https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Killing_field/articleshow /2256071.cms
In brief: It was around evening - a little after 4.15 pm - on April 13, 1919 that this field shot into infamy. That day, which happened to be Baisakhi or the Sikh New Year's Day, several thousand people were packed inside the six or seven acre space hemmed in by buildings for a meeting to protest the Rowlatt Act.
There was widespread discontent in Amritsar and the rest of Punjab against the Act, which curtailed civil liberties of Indians. In early April, two popular leaders in Amritsar, Satya Pal and Saifuddin Kitchlew, had been arrested.
On April 10, there were riots in the city prompting Brigadier General Reginald Dyer to arrive with reinforcements from Jalandar. According to Dyer's biographer, Nigel Collet, the general and his men marched toward Jallianwala Bagh on April 13 with the express intention of firing on those taking part in the meeting and thereby violating prohibitory orders on meetings.
Dyer described what happened after that in clinical detail in his report to the government: "I entered the Jallenwallian Bagh by a very narrow lane which necessitated my leaving my armoured cars behind. On entering, I saw a dense crowd estimated at about 5000; a man on a raised platform addressing the audience and aiming gesticulations with his hands. I realised that my force was small and to hesitate might induce attack. I immediately opened fire and dispersed the crowd. I estimate that between 200 and 300 of the crowd were killed. My party fired 1650 rounds."
A well, where many of the victims jumped in to escape the firing, still stands. So do the walls, pockmarked by bullets, surrounding the ground and the narrow passage through which Dyer's mostly Gurkha and Baluch troops fired.
However, it wasn't the number of victims but the way Dyer acted that turned Jallianwala into a powerful symbol of brutality and severely dented the image of Britain as an enlightened colonial power.
During the Hunter Committee hearings, Dyer did not once show any remorse. When asked about the severity of his action he replied: "I was going to punish them. My idea from the military point of view was to make a wide impression... To strike terror not only in the city of Amritsar, but throughout the Punjab."
Though Dyer was forced into retirement, there was widespread support among the British public for him. The Morning Post initiated a fund for Dyer and by the end of 1920 nearly 28,000 had been raised.
Dyer's action and the subsequent reluctance of the British government boomeranged. It hardened the resolve of Indian nationalists to step up their campaign against the colonial government. Mahatma Gandhi would write in 1920 that Jallianwala Bagh and its aftermath "estranged me completely from the present government and have disabled me from tendering, as I have hitherto tendered, my loyal cooperation."
In 1919, Rabindranath Tagore asked to be relieved of his knighthood. Several years later, Jallianwala Bagh would claim its final victim. In 1940, a young revolutionary from Punjab, Udham Singh, shot dead Michael O'Dwyer, who was the lieutenant-governor of Punjab in 1919. O'Dwyer had defended Dyer right till the latter's death in 1927.
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