How India’s involvement in WW1 laid the groundwork for the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre
Seventy years ago, this month, Germany surrendered to the Allies to end World War II in Europe. India provided a game-changing contribution which was and is not really ever acknowledged enough in terms of how it contributed to the British victory, and in also overcoming Britain’s limitations. This lack of gratitude and in taking Indian assertions to the end game of self determination, helped sow the seeds for what eventually led to the Amritsar Massacre of 1919 in the Jalliwanwala Bagh, Amritsar.
During World War I (1914–18), India’s contribution the British war effort was gargantuan. The New York Times wrote in 1918: “The world must pay India in whatever India wants, for without Indian products, there would be greater difficulty in winning the war.”
Part of my research for my forthcoming book on the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre in April 1919 (to be commemorated in its centenary next April 2019) focuses on the deep unsettlement among the Indian populace (and the Indian soldiers) after giving money, manpower and blood for the British Empire and getting nothing in return by way of actual self determination and release from the clutches of colonial rule. It’s also interesting to understand why so many Indians signed up to fight for the British, to rule over their own countrymen and, on many an occasion, to flog, whip, maim, torture and kill at the behest of their rulers.
Throughout its period of colonial rule for 200 years, Britain had reduced India to a level of poverty that Indians were ready to grab at any opportunity to gain a living, even if it meant killing their own countrymen. As soldiers, they felt pride in serving the cause of protecting the Empire, of adventure in far flung lands to do the same, and importantly to at least send home some money instead of living a life of merely getting by.
But it’s not as if Indians (particularly Sikhs) just signed up voluntarily to help rule over their own. Recruitment tactics were notoriously strategic, steeped in accounts of extortion, blackmail, outright trickery and false promises. For example, there are reports that in Haryana, for instance, that the British blocked water supplies of those who did not readily come forward to join the army. When that didn’t work, there were rumours of beatings to ensure enlistment.
What led to the events surrounding the horror of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre in 1919 was a sense of ingratitude among the Indian populace. So much money, manpower and materiel was spent by Indian soldiers to protect the Raj and yet India was instead repaid by continual colonial rule, the notorious Rowlatt Act which encouraged extra-judicial detentions and kangaroo courts, and a steadfast refusal to pay India for its goods and services.
Then of course there was the continually callous and racist attitude towards Indians despite the effort of the country in assisting Britain to overcome its adversaries during the Great War.
India’s role in the war was only fleetingly referenced when the march towards the kind of climate that made the Amritsar Massacre possible came about. Indians were essentially fighting as mercenaries for the British and were able to swallow this bitter pill because they genuinely felt that self-determination and independence was a promise to them that would be kept.
Saurav Dutt is author of a forthcoming commemorative book to mark the centenary of the Amritsar Massacre of 1919, to be released in time for the centenary in April 2019.
