Jallianwala Bagh Massacre: Remembering the dark day 103 years later

Udham Singh, who was a member of the revolutionist Ghadar party, shot Colonel Reginald Dyer on March 13, 1940 to avenge the massacre.

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre took place exactly 103 years back on April 13, 1919. Hundreds of people were killed on this day by indiscriminate firing by the colonial forces. While the British claimed that a little over 300 people died, the then Congress Party said at least a thousand were murdered in cold blood. 

Let’s look at what exactly had happened in Jallianwala Bagh 

1. The Jallianwala Bagh massacre happened exactly 103 years back on April 13, 1919. 
2. The British had imposed a draconian Martial Law, which had banned public gatherings, but people were not made aware of it. So, on the dark day, thousands of people visited to celebrate the Baisakhi festival, which was on April 13 in the year 1919.
3. The shots were fired on the orders of Colonel Reginald Dyer, who was the acting Brigadier. He had asked his troops to shoot indiscriminately without asking the crowd to disperse.  The British soldiers were armed with two armoured cars and machine guns while the troops used Scinde rifles.
4. The firing continued for nearly 10 to 15 minutes and roughly 1,650 rounds of bullets were fired, which killed over a thousand people.  
5. The site, where the gruesome and unfortunate incident took place, was an enclosed garden known as Jallianwala bagh in Punjab’s Amritsar. The event has been embedded in our history as the “Amritsar Massacre”.
6. The garden, which turned into a sea of dead, was enclosed on three sides since houses were built around it.  The entire garden had no exit route apart from the main entrance. This made sure that no one could leave the spot when the shooting starts. 

Ripple Effect

1. Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore refused to accept Knighthood to protest the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
2. Mahatma Gandhi, too, returned the ‘Kaiser-i-Hind’ award. 

Outcome

1. Udham Singh, who was a member of the revolutionist Ghadar party, shot Colonel Reginald Dyer on March 13, 1940. Udham Singh had taken revenge for the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre.
2. The last known survivor of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, Shingara Singh, passed away on June 29, 2009, at the age of 113.

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