point to reach Ooty. Anyway, we were talking about Punjab, where by
1907 one could witness a lot of unrest. Large numbers of people were unhappy
with the colonization bill and Land alienation act since land could be
appropriated by the British if a person had no heirs after death and later the
British could sell it to anybody else. Lala Lajpat Rai led the revolts against
these moves, and was successful in getting the colonization bill repealed. The
world war followed with a number of Punjabis fighting for the British, but
gaining nothing. A large number died in an influenza pandemic which followed.
In March 1919, the Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act
or the Rowlatt Act of 1919 was passed which extended emergency measures of indefinite
detention and incarceration without trial in response to the perceived threats
of terrorism from revolutionary nationalist organizations. Incidentally this
had been in force (Defense of India act) since the world war, and was just
being extended. This unpopular legislation provided for stricter control of the
press, arrests without warrant, indefinite detention without trial, and juryless
‘in camera’ trials for proscribed political acts. The accused were denied the
right to know the accusers and the evidence used in the trial. In effect it was
a situation with 'No Dalil, No Vakil, No Appeal’ i.e., no pleas, no lawyer, no
Appeal. People rose in protest, Gandhi leading it with Satyagraha movements.
Hartals followed, proving to be successful. In Punjab it was a critical issue
for there were many protest movements brewing up. As a preventive measure
arrests of two popular leaders Satyapal and Saifuddin Kitchlew were ordered in
April 1919 by O’Dwyer the governor general of Punjab. This was to start a
series of actions resulting in the involvement of Dyer and a terrible massacre
of many innocent people. But before we get there, who is this O’Dwyer? Many
people in India are still confused between O’Dwyer and Dyer. They are different
people, with the latter - a military man reporting to the former an
administrator. Let’s take a look at that man and his life in India.
 |
| O'Dwyer |
Michael Francis O'Dwyer was the Lieutenant Governor of the
Punjab from 1912 until 1919. An Irishman, one of 14 children from a rural
family, was born around the same time as Dyer, in 1864. By 1882 he had passed
the ICS entrance exams and in 1884 was posted as AC of Shahpur in Punjab.
Following a relatively quiet period where he mastered some languages, he went
on get appointed to the Punjab–North West Frontier boundary commission. During
this posting he had additional responsibility as political resident of the
notoriously violent NWFP. By 1908 he had
moved to Hyderabad as acting resident and it was in 1913 that he succeeded Sir
Louis Dane as lieutenant-governor of the Punjab. It was to become his last
posting in India, during a period when he proved to be totally against organizations
such as the INC.
As you would see, his period of governance also overlapped the
world war, an event which was detrimental to many of his actions. As a zealous
recruiter, he organized for many a Punjabi to join the war effort. But some of the
early returnees were to spell doom for him, such as those who were behind the
Ghadar movement which professed an end to British rule in Punjab. The defense
act allowed him to stifle the early Ghadaris and he went on to recruit even
more Punjabi soldiers, over half a million of them for the rest of the war. But
it appears that Punjab was like a boiling caldron politically, and having its
lid closed. An explosion was imminent. O'Dwyer was determined that he was not
going to lose control in a repeat of the Sepoy mutiny of 1857. He had concerns
about German and Bolshevik agents inciting a rebellion in the province, but he
was convinced that the real danger came from Indian nationalists, whose
protests were becoming more vocal and violent. Dwyer announced to the Lahore
council that ‘a day of reckoning is in store for them’. He was also concerned
that the revolt was imminent, especially as this was a time when British troops
typically withdrew to the hills for the summer.
Hearing about a protest Satyagraha in the offing, Dwyer had
decided to act. Gandhi had been detained and prevented from entering Punjab and
Satyapal and Kitchlew had been arrested and moved to Dharmasala. On 10th
April 1919, crowds gathered at a bridge leading into the Civil Lines where the
British commissioner was quartered, demanding a release of the two leaders.
Unable to hold the crowd back, the military picket panicked and began firing,
killing several protesters. The shooting of protesters resulted in a mob acting
in revenge. As it transpired, a British electrician, two railway workers and three
British bank employees were beaten to death.
Later, one Miss Marcella Sherwood,
who supervised the Mission Day School for Girls was assaulted by the mob in a
narrow street called the Kucha Kurrichhan on the 11th. Sherwood was rescued
by locals and moved to the Gobindgarh fort. Railway lines were destroyed,
telegraphic posts and lines cut, and government buildings burnt as the mayhem
continued. Retaliatory shooting at crowds from the military several times
during the days resulted in some eight to twenty deaths. As Amritsar burned, a
train bound for Peshawar containing Gurkhas armed only with Kukris unexpectedly
rolled in. 50 of them were quickly issued .303 rifles from the fort. Later another
train with and Baluchi and English reinforcements came in. Tragically these
Baluchis and Gurkhas were to serve a big part in what transpire next. It was
into this messy situation that Col Dyer was moved to from Jalandhar, in order
to decisively take over control of the situation.
Although he arrived in Jalandhar as a temporary Brigade
General of the 45th Infantry Brigade, he was not to know what
monstrosity in store for him a later. He was leading a peaceful life, wife in
tow, and in fact he proved to be adept at fancy dress fooling some officers
into first thinking he was a German officer and later as a Baluch officer. It
was during this period that he resigned from the Jalandhar club as it would not
grant admittance to a native officer, in protest. Back in Jalandhar, Dyer and
Annie were quietly dining but some hours earlier they had received a message of
the events and commotion in Amritsar, from Lahore. He had sent all available
troops already to Amritsar. It was a very hot summer in Punjab and it was only
the next afternoon that Dyer decided to motor down to Amritsar and take
personal charge of the situation there, accompanied by Briggs and Southey. Dyer had another reason to delay actions, he
was actually suffering from arteriosclerosis (thus being more deliberate before
moving quickly) and this added to his already short temper, when in pain.
Reaching at night, he was briefed on the attack and about Miss Sherwood’s
distress.
Dyer toured the city, empowered the police superintendent
and moved to the railway station to ponder over the next steps. He then issued
a proclamation ordering a total curfew and a threat of firing on any kind of
crowd which assembled. By dawn he had moved to Rambagh, and had at his
disposal, 475 British and 710 native soldiers as well as two armored cars and
several machine guns.
Meanwhile Dyer got word from Shimla as Lt Gen Dwyer had
reported to them and the word was ‘if troops were to be used and they were
forced to open fire, they should make an example’. As all this was going on, Hans
Raj, an aide to Dr. Kitchlew and an unsavory character was busy arranging a public
protest meeting at 430PM the following day in the Jallianwala Bagh, now a plot
of empty ground with just a well, a pepul tree and the relics of a shrine.
Sunday morning dawned and Dyer warned his soldiers not to
take it out personal against any natives. They then took out a march and read
the proclamation of curfew at 19 different points in the City. Curiously it was
not read at the Jalianwalah Bagh or the Golden temple where the crowds were expected
to be the biggest. By afternoon the Bagh started to fill up, what with many
people in the city for the Biasaki celebrations. A plane flew overhead and some
people scattered in panic fearing bombing, as Dwyer had ordered, in another
incident. At about 4PM, Dyer heard about the meeting, and proceeded to the
location with his troops. Interestingly Dwyer had earlier that afternoon
preemptively proclaimed martial law in Lahore and Amritsar. Did he actually
also order Dyer to do what he was going to do? We will get to that later as we
sift through the ashes.
Dyer, Briggs and Anderson drove to the Bagh accompanied by 25
Baluchi’s armed with rifles, 25 Gurkhas also similarly armed and 40 Gurkhas
with Kukris (carefully selected so they would not hesitate to fire on the
Punjabis). The armored cars followed. Dyer, Briggs and Anderson stationed
themselves at the very back. The formation now moved into the bagh, leaving the
armored cars on the street as there was not enough space for them to drive
through.
Without any warning, the troops took firing positions and
Dyer gave the order to fire. Hans Raj first told the crowd that the Sarkar
would not fire, then he entreated them not to flee stating that the shots were
blanks, before bolting. It was utter chaos. The troops fired volley after
volley, in total 1650 shots into the 5,000 odd crowd. As records indicate, some
379 died, including women and children. Over a thousand were injured. Dyer
emotionless, directed the troops to direct fire where the crowd was the
thickest, for some 10 or so minutes. The resulting massacre was according to
the callous Dyer, ‘a lesson which would be felt throughout India’. He did
nothing to help anybody, even the injured and dying, after the shooting.
Dyer filed an arrogant and remorseless report after the
event, never once thinking he would be questioned and Dwyer immediately replied
– ‘your action correct and the Lt General approves’.
Shops remained closed the following days, and Dyer threatened
the owners with force and guns upon which they reopened. Something had flipped
Dyers mind completely for his next steps were baffling, he issued a series of
humiliating orders, forcing anybody who met an European to salaam him in
respect, forcing people to crawl through the Kucha Kurrichhan alley, all
bicycles were confiscated, and 93 native lawyers were forced to work as coolies
and watch floggings. Many young men were flogged for assaulting Miss Sherwood.
Colonel Dyer later explained the crawling order to a British inspector:
"Some Indians crawl face downwards in front of their gods. I wanted them
to know that a British woman is as sacred as a Hindu god and therefore they
have to crawl in front of her, too."
The event involving Sherwood, was in hindsight, what brought
Dyer to the breaking point. In fact she had ventured out alone in the middle of
a riot, got hit a few times and was brought to the ground in the melee, not
sexually assaulted, stripped or raped as was widely rumored. But then Col Dyer
probably recalled the mutiny where ‘delicately nurtured white women’ had once been
assaulted. His Annie was in the vicinity and this could happen to her too. A
terrible fear gnawed his heart of this very possibility and he had to act
before it was too late, he had to nip any possibility of a mass riot in the
bud. It had nothing to do with any kind of insurrection against the crown.
O’Dwyer stated ‘the Amritsar business cleared the air, and
if there was to be a holocaust anywhere, and one regrets there should be it was
best at Amritsar. Speaking with perhaps a more intimate knowledge of the then
situation than anyone else, I have no hesitation in saying that General Dyer's
action that day was the decisive factor in crushing the rebellion, the
seriousness of which is only now being realized’.
I will not dwell too much on the event and its aftermath any
further, for there is so much of detail available in the public domain. While
most of the British in India including people like Kipling were supportive of Dyer’s
actions, Indian politicians and statesmen were in uproar. Even Churchill
mentioned it to be a sinister & monstrous event as Americans condemned it.
The Hunter Commission was appointed and Dyer still refused to accept the weight
of his actions saying ‘I think it quite possible that I could have dispersed
the crowd without firing but they would have come back again and laughed, and I
would have made, what I consider, a fool of myself’. As this continued, Dyer,
seriously ill with jaundice and arteriosclerosis, was hospitalized.
Legal and Home Members on the Viceroy's Council ultimately
decided that, though Dyer had acted in a callous and brutal way, military or
legal prosecution would not be possible due to political reasons. However, he
was finally found guilty of a mistaken notion of duty and relieved of his
command on 23rd March. The British meanwhile collected a large purse
of close to 28,000 pounds to allow Dyer a happy retirement. It is said that Dyer did not sleep a single
night after that event and died a broken man in July 1927. Miss Marcella
Sherwood for one, later defended Colonel Dyer, describing him "as the
'saviour' of the Punjab and returned to continue her missionary work.
O’Dwyer cooperated with the subsequent inquiry established
under Lord Hunter and, in a series of forthright statements, supported Dyer's
actions. Dyer was censured and ordered to resign; and although O'Dwyer remained
in India, his career was effectively over.
And now for the final part. Sankaran Nair resigned from the
Viceroy’s Executive Council in protest against the conduct of the Government
even after Annie Besant and CF Andrews begged him to stay as the Indian
representative within the council. He continued in the Secretary of State’s
Council and moved to England. It was
largely due to his insistence that a Royal Commission was appointed to inquire
into the events of 1919 and the guilty officials, civilian and military, were
punished. ‘As far as it lay in my power’, said Sankaran Nair, ‘I was determined
to prevent another Jalianwala Bagh in India ’. Sankaran Nair however could not
see eye to eye with Mahatma Gandhi and wrote a book called Gandhi and Anarchy,
where he detailed his hesitation in supporting Gandhian methods. In it he also
wrote the so called libelous statement: "Before the Reforms it was in the
power of the Lieutenant-Governor (i.e. Dwyer), a single individual, to commit
the atrocities in the Punjab we know only too well”.
O’Dwyer who felt that he and Dyer had been thrown under the
bus, was incensed by Nair’s words- But
when they were made by a man who was a member of the Government of India - the
authority to which I was directly subordinate at the time of the events in
question and who had, as he claims special inner knowledge not available to the
general public, I could not pass them by.
The British and Indian government tried hard to get the two
dueling parties to compromise, in fact they even provided confidential
information to Nair to fight his case. After all they did not want all kinds of
information hitting the press wires and incensing the public even further.
The case is an interesting study by itself and I will
therefore not talk too much about it, but just that it was stilted against Nair
all the way. As Collett explains ‘In court, Nair found himself at a very great
disadvantage. In the England of 1924 there were few who were prepared to
support his view that Sir Michael O'Dwyer had been repressive tyrant, and those
who were had little public standing. Only one Englishman was on Nair’s side as
a witness and his evidence did not amount to much. Nair’s legal team was forced
to fall back on depositions legally sworn by over 120 witnesses. Only one juror
supported Nair, the Hon Harold Laski. Sir Michael O'Dwyer won his case, and was
able ever thereafter to maintain that he and Dyer had been vindicated in a
British court. Nair had to not only pay a fine of 500 pounds but also bear the
court costs of around 7,000 Pounds. But the Nair case inflicted great damages
on the British establishment, public outcry became even more strident and
Justice McCardie had to bear the brunt of it, and as days went by took to
occult and gambling, finally committing suicide.
Michael O’Dwyer, as you will recall was assassinated by
Udham Singh (Alias Mohammed Singh Azad) in 1940 in retaliation for the Jallianwala
Bagh massacre in Amritsar. Singh said, ‘I did it because I had a grudge against
him. He deserved it. He was the real culprit. He wanted to crush the spirit of my
people, so I have crushed him’.
Nair returned to Madras in 1924, deciding to take a back
seat from then on seeing Gandhiji in the ascendance. He did put in a final word though ‘Thanks to
Gandhi, India has become a world's problem, that is his greatest contribution’.
He spent many of his last years with KPS Menon, his son-in-law, in Ceylon
continuing his yoga practices and immersed in religion. In 1934, hearing of his
son-in-law Kandeth’s demise, he rushed from Madras to Madanpalle and on the
way met with an accident fetching him a serious head injury. He passed away a
month later, in May 1934.
He was loud, he was brusque and he was rough. That perhaps made his life amidst an overbearing British bureaucracy, bearable. But he had a sense of humor, look at
the following incident which transpired after he had resigned from the
viceroy’s council and you will understand the man.
Sankaran Nair had resigned in disgust from the viceroy's
executive council and during the final interview, Lord Chelmsford asked if he
could suggest somebody as his successor. Pointing to his peon, Ramprasad, Nair
said, “He is tall, he is handsome, he wears his livery well and he will say yes
to whatever you say. Altogether he will make an ideal member of the council”.
The Muree brewery which Dyer’s father started still brews
beer in Pakistan. In 2013, Murree Brewery opened a franchise in India to a
Bangalore-based entrepreneur, allowing the brewing, bottling and marketing of
the beer in India.
References
Armies of the Raj: From the Mutiny to Independence, 1858-1947
- Byron Farwell
The Butcher of Amritsar: General Reginald Dyer - Nigel
Collett
The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre - Savita Narain
The Amritsar Massacre, 1919 Tim Coates
Autobiography of Sir C. Sankaran Nair
Gandhi and Anarchy - C. Sankaran Nair
A short life of Sir C. Sankaran Nair, C Madhava Nair
Sir C. Sankaran Nair – KPS Menon
India as I know it - Michael O'Dwyer
The O'Dwyer v. Nair Libel Case of 1924: NIGEL A. COLLETT
India's Prisoner: A Biography of Edward John Thompson,
1886-1946 - Mary Lago
