Jallianwala Bagh massacre

Overview

On 13 April 1919, troops under Brigadier General Reginald Dyer fired on a gathering at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar. The National Army Museum identifies the event as a watershed in the history of British India. The sources below examine the context, colonial punishment and later interpretations; they do not establish a definitive casualty count.[5]

A city already mobilised

Before the massacre, political grievances were already shaping Amritsar’s everyday life. Kim Wagner’s published book excerpt describes protests over discriminatory railway platform access: Europeans could enter freely, while Indians depended on tickets whose sale had been restricted. Dr Satyapal emerged as a local campaigner against the measure. The controversy linked an ordinary encounter with railway administration to demands for Home Rule. The issue was not the sole cause of April’s events, but it helps explain why nationalism could mobilise through practical experiences of unequal treatment.[3]

Firing on civilians

The National Army Museum describes protesters and people attending the local festival among those in the garden. It records that the troops opened fire without warning. The official count recorded 379 deaths and around 1,200 wounded; the museum states that the real toll was higher. A precise alternative total cannot be established from that description. The uncertainty over the final number does not alter the documented act: armed forces fired into an unarmed gathering.[1]

The museum also situates the massacre after unrest on 10 April, including killings, damage to buildings, an assault on missionary Marcella Sherwood and shootings by troops. These preceding acts belong to the chronology. They do not make every person in the later gathering responsible for them or turn collective punishment into an explanation of individual guilt.[1]

Punishment beyond Jallianwala

Afterwards, Indian men were forced to crawl through the street where Sherwood had been attacked. The museum records that men who had helped her also suffered this punishment. The measure imposed public humiliation without establishing each resident’s individual responsibility.[1]

Inquiry was different from a criminal trial

In the House of Commons on 9 June 1920, Secretary of State Edwin Montagu explained that the commander-in-chief had accepted the Hunter Committee’s conclusions and directed Dyer to resign his brigade command. Questioned about legal representation, Montagu emphasised that the committee was not a military court. The exchange matters because removal from an appointment, an administrative inquiry and conviction at trial are different outcomes. It also records continuing political disagreement over how Dyer should be treated.[2]

Wagner’s book, as described by its university publisher, places Dyer’s decision within colonial fear and local nationalist politics. That interpretation connects the massacre to structures of imperial power rather than treating it as an isolated episode explicable only through one officer’s personality. The victims and ordinary city residents remain central to that larger history. His account combines a close local history with a wider analysis of empire.[4]

Finding the inquiry evidence

The British Library’s India Office Records catalogue identifies an Amritsar evidence volume from the Disorders Inquiry, also known as the Hunter Committee, under shelfmark IOR/V/26/262/5. The catalogue lists it as a 1920 volume. When checked on 5 November 2026, it said the digital images were unavailable. Researchers can use the shelfmark to ask the library about consulting the physical item. The catalogue description identifies the record; it does not, by itself, establish what a particular witness said or substitute for reading the evidence.[6]