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Amritsar Massacre
Massacre of Indians in Amritsar, Punjab
Place of event
Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, India
About
The Amritsar Massacre took place in Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, India on 13 April 1919. Thousands had gathered to celebrate the Sikh festival of Vaisakhi and to protest the Rowlatt Act, which gave the British powers to imprison Indians suspected of 'terrorist' activities for up to two years without trial. Troops led by General Dyer shot into the crowd and between 500 and 600 people were killed, with many more injured, although exact numbers are hard to know for certain.
In the aftermath of the Amritsar Massacre, Rabindranath Tagore returned his knighthood. In 1940, in London, Udham Singh shot Michael O’Dwyer, the Governor of the Punjab in 1919, whom Singh held responsible for the Amritsar Massacre.
Anand, Anita, The Patient Assassin, A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge and the Raj (London: Simon & Schuster, 2019)
Wagner, Kim, Amritsar 1919: An Empire of Fear and the Making of a Massacre (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019)
Image credit
© Remaking Britain: South Asian Connections and Networks, 1930s – present
