STORIES
Massacre at Amritsar
The vast British colony of India was seething with unrest in the spring of 1919. Political activists and influential leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi were demanding freedom from colonial rule. The 1914-18 World War in Europe was over, and returning demobbed soldiers discovered an India more impoverished and less free then when they left to fight for their rulers. In the Punjab, the doubling of prices of wheat and rice, plus tripling the price of salt inflamed the local population.
On 10 April 1919, a protest was held outside the residence of the Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar, a city in Punjab, a large province in the north-western part of a then undivided India. The demonstration was held to demand the release of two popular leaders of the Indian Independence Movement who had been arrested for protesting against the controversial Rowlatt Act, which invoked emergency suspension of all civil liberties. After several hours of chanting in protest, the growing crowd was fired on by a military picket, and began to disperse.
The gunfire set off a chain of violence. Later in the day, several banks and other government buildings, including the Town Hall and the railway station were attacked and set on fire. The escalation continued as five Europeans were killed, including government employees and civilians. A missionary named Marcella Sherwood was assaulted, raped and left for dead. There was retaliatory firing on the crowd from troops several times during the day, and around twenty protesters were shot dead.
The city of Amritsar was quiet for another two days, but violence continued in other parts of the Punjab. Railway lines were torn up, government buildings set ablaze, telegraph poles destroyed and three more Europeans were killed. By 12 April, the British Viceroy Lord Chelmsford had put most of the Punjab under martial law. The legislation placed restrictions on a number of freedoms, including assembly, banning gatherings of more than five people at a time.
On 13 April, thousands of people gathered in the Jallianwala Bagh (Garden) in the heart of Amritsar. The occasion was a religious festival known as ‘Baisakhi’, a traditional gathering for Hindus and Sikhs in Amritsar to participate in festivities and celebrations uniting both religions. By afternoon, over 20,000 people had gathered, hearing a succession of speeches condemning the Rowlatt Act and recent arrests. However many of the crowd were villagers who had come to celebrate the festival with no intention of registering political protest.
The gathering was peaceful until 4.30pm when 90 soldiers under the command of Brigadier Reginald Dyer formed up on one side of the large square. Dyer had arrived from Jalandhar at 9pm the previous day as British expatriates convinced themselves that another Indian mutiny (similar to that of 1857) was about to take place.
The Bagh comprised seven acres and was walled on all sides except for five entrances, four of them very narrow, and mostly kept locked. The fifth entrance was blocked by Dyer’s troops and two armoured cars carrying Vickers machine guns; but these vehicles were unable to enter the garden through the narrow passageway. The men under Dyer’s command were 25 Gurkhas of 1st/9th Gurkha Rifles, 25 Pathans and 40 Baluchs of 54th Sikhs and 59th Sindh Rifles, all armed with .303 Lee Enfield bolt-action rifles. They formed in two rows, with the front row crouched.
Without any warning to disperse, Dyer ordered his men to open fire into the crowd shortly after they deployed. As the bodies fell, people tried to climb the walls to escape, and Dyer directed the fire of his men on places where the crowd was thickest. He claimed he did this not because the gathering was slow to disperse, but because he had decided to punish them severely for assembling there against martial law. Firing was also directed at the exit gates through which people were attempting to run away and mounds of corpses and wounded soon piled up at these places.
Many jumped into a well in the compound to escape the remorseless hail of bullets. The first to leap into the well were drowned and many more were trampled to death by others jumping on top of them. More than 180 corpses were later plucked out of that well which had suddenly become a terrible hole of death.
After ten minutes of firing, Dyer’s men had expended all 1,650 rounds of ammunition issued to them as shell casings littered the sand. Hundreds of people were lying dead or wounded in the dust. Official estimates put the figures at 379 killed (337 men, 41 boys and a baby. Curiously no female deaths were recorded). There were also over 1,200 injured, though the actual figure is hotly disputed. Many Indian sources put the death toll at 1,516 with over 1,300 wounded.
Many died as the wounded could not be moved as a curfew was still in place. Debate about the number that died in the Jallianwala Bagh that afternoon continues to this day. The Civil Surgeon Dr R Smith, who visited the macabre scene on 14 April, reported that over 1,800 people had been either shot or trampled to death. Mercifully, Dyer was not able to use the belt-fed Vickers machine guns mounted on the two armoured cars, which certainly would have put the death toll much higher with their ability to spew out six rounds a second (360 per minute) into that terrified crowd.
Back in his headquarters, Dyer reported to Sir Michael O’Dwyer, the Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab, that he had been “confronted by a revolutionary army, and had been obliged to teach a moral lesson to the Punjab.” O’Dwyer telegraphed back, “Your action was correct. Lieutenant Governor approves!” Many British citizens in India, as well as the British press, defended Dyer as the man who ‘had saved British pride and honour’ by massacring civilians in revenge for the assault on Marcella Sherwood. (The fear of being raped by ‘coolies’ was a deep-seated nightmare shared among well-bred expatriate English women in India).
The massacre earned General Dyer the infamous epitaph ‘The Butcher of Amritsar’ in British India. It has been repeatedly pointed out that the death toll was deliberately suppressed by the British government for political reasons. On 14 April Dyer had a statement in Urdu posted at the site of the massacre. It stated in part, “You people know well that I am a Sepoy and soldier. Do you want war or peace? If you wish for a war, the Government is prepared for it, and if you want peace, then obey my orders and open all your shops; else I will shoot you down. For me the battlefield of France or Amritsar is the same. I am a military man and I will go straight. Neither shall I move to the right nor to the left....obey my orders. I do not wish to have anything else. I have served in the military for over 30 years, and I understand the Indian Sepoy and the Sikh people very well. You will have to obey my orders and observe peace; otherwise the shops will be opened by force. You have committed a bad act in killing English people. Revenge will be taken upon you and your children.”
Humiliation continued for the locals as they were forced to observe Dyer’s ‘Crawling Order’: anyone passing by the place where the missionary Marcella Sherwood was assaulted was forced to crawl by the spot on their stomachs, and those refusing to do so were severely beaten by Sepoys wielding lathis (wooden canes).
Though Dyer was initially praised for his actions in Amritsar, he was widely condemned internationally, and eventually forced to answer to the Hunter Committee by Edwin Montagu, Secretary of State for India following the ‘Dyer debates’ in England’s House of Commons. Dyer admitted before the commission that he had come to know about the meeting at the Jallianwala Bagh at 12.40pm on 13 April, but took no steps to prevent it. He stated that he had taken his troops to the Bagh with the deliberate intention of opening fire on the crowd assembled there.
A British Labour Party Conference at Scarborough unanimously passed a resolution denouncing the massacre as a ‘Cruel and Barbarous action’ and called for the dismissal of O’Dwyer, Dyer and the British Viceroy Lord Chelmsford. Although many felt that he had committed a war crime, critics were amazed that Dyer was never called before a Court Martial.
Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for War at the time, called the massacre ‘An episode without precedent or parallel in the modern history of the British Empire...an extraordinary even, a monstrous event, an event which stands in singular and sinister isolation.” Herbert Asquith observed, “(This) is one of the worst outrages in the whole of our history.” The famous Pandit Nehru declared the massacre “A great crime that was done in the name of law in the Punjab. The British army is supposed to recruit and train armed men to protect civilian populations, not massacre them.”
News of the atrocity sparked off unrest in other areas. At Gujranwala, three military bi-planes flying up from Lahore bombed and strafed a rioting crowd, and an armoured train was used to fire on demonstrators in Kasur. Independent reports placed the death toll in Gujranwala at 334, making the official total of 11 quite laughable.
Dyer was relieved of active service as a consequence of the committee’s findings, but the House of Lords approved his actions, passing a resolution deploring ‘the conduct of the case against General Dyer as (being) unjust to that officer.’ Colonial India rose to his support, collecting over 263,000 pounds sterling for his retirement. The clergy of the Golden Temple at Amritsar, led by Arur Singh, also honoured the massacring general by declaring him an honorary Sikh, on condition that he renounce one cigarette a year!
Reginald Edward Harry Dyer was born in Murree (now in Pakistan) on 9 October 1864. He spent his childhood in Shimla and was educated at the Bishop Cotton Boys’ School in Bangalore. By the time of the massacre at Amritsar, he had compiled a formidable military record. In 1885, he was commissioned into the Queen’s Royal Regiment (West Surrey) and served in riot control duties in Belfast (1886) and the third Burmese War (1886-87). He was then transferred to the Indian Army, initially joining the 39th Bengal Infantry before moving to the 29th Punjabis. Whilst there he served in the Black Mountain Campaign (1888), the relief of Chitral (1895) and the Mahsud blockade (1901-02).
He commanded the 25th Punjabis in the Zakha Khel Expedition (1908); and during World War I (1914-18) headed the Seistan Force, for which he was mentioned in dispatches and awarded the order of Companion of the Bath. In 1919, a month after the massacre, he was involved in the Third Anglo-Afghan War where his brigade relieved the garrison of Thal, for which he was again mentioned in dispatches. There is no doubt that he was a brave and capable soldier who never shirked unpleasant duties; but his total lack of remorse during the massacre at Amritsar is quite chilling. Though he grew up in India, Dyer cherished British upper class values of the time, which claimed an infinite superiority over the ‘natives’. At a dinner party of like-minded military colonials, he is once alleged to have remarked, “A firm hand at all times is the only thing that these damn coolies really understand and respect.”
At the Hunter Committee hearings, he was asked, “General, is it true that you did not open fire with your machine guns by the sheer accident of the armoured cars not being able to get into the Bagh?” Dyer replied, “Yes, I have stated that if the cars had been able to enter the garden, the possibility is that I would have ordered my men to open fire with them.”
After his enforced retirement, Dyer, still haunted by the fallout from the infamous massacre, suffered failing health: he was stricken with paralysis from which he never recovered. He died at Long Ashton, near Bristol on 23 July 1927 of Atherosclerosis and cerebral hemorrhage. His last words reportedly were, “Some say I did right, while others say I did wrong. Now I only want to die...and know of my maker whether I did right or wrong.”
In his 1925 autobiography, ‘India as I knew it’, Michael O’Dwyer wrote, “The Punjabis were quick to take to heart the lesson that revolution is a dangerous thing. General Dyer took swift and necessary positive counter-measures to the uprising and prevented another Indian mutiny.”
Later developments demonstrated just how far O’Dwyer was wrong in his assessment of the Punjabis. On 13 March 1940, he was shot dead at Caxton Hall in London by a Punjabi revolutionary and ‘freedom fighter’ named Sardar Udham Singh. Singh had witnessed the massacre at Amritsar, where he was wounded, and he never forgot the horror of that fateful day as he stalked O’Dwyer for another 21 years. Sardar Singh was tried for murder, found guilty and hanged in June 1940 whilst Britain was gearing up for war with Nazi Germany.
Richard Attenborough’s award winning film ‘Gandhi’ (1982) graphically depicts the massacre with the role of the stoic General Dyer played by Edward Fox. There is a telling verbal exchange in the movie depicting the Hunter Committee hearings. In answer to a question about medical aid, Dyer states (after the massacre) “I was ready to help any who applied.”
His questioner then asks, “General, how does a wounded child shot with a Lee Enfield .303 rifle apply for help?” There is a grim silence during which time General Dyer declines to answer.
Footnote: There was another bloodbath at Amritsar in June 1984, when Indian troops stormed the famous ‘Golden Temple’ which had been occupied by Sikh extremists against what they felt was the repressive rule of India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (1917-1984). After a standoff lasting several days, Ms. Gandhi ordered soldiers to attack the temple (‘Operation Blue Star’) and in a bitter fire fight, 493 men were killed. In revenge for this bloody incident, Ms Gandhi (daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru) was herself assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards on 31 October 1984.
IF YOU need a check on my True Crime series of stories, published in the Hua Hin Observer, here is a complete list to date:
April 2002 -The Green Bicycle case, 1921. May 2002 - The Craig/Bentley Case, 1952. June 2002 - The A6 Murder Case, 1961. July 2002 - Murder of the Earl of Errol, 1941. August 2002 - The O J Simpson murder trial, 1995. September 2002 - The Aileen Wuornos case, 1989. October 2002 - The Ronald Opus case, 1993. November 2002 - Madame X, 1929. December 2002 - The Spree Killer, 1984. January 2003 - Shootout at Smiths' Club, 1966. February 2003 - The Christine Dryland case, 1991. March 2003 - Poisoned Pie in Essex, 1982. April 2003 - The Heydrich assassination, 1943. May 2003 - The Diana Davidson Murder case, 1969. June 2003 - The death of Alkibiades, 404 BC. July 2003 - The headsman of Colmar, 1780. August 2003 - The Ruth Ellis case, 1955. September 2003 - The Mel Jones Murder case, 1975. October 2003 - The Bluebeard of the bath, 1915. November 2003 - Murder in a combat zone, 1966. December 2003 - The Barn Restaurant murder case, 1972. January 2004 - The assassination of JFK, 1963. February 2004 - Judge Falcone and the Mafia, 1992. March 2004 - Gilles de Rais/Bluebeard, 1404-1440. April 2004 - The hand in the sand case, 1885. May 2004 - The body in the bag, 1979
The Muslim Fishermen of Phang Nga
The four Muslim provinces of southern Thailand Narathiwat, Pattani, Yala, and Satun have made international headlines in recent years due to an extremist insurgency that has left hundreds dead. The bad press emanating from the south has left the rest of Thailand’s many Muslim groups beneath an undeserved dark cloud. The various Muslim peoples in Thailand are an extremely diverse group, each with their own unique history, language, and culture. Often the only similarity they share is their religion. In the north, the majority of the Muslims are ethnic Chinese, from Yunan. In central Thailand one can find the Cham people, the last descendents of the Kingdom of Champa. Dispersed throughout Thailand are various groups of ethnic Thais, whose ancestors converted to Islam centuries ago.
In Phang Nga Province, Thung Nang Dam village, Kuraburi District, near Phuket, the Muslim people are ethnic Thai, rather than ethnic Malay. The people speak Southern Thai dialect. Unlike the four southern provinces there is no insurgency. The biggest problem this poor fishing community faces is their struggle to recover after the 2004 tsunami. This was one of the worst hit areas, with countless deaths, and numerous people still missing. Entire villages were swept away by the monstrous waves which also took their fishing boats, leaving the villagers with no way to earn a living.
Through the help of foreign and local aid organizations, most of the fishing boats have been restored, and new homes have been built. Often, villagers elected to rebuild further from the sea, for fear of a future calamity. Community based tourism projects, such as North Andaman Tsunami Relief (NATR), have been trying to create tourism businesses for the locals, arranging for tourists to sleep in a home-stay, with a Muslim family. The goal of the project is to create new sources of income for the Muslim families, while hopefully educating the outside world about the plight of these gentle people.
Upon arrival at the NATR office, I was met by my guide and translator, Mustafa, who promised to give me a glimpse into the life of a Thai Muslim community. Mustafa, an ethnic Thai, converted to Islam after his fiancé, a Muslim girl, was killed in the 2004 tsunami. Her parents told him “Mustafa we just lost a daughter. We don’t wish to lose our son too.” Mustafa changed his religion and officially became their son. “The circumcision wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.” he said.
Travelling in the district with Mustafa was like riding around Hollywood with a big movie star. Everyone knew Mustafa and they all respected the hard work he and NATR had done in the community.
Our first stop was at a beautiful Islamic primary school, which lay across a quiet stream, along a tranquil, dusty road in the midst of scenic fields. According to the teacher, a bright young Muslim woman, wearing a headscarf, boys and girls attend the same school but they are separated in class. They spend half the day learning religious subjects and half the day learning secular ones. The children learned an impressive array of languages. They studied Arabic, Malay, Thai and English. They used the Roman alphabet to write Malay language, which they call piasa Jawei (an old term which meant Indonesia and Malaysia). Although all Muslims in Asia attempt to learn Arabic, Malay, which tends to be infinitely easier to learn, becomes the primary religious language. The teacher explained that the school was mostly funded by the Thai government, but children paid a nominal fee of about 600 Baht per year. The school is free for orphans. The children graduating from grade 12, at the Muslim school, are qualified to attend any state university in Thailand. For those parents who prefer that their children receive a more religious based education, there are two Muslim universities; one in Bangkok and one in the south of Thailand in the four Muslim provinces.
Muslim boys, like their Buddhist counterparts, are required to attend national military service. They are also permitted to become career soldiers or police.
In other countries, ethnic minorities are prevented from participating in local government. In Thailand, however, this seemed not to be the case. The local governor is elected by the people. Typically, in a Muslim area, he is a Muslim, a member of the community. “We also have a Toe Imam, or spiritual leader of our community.” explained Mustafa. “The Toe Imam is generally the oldest male in the community. He holds this position for life unless he dies, retires or commits some horrible act.”
Muslims differ greatly from their Buddhist neighbours. For example, Muslims bury their dead. Thais burn their dead. The Thai Muslims eat halal food and are forbidden to eat pork. They don’t drink alcohol, but some of them chew beetle and another stimulating leaf, called gaton. Gaton is a bitter tasting leaf, which they chew like coca.
They consider themselves to be Sunni Muslims and pray 5 times per day. Friday is the big Muslim service, mostly for men. Some mosques allow women, but then they are separated from the men by a sheet. Many families chose to worship at home, where men and women pray together. During prayers, men wear a sarong and a clean white shirt.
The average family has 4-5 children. Some have as many as seven, according to Mustafa, “The religion prohibits family planning.” Circumcision is done only on boys and typically at the age of five. There is a large festival once a year when all eligible boys are circumcised.
The main business of Thai Muslims is fishing. The Muslims tend to have a small garden for herbs, fruits and vegetables, but as a rule, they can’t be considered farmers. “The people are poor.” explained Mustafa, “They know that they can go to the sea and in thirty minutes they can find food. So, they are lazy. They go out in the morning and drop their nets. In the evening they go and recover them. They could be doing so much in between. That is what the Chinese do. But our people say in the hot season it is too hot to work. In the rainy season it is too wet to work.”
Mustafa, like the rest of this coastal community, lost everything in the tsunami. “My dream is to work two more years, save my money and go to Mecca.” They use the name Haji for people who have been to Mecca. Mustafa hoped that one day he could be called Haji. “Although we are all Thai, there is racism against the Muslims.” Said Mustafa. “Your religion is written on your ID card. Even if it wasn’t, they would know from the name.” “Speaking of names,” he said, eyeing me thoughtfully. “Your name is too hard for Thai people. I will give you a Muslim name, so people will find it easier to talk to you. Let me think of a good name for someone like you.”
That sounded great to me, but there was only one Muslim name I wanted. It is the one name that has meant a great deal to me my whole life. I was both pleased and surprised when Mustafa suddenly said. “We shall call you Ali.”
Every Muslim house we visited had at least one songbird in a cage. “Muslim people like to keep birds.” explained Mustafa. “They also like to bring their birds to competitions to see who has the best bird.”
At the market, there were yellow shirts everywhere to show support for the King, in the wake of Thailand’s recent military coup. “We love the king here.” Said Mustafa. “But we are afraid. He is old...It is a natural fact that he will...” Mustafa couldn’t even finish the sentence. “You mean he will eventually die?” I asked, also not happy about that eventuality. “Yes.” Said Mustafa.
Other political issues aside, it was clear that the Muslim people held the king in the same reverence as the Buddhists.
At dusk, we stopped off at the beach where the water buffalos came down to swim. Wanting to take photos, I crept up on the massive herd, slowly getting closer and closer. While the herd swam, three large bulls stood guard on the beach. The closer I got, the more agitated the sentries became. Visions of Steve Irwin began to run through my mind. Finally, when the guards looked as if they were going to charge, I backed off, fighting the impulse to run.
I stayed over night with a Muslim host family in Bahn Tatle Nock Village. The original village had been completely destroyed by the tsunami. The village was rebuilt through the help of aid projects, but unfortunately it no longer reflected the authentic Muslim way of life. Out of necessity, the villages were rebuilt in the quickest, cheapest manner. The houses were all two storeys with the kitchen downstairs and the bedrooms up stairs. The living room and dinner table were outside under the shelter of the second storey. The typical Muslim house, on the other hand, is only one storey, raised off the ground, to prevent reptiles from entering. The kitchen is normally in the back.
In trying to communicate with my host family, I discovered that Southern Dialect was so different from Northern or Central, that we couldn’t understand each other at all. Another observation I made was that the people looked different than the Thais I knew in Bangkok and Chiang Mai. I finally decided it was the constant exposure to the sun and the fact that they were probably pure Thai, rather than part Chinese like the people in the North. In some way, these Muslim people were more Thai than the Thais.
My host mother prepared a simple dinner of rice, eggs, and fish that the father had caught earlier in the day. I was constantly afraid of offending my Muslim hosts. I have been with Buddhists for years. I know and understand their customs. But the Muslims were new to me. In Thailand, simple meals are eaten with a spoon alone. They rarely use a fork and never a knife. Among Buddhists, large chunks of meat or fish are held on the plate with the right hand and cut with the spoon. Eating with Muslims, I knew not to eat with my left hand. The Muslims held the spoon in the left hand and used the right hand to touch the food. But I found it impossible to navigate a spoon with my left hand. So, I put the spoon in my right hand and touched the food with my left. It probably grossed everyone out, but the fish was really tasty.
Inside the house we slept under mosquito netting, which was like building a blanket fort when you were ten. Just like rural Thai families, they didn’t use beds. They slept on top of a thick blanket on the floor. For some reason, the family gave me a pink mosquito net. The light filtering through gave everything a surreal candy-world glow.
In the morning, Mustafa picked me up and we stopped by the market, where we had coffee with the fishermen. Only men sat in the restaurant drinking coffee. The fishermen lead a leisurely life. In the morning, they had nothing to do. They wouldn’t even go set their nets till noon, when the tide changed. So, they just hung out, drinking coffee, chewing leaves and talking. Later, they would throw out their nets, and then have coffee again for five or six hours, before retrieving them.
“The fishermen are very poor” repeated Mustafa, while we sipped the syrupy coffee from small glasses. “When the boat breaks, they have no money to fix it. When they need petrol or any extra expense they have to borrow from sponsors.” These sponsors are basically creditors who become partners of the fishermen, taking part of their catch. “Debt is very common among the fishermen. In one village, of about 120 houses all but two families owe money. But because of the sea there is always hope. No matter how bad things are, they can always go to sea. And, they can always eat.”
I asked Mustafa why it is that in Vietnam, Cambodia, and other countries I have been to, the Muslims generally are fishermen not farmers. “Most families have a small farm, but the Muslims have a special reverence for the water. And, they like the freedom of being fishermen.” he answered.
Near by is Banji Island, also called James Bond Island, where the film, “The Man with the Golden Gun” was filmed. “Three families came by boat from Indonesia and settled on the island. They put up a flag on the beach to signal that this was a place of good fishing. Soon, others came. Now there are 1,000 people, 250 families in the village.”
The sea no longer yields what it once did. A Muslim woman, named Pern, told me. “The fishermen used to catch ten kilos of squid per day. Now they have days when they only catch a single kilo. The gas alone cost 250 Baht a day. With ten kilos they would catch fish, subtract gas, and then split four ways with the other helpers on the boat. Even in the best of times, they would only earn a few hundred Baht a day. And that had to feed the whole family. Now a days, with 1 kg, they don’t even cover their gas. But, they still need to eat.”
Today, thanks to education and a certain degree of open-mindedness, the children may have the opportunity to do something different. An old man, named Solet, told me proudly, “My son is in ninth grade.” This was the highest level of education anyone in his family had ever achieved. “He also plays football!” exclaimed the proud papa. Even football was a foreign concept to people who normally spent all of their energy trying to feed a family. The arrival of football was also a sign that the times are changing. “I would like to see him go to university.” Said Solet. “He could qualify now for the sports high school, followed by the athletic university, but I am afraid that if he leaves home he will lose his religion.” Mustafa reminded Solet about the Muslim university. “Yes,” said Solet, “that might be a good idea.” Maybe Solet’s son will go on to be the next great leader of the community. The men excused themselves, wishing me peace. It was time for them to go throw out their nets.
Football, Muslim University and now community based tourism; hopefully the future will be kinder to these pleasant people than the past.
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