Jallianwala Bagh and the National Memorial ( Amendment) Bill, 2019

Jallianwala Bagh and the National Memorial ( Amendment) Bill, 2019 

The Rajya Sabha discussed with passion, the Jallianwala Bagh National Memorial (Amendment) Bill 2019, in the centenary year of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre (13th April 1919). This Bill was passed by the Lok Sabha during the previous monsoon session and was debated in the upper house of the parliament yesterday. Leaders, cutting across party lines, paid rich tributes to the Jallianwala Bagh martyrs - innocent lives that were lost during the devilish massacre that was perpetrated by the British on innocent people - including women and children - who had assembled at the Jallianwala Bagh park. Hundreds of people died in the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and several more were severely wounded and mimed for life in the tyrannical act by the Colonial British forces. The perpetrator, as expected, most unfortunately, went unpunished. 

The Jallianwala Bagh National Memorial (Amendment) Bill 2019 debate brought to focus an unanimous agreement of the house on the express need to create a world class National Memorial at this historic site. The Honourable Culture Minister, Prahlad Singh Patel  concluded the debate and thanked all the members who took part in the debate and the house passed the Bill with voice vote.  During the debate most members, particularly from Punjab and West Bengal, recollected the horror and highlighted the support that Nobelist Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore gave in staging protest against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. 

Rabindranath Tagore was knighted by the British in 1915 and was also the recipient of the coveted Nobel Prize in Literature. When he received the tragic news about Jallianwala Bagh, he was deeply pained. He tried his best to move towards Punjab and sent a message to Mahatma Gandhi ji  suggesting that both of them together should travel to Delhi and from there to Punjab to show solidarity with the people of Punjab. But then the Mahatma was not in favour of Gurudev’s idea, idea, which he feared may lead to violence. (The great Indian statistician Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis - founder of Indian Statistical Institute - has talked about this). When Gandhi ji did not support his idea of moving to Punjab - fearing violence - Tagore approached Chittaranjan Das, a stalwart of Bengal during non-cooperation movement, and requested him to arrange a protest meeting, which he wished to preside. Unfortunately that too did not materialise and therefore Tagore, agonised by the unprecedented Jallianwala Bagh massacre, decided to protest against the British brutality by denouncing his knighthood. He denounced his knighthood as an act of protest with a repudiation letter, which he wrote to the Viceroy Lord Chelmsford, dated May 30, 1919.

In this historic letter Tagore says  “The time has come when badges of honour make our shame glaring in the incongruous context of humiliation, and I for my part, wish to stand, shorn, of all special distinctions, by the side of those of my countrymen who, for their so called insignificance, are liable to suffer degradation not fit for human beings. ..  And these are the reasons which have compelled me to ask Your Excellency, with due reference and regret, to relieve me of my title of knighthood, which I had the honour to accept from His Majesty the King at the hands of your predecessor, for whose nobleness of heart,  I still entertain great admiration”. Tagore organised more than one protest in Calcutta against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

It is therefore in fitness of things that Calcutta, (Kolkata) the city where major protests against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre were staged, will now be commemorating the centenary of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre with an interesting exhibition. The exhibition ‘Ways of Remembering Jallianwala Bagh & Rabindranath Tagore’s Response to the Massacre’ will be unique because of its linkage to Punjab and Bengal the two major states, which were central to the freedom struggle. More over, this will be the first time that the Victoria Memorial Hall (VMH), a symbol of British Colonial Raj, in almost its hundred years of existence, will be hosting an exhibition to commemorate the centenary of Jallianwala Bagh for which I wish to thank my good friend Dr Sengupta General Secretary of VMH. This unique exhibition, curated by Ms. Dutta Gupta, will provide historic information on not just what happened on that fateful day - April 13, 1919 - but will place the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in context. On display will be the letter that Tagore wrote to Viceroy Chelmsford. Tagore continued his efforts in highlighting the atrocities committed at Jallianwala Bagh till the matter was discussed in the British Parliament. The exhibition will include Tagore’s letters with C.F. Andrews and other public figures and various other kinds of archival documents.

Certain incidents from the annals of history, remain infamously etched in the collective memory of nations and one such event for India is the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. The British General, Reginald Dyer, one hundred years ago on the infamous 13th of April 1919, perpetrated the most heinous of act at the Jallianwala Bagh. It continues to be one of the worst heinous, unpardonable, dastardly criminal act that left an indelible scar on our nation and it continues to evoke emotions of unprecedented proportions, which were witnessed during the parliamentary debate on the Jallianwala Bagh National Memorial ( Amendment) Bill, 2019.  While the Jallianwala Bagh tragedy cannot be reversed, an unconditional apology from the British government, which was long overdue, could have demonstrated their remorse for this dastardly act. But most unfortunately it has not happened. The British Government, true to their tyrannical past refused to render an apology, let alone compensate through reparation begging atonement for their inexcusable crime. Contrary to their condemnable behaviour, we Indians, true to our culture and philosophy of ahimsa have moved on and have not even asked for an official apology not to talk of any reparation - the articulations for which was so exemplarily adduced by Dr. Shashi Tharoor in a debate - now gone viral - before the August gathering at the Oxford.

The criminality of the massacre of innocent lives by the British General at the Jallianwala Bagh, can be mirrored to such other equally heinous crimes that were committed at the Auschwitz by the Nazis during the WW II and perhaps to the more recent Tiananmen Square, China, in 1989. The Jallianwala Bagh had all the trappings of a crime against humanity and should have placed General Dyer in the infamous company of villains of World Wars but unfortunately that has not happened, courtesy Mahatma Gandhi ji.Although Gandhi ji called Dyer, ‘the chief perpetrator of the Jallianwala Bagh, blood thirsty and warned people against ‘Dyerism’, yet he asked the ‘Jallianwala Bagh Congress Inquiry Committee’ not to prosecute him. The apostle of peace that he was, Gandhi ji pardoned Dyer’s unpardonable sin. 

More than 300 unarmed civilians, including a large number of women and children, were gunned down indiscriminately by Reginald Dyer’s British army and as per some records, almost 2,000 more were grievously wounded when Dyer, ordered his troops to fire at unarmed protesters in the Jallianwala park. What prompted this peaceful, Gandhian like, protest by the Punjabis, was the backtracking of the promise made by the British to the Indian National Congress and other leaders of the Indian Independence movement, to accord Dominion Status to India, involving some amount of self-governance. In return, the British had sought India’s support in fighting World War I. While Indians, particularly the Punjabis - Sikhs - uncompromisingly supported the British in their War, including payment of millions of pounds in taxes, and providing food grains, arms and ammunition for the British Army to fight the War and so also the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of Punjabi men during the war, what they expected post the WW1 was a promise of self rule. But after the War the British reneged on their promise compelling peaceful protests across nations including the one at the Jallianwala Bagh.

The cruelty and inhuman act of Jallianwala Bagh massacre ensured that Amritsar became India, an India that was outraged, bloodied and the ensuing trauma was so deep as to have altered the very composition of India’s political psyche. The Jallianwala Bagh massacre became a symbol of the tyrannical rule by the British that changed the political history of our country and accentuated the way forward for our focussed and sustained freedom struggle. On the occasion of the centenary of this dastardly act an unpardonable tragedy of humongous proportions, it is pertinent to question the British on what authority did they have to impose their so called higher ideas of morality. The hundred years post the Jallianwala Bagh has been a long time in the Indian political history and from being a subservient nation to the colonial masters, we have come a long way and several subsequent happenings including independence, the trauma of partition, self-sufficiency in food, achieving an incredible success in the field of IT, education, Space and Atomic energy and so also the improvement in the overall socio economic conditions of our citizens. All of these developments have tried to erase the trauma of the Jallianwala Bagh, which however has continued to remain in our collective memory. However it is necessary that we perpetuate this information to the young generation, in whose minds this memory is gradually fading into the sepia of fading memory. The Jallianwala Bagh National Memorial hopefully will ensure that we as a nation don’t forget this incident.  On this centenary year of the Jallianwala Bagh, let us all join hands in praying for all those martyrs who sacrificed their life for the freedom of our country and pledge that we remain united as one nation, whose foundations were built on the sacrifice of innumerable martyrs.

Jai Hind

Image courtesy Bijay chaurasia, Wikimedia commons.