Rabindranath and Jallianwalabagh

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre (Punjabi: ਜਲ੍ਹਿਆਂਵਾਲਾ ਬਾਗ਼ ਹਤਿਆਕਾਂਡ, Hindi: जलियांवाला बाग़ हत्याकांड, Urdu: جليانوالہ باغ قتلِ عام Jallianwala Bāġa Hatyākāṇḍ), also known as the Amritsar massacre, took place in the Jallianwala Bagh public garden in the northern Indian city of Amritsar, and was ordered by Brigadier-General Reginald E.H. Dyer. On Sunday 13 April 1919, Dyer was convinced that a major insurrection was at hand. He banned all meetings, and hearing a meeting of 15,000 to 20,000 people had assembled he marched his fifty riflemen to a raised bank and ordered them to shoot at the crowd which included men, women, and children. Dyer kept the firing up for about ten minutes. Official Government of India sources estimated the fatalities at 379, with 1,100 wounded. The casualty number estimated by the Indian National Congress was more than 1,500, with approximately 1,000 killed.

The Jallianwala Bagh was bounded on all sides by houses and buildings and had few narrow entrances, most of which were kept permanently locked. The main entrance was relatively wider, but was guarded by the troops backed by the armoured vehicles

On April 13, the traditional festival of Baisakhi, thousands of Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims gathered in the Jallianwala Bagh (garden) near the Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar. Most were unaware of the political meeting.

An hour after the meeting began as scheduled at 4:30 pm, Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer marched a group of sixty-five Gurkha and twenty-five Baluchi soldiers into the Bagh, fifty of whom were armed with rifles. Dyer had also brought two armoured cars armed with machine guns, however the vehicles were left outside as they were unable to enter the Bagh through the narrow entrance. The Jallianwala Bagh was bounded on all sides by houses and buildings and had few narrow entrances, most of which were kept permanently locked. The main entrance was relatively wider, but was guarded by the troops backed by the armoured vehicles. General Dyer did not order the crowd to disperse; indeed he blocked the main exits. His goal, he explained later, was not to disperse the meeting but to punish the Indians for disobedience. General Dyer ordered his troops to begin shooting towards the densest sections of the crowd, including the women and children. He continued the shooting, approximately 1,650 rounds in all, until the ammunition supply was almost exhausted. The crowd made no effort to attack the soldiers in any way.
A number of people died in stampedes at the narrow gates or by jumping into the solitary well on the compound to escape the shooting. A plaque in the monument at the site, set up after independence, says that 120 bodies were pulled out of the well. The wounded could not be moved from where they had fallen, as a curfew had been declared – many more died during the night.
The number of deaths caused by the shooting is disputed. While the official figure given by the British inquiry into the massacre is 379 deaths, the method used by the inquiry has been subject to criticism. In July 1919, three months after the massacre, officials were tasked with finding who had been killed by inviting inhabitants of the city to volunteer information about those who had died. This information was likely incomplete due to fear that those who participated would be identified as having been present at the meeting, and some of the dead may not have had close relations in the area. Additionally, a senior civil servant in the Punjab interviewed by the members of the committee admitted that the actual figure could be higher.

Since the official figures were probably flawed regarding the size of the crowd (15,000–20,000), the number of rounds shot and the period of shooting, the politically interested Indian National Congress instituted a separate inquiry of its own, with conclusions that differed considerably from the Government's. The casualty number quoted by the INC was more than 1,500, with approximately 1,000 killed. Despite the Government's best efforts to suppress information of the massacre, news spread elsewhere in India and widespread outrage ensued; however, the details of the massacre did not become known in Britain until December 1919