The Rowlatt Act and the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre

In 1919 the British offered Indians a "carrot and stick": the modest Montagu-Chelmsford reforms as the carrot, and the repressive Rowlatt Act as the stick. The Act betrayed Indian hopes of self-rule after the war. Gandhi answered with his first all-India satyagraha. The protest in Punjab ended in the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 13 April 1919. It stunned the nation. One historian called it the "decisive moment when Indians were alienated from British rule." This is a very high-yield topic.

Just six months before the Montford reforms came into force, the government pushed the Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act through the Imperial Legislative Council. It was passed in March 1919, during the viceroyalty of Lord Chelmsford (Viceroy 1916–1921), the same Viceroy whose name the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms carry. It was popularly called the Rowlatt Act, after Sir Sidney Rowlatt, whose commission had investigated "seditious conspiracy." It made the wartime emergency powers permanent:

• it allowed political activists to be tried without juries or imprisoned without trial;
• it permitted arrest without warrant on mere suspicion of "treason," and secret trials by a special panel of three judges with no court of appeal; and
• it sought to suspend habeas corpus, the basis of civil liberty, and tightened control over the press.

Every elected Indian member voted against the bill but was overruled by the official majority. In protest, leaders including Jinnah, Madan Mohan Malaviya and Mazhar-ul-Haq resigned from the Council. Indians summed it up as "no appeal, no vakil, no daleel" (no appeal, no lawyer, no argument).

Indians expected self-rule as a reward for their war service. Instead they got the limited Montford reforms and the shocking Rowlatt Act. They felt betrayed. So did Gandhi, who had backed the war effort. He called the Rowlatt Act the "Black Act" and launched his first all-India satyagraha.

He set up a Satyagraha Sabha, drawing in younger members of the Home Rule Leagues and the Pan-Islamists. He called for a nationwide hartal (strike) with fasting and prayer, civil disobedience of specific laws, and the courting of arrest. This was a radical change:

• the masses had now found a direction. They could act, not merely complain;
• from now on peasants, artisans and the urban poor played an increasingly important part; and
• the orientation of the national movement turned permanently towards the masses.

The satyagraha was to begin on 6 April 1919. Before that, large-scale and sometimes violent anti-British demonstrations broke out in Calcutta, Bombay, Delhi and Ahmedabad. Punjab became especially explosive after wartime repression and forcible recruitment. The army was called in.

Amritsar was the worst affected. Two nationalist leaders, Saifuddin Kitchlew and Dr Satyapal, were arrested on 9 April. Protests turned violent and some Indians were killed in police firing. Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer was sent to restore order. On 13 April 1919, which was also Baisakhi, he banned all assemblies of more than three.

That day a large crowd assembled in the Jallianwala Bagh, an enclosed ground with a single narrow exit. Most were villagers unaware of the ban, gathered to celebrate Baisakhi. Dyer arrived with his troops and blocked the only exit. Without any warning or order to disperse, he opened fire on the unarmed crowd of men, women and children until the ammunition ran low. Official figures admitted 379 dead and about 1,100 wounded. The Congress estimated over 1,000 killed. 1,650 bullets were fired. Martial law followed in Punjab, with public floggings and the infamous "crawling order."

The whole nation was stunned. Rabindranath Tagore renounced his knighthood. Gandhi gave up the Kaiser-i-Hind title he had received for his Boer War work. Overwhelmed by the violence, he withdrew the satyagraha on 18 April 1919. Years later, Udham Singh assassinated Michael O'Dwyer, the Lieutenant-Governor who had backed the repression (hanged 1940).

Condemnation came from within the British government too. Edwin Montagu, the Secretary of State for India, denounced the massacre as "Preventive Murder". The phrase captured Dyer's own defence: he had fired not to disperse the crowd but to "teach a lesson" and prevent future defiance.

The Hunter Committee. Public outrage forced the government to set up the Disorders Inquiry Committee on 14 October 1919, known as the Hunter Committee after its chairman, Lord William Hunter. It censured Dyer but imposed no real punishment. This deepened Indian disillusion. As A.J.P. Taylor wrote, the massacre was the "decisive moment when Indians were alienated from British rule."