The Jallianwala Bagh massacre, also known as the Amritsar massacre, was a seminal event in

the British rule of India. On 13 April 1919, a crowd of non-violent protesters, along with Baishakhi
pilgrims, had gathered in the Jallianwala Bagh garden in Amritsar, Punjab to protest against the
arrest of two leaders despite a curfew which had been recently declared.[1] On the orders ofBrigadierGeneral Reginald Dyer, the army fired on the crowd for ten minutes, directing their bullets largely
towards the few open gates through which people were trying to run out. The figures released by the
British government were 370 dead and 1200 wounded. Other sources place the number dead at well
over 1000. This "brutality stunned the entire nation",[2] resulting in a "wrenching loss of faith" of the
general public in the intentions of Britain.[3] The ineffective inquiry and the initial accolades for Dyer
by the House of Lords fuelled widespread anger, leading to the Non-cooperation Movement of
192022.[4]
On Sunday, 13 April 1919, Dyer was convinced of a major insurrection and he banned all meetings,
however this notice was not widely disseminated. That was the day of Baisakhi, the main Sikh
festival, and many villagers had gathered in the Bagh. On hearing that a meeting had assembled at
Jallianwala Bagh, Dyer went with fifty Gurkha riflemen to a raised bank and ordered them to shoot at
the crowd. Dyer continued the firing for about ten minutes, until the ammunition supply was almost
exhausted; Dyer stated that 1,650 rounds had been fired, a number which seems to have been
derived by counting empty cartridge cases picked up by the troops.[5] Official British Indian sources
gave a figure of 379 identified dead,[5] with approximately 1,100 wounded. The casualty number
estimated by the Indian National Congress was more than 1,500, with approximately 1,000 dead.[6]
Dyer was initially lauded by conservative forces in the empire, but in July 1920 he was censured and
forced to retire by the House of Commons.[7] He became a celebrated hero in Britain among most of
the people connected to the British Raj,[8] for example, the House of Lords,[9] but unpopular in the
House of Commons, that voted against Dyer twice.[10] The massacre caused a re-evaluation of the
army's role, in which the new policy became "minimum force", and the army was retrained and
developed suitable tactics for crowd control.[11]Some historians consider the episode as a decisive
step towards the end of British rule in India,[12] although others believe that greater self-government
was inevitable as a result of India's involvement in World War I