Why Dyer is compelled to this open firing? 

• The excerpt that follows was part of a detailed and rigorous cross-examination of General Dyer. Sir Chimanlal Setalvad, a lawyer from Bharuch, Gujarat, who lived in Bombay, conducted this particular part of the cross-examination:

Chimanlal Setalvad: "You took two armoured cars with you?"
Dyer: "Yes."
Chimanlal Setalvad: "Those cars had machine guns?"
Dyer: "Yes."
Chimanlal Setalvad: "And when you took them you meant to use the machine guns against the crowd, did you?"
Dyer: "If necessary. If the necessity arose, and I was attacked, or anything else like that, I presume I would have used them."
Chimanlal Setalvad: "When you arrived there you were not able to take the armoured cars in because the passage was too narrow?"
Dyer: "Yes."
Chimanlal Setalvad: "Supposing the passage was sufficient to allow the armoured cars to go in, would you have opened fire with the machine guns?"
Dyer: "I think, probably, yes."
Chimanlal Setalvad: "In that case the casualties would have been very much higher?"
Dyer: "Yes."
Chimanlal Setalvad: "And you did not open fire with the machine guns simply by the accident of the armoured cars not being able to get in?"
Dyer: "I have answered you. I have said that if they had been there the probability is that I would have opened fire with them."
Chimanlal Setalvad: "With the machine guns straight?"
Dyer: "With the machine guns."
Chimanlal Setalvad: "I take it that your idea in taking that action was to strike terror?"
Dyer: "Call it what you like. I was going to punish them. My idea from the military point of view was to make a wide impression."
Chimanlal Setalvad: "To strike terror not only in the city of Amritsar, but throughout the Punjab?"
Dyer: "Yes, throughout the Punjab. I wanted to reduce their morale; the morale of the rebels."
Chimanlal Setalvad: "Did it occur to you that by adopting this method of 'frightfulness' – excuse the term – you were really doing a great disservice to the British Raj by driving discontent deep?"
Dyer: "I did not like the idea of doing it, but I also realised that it was the only means of saving life and that any reasonable man with justice in his mind would realise that I had done the right thing; it was a merciful though horrible act and they ought to be thankful to me for doing it. I thought I would be doing a jolly lot of good and they would realise that they were not to be wicked."

• Dyer later explained that this act "was not to disperse the meeting but to punish the Indians for disobedience." The excerpt from the cross-examination reveals the mind of Dyer and his reasons for the deliberate massacre that earned him a place as one of modern history’s greatest cowards.

When did the incident proved to be the turning point to India? 

• At that time, the British thought that this was simply a passing incident. With time people would forget about it and move on. However, this incident turned out to be a turning point in India’s independence struggle. Too much blood had flown in the Bagh to be forgotten.
• Beginning with the Noncooperation Movement and the Khilafat Movement, Indian nationalists began to demand the withdrawal of the British from India. Whereas an earlier breed of politicians wanted some share in government, equal rights and opportunities, after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, leaders demanded Purna Swaraj — complete independence.
• The episode was so horrific that it helped galvanize support for the freedom movement in Punjab, and among moderate Indians who until then saw British rule as benign.
• “That is an episode which appears to me to be without precedent or parallel in the modern history of the British Empire,” Winston Churchill, who was then serving in the cabinet as war secretary, told British lawmakers July 1920. It was a “crucial tipping point in the story of the freedom struggle but it was by no means the worst thing the British did in India,” writes William Dalrymple, an acclaimed historian and author.
• Ongoing newspaper stories and editorials over the following two decades stirred nationalist feelings and the massacre had a profound effect on Mahatma Gandhi. His concept of Satyagraha, or peaceful, non-violent resistance, was now to be implemented on a nationwide scale.
• Legend has it that a 12-year old student of Lahore’s DAV School went to the Jallianwala Bagh on April 14 and collected a sample of the blood-stained soil. It would serve as a constant reminder of the hurt and humiliation that his people had suffered at the hands of the imperialist regime.
• His name was Bhagat Singh, who would go down in history as India’s foremost revolutionary.

Where did Gandhi miscalculated about the massacre? 

• In the backdrop of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919, the Non-Cooperation Movement announced by Mahatma Gandhi in 1920 and his declaration of “Swaraj in One Year” galvanized the entire country as never before.
• For the first time since 1857, the peasantry joined the struggle in strength. It linked burning agrarian issues like taxes, rent and eviction by landlords to the struggle for independence.
• The support of the Congress to the Khilafat movement also drew the Muslim masses into the struggle in huge numbers and remarkable Hindu-Muslim unity was witnessed everywhere in the course of the movement.
• Among the participants in the non-violent ‘satyagraha’ (truth-seeking) were young men who would go on to become India’s leading armed revolutionaries.
• They included Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad, Surya Sen, Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee, Sukhdev, Jatin Das, Bhagwati Charan Vohra, Yashpal, Shiv Verma, Gaya Prasad and Jaidev Kapoor. Some of the armed freedom fighters in Bengal had, in fact, promised Mahatma Gandhi to suspend their activities to ensure success of the non-violent movement.
• The country seemed impatient to get rid of the British government who were caught unprepared to deal with a movement of such scale and unity. Then Gandhi surprised everyone – even the British – by his decision to end the movement.
• Gandhi’s sudden and arbitrary withdrawal of the nationwide movement in February 1922 after the events in Chauri Chaura in Uttar Pradesh came like a bolt from the blue.
• The peasants of Chauri Chaura were fighting both imperialism and landlordism, and they were subjected to violence by the British police. Enraged, they burnt down the thana where the police fled to take shelter. 22 policemen were killed.
• Gandhi wrote, "God has been abundantly kind to me. He has warned me the third time that there is not yet in India that truthful and non-violent atmosphere which and which alone can justify mass disobedience....which means gentle, truthful, humble, knowing, never criminal and hateful. He warned me in 1919 when the Rowlatt Act agitation was started. Ahmedabad, Viramgam, and Kheda erred. Amritsar and Kasur erred. I retraced my steps, called it a Himalayan miscalculation, humbled myself before God and man, and stopped not merely mass civil disobedience but even my own which I knew to be civil and non-violent."
• It is debated till today if Gandhi was right in calling off a movement which seemed to be heading towards success; after all millions of Indians had left everything at his call to take up Satyagraha – why should everyone suffer for the fault of a handful in Chauri Chaura? And did not the British kill more than a thousand innocent Indians just three years ago?
• Stopping the non-cooperation movement following Chauri Chaura was one of Gandhi’s most significant acts - a cleansing of the body politic, in effect.
• Years later, despite severe criticism, from being called a confused man to being called a British lackey, he did not waver on the correctness of the decision.
• He wrote in 1928, “To this date I have felt that I have served the country by calling off the non-co-operation movement. I am confident that history will look upon it as a form of perfect satyagraha and not as an act of cowardice.”
• It was clear, however, that India will have to wait for its independence.
• Gandhi had not forgotten the reason why he had launched the non-cooperation movement.
• “No empire intoxicated with the red wine of power and plunder of weaker races has yet lived long in this world, and this “British Empire” which is based on organised exploitation of physically weaker races of the earth and upon a continuous exhibition of brute force, cannot live if there is a just God ruling the universe... It is high time that the British people were made to realise that the fight that was commenced in 1920 is a fight to the finish”, he wrote after calling off the movement.
• This article and two earlier ones formed the basis of sedition charges against Gandhi. He was tried and sentenced to six years' imprisonment in March 1922. He was, however, released in February 1924 on health grounds.
• Many revolutionaries were launched as a result of the calling off of the movement.
• The Hindustan Republican Association (HRA) was formed in 1923 – within a year of Chauri Chaura and its aftermath. It would be renamed as the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) after Bhagat Singh joined and led it.
• When Mahatma Gandhi eschewed the violence and withdrew his call for non-cooperation, Ram Prasad Bismil and others believed there was no choice but to resort to arms and created the HRA. The Congress split into two parts, appropriately called the Naram Dal (Tender Party) and the Garam Dal (Hot Party).
• Even though the seeds of Bhagat Singh’s revolutionary path were sown in the early days after his visit to Jallianwala Bagh, he became a committed revolutionary after the death of Lala Lajpat Rai.
• In 1928, Rai had died of a heart attack after being wounded by a British lathi charge during a protest against the Simon Commission in Lahore. The police force led by James A. Scott resorted to quelling the crowd with batons and in doing so injured Rai. Bhagat Singh and his colleagues pledged that Scott would not go free (General Dyer, the leader of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, had escaped without punishment).
• The revolutionaries inspired the country with their fearless actions but could not even come close to achieving independence for their motherland. This, in a way, justified Gandhi’s assertion that – even practically – violence cannot win India her freedom. Even Bhagat Singh never believed that violence will win freedom. Just that violence was indispensable to “make the deaf hear”.
• This is what Singh wrote two months before he was hanged (on March 23, 1931): “Apparently I have acted like a terrorist. But I am not a terrorist. I am a revolutionary who has got such definite ideas of a lengthy program as is being discussed here… Let me announce with all the strength at my command, that I am not a terrorist and I never was, except perhaps in the beginning of my revolutionary career. And I am convinced that we cannot gain anything through those methods.

Who takes revenge for the massacre? 

• On 13 March 1940, at Caxton Hall in London, Udham Singh, an Indian independence activist from Sunam who had witnessed the events in Amritsar and was himself wounded, shot and killed Michael O'Dwyer (not be confused with General Dyer who had died in 1927), the British Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab at the time of the massacre, who had approved General Dyer's action and was believed to be the main planner.
• Udham Singh (born Sher Singh) was present in the Jallianwala Bagh on the tragic day. It is believed (but cannot be verified) that he stayed back to tend to the injured and later took a vow at the Golden Temple to avenge the killings. He would have to wait for more than two decades to fulfill his pledge.
• Singh became involved in revolutionary politics and was deeply influenced by Bhagat Singh and his revolutionary group. In 1924, Singh became involved with the Ghadar Party, organizing Indians overseas towards overthrowing colonial rule.
• In 1927, he returned to India on orders from Bhagat Singh, bringing 25 associates as well as revolvers and ammunition. Soon after, he was arrested for possession of unlicensed arms. He was sentenced to five years in prison.
• Singh finally reached England in 1933 with the aim of assassinating Michael O’Dwyer, who he held responsible for the brutal Jallianwala massacre (O’Dwyer had even called the massacre a “correct action”). In London, he fell in with socialist groups while working as a carpenter, motor mechanic and signboard painter.
• On March 13, 1940, Udham Singh hid a revolver in his overcoat, sneaked into Caxton hall and shot O’Dwyer twice as he moved from the platform after the meeting concluded. Singh did not try to flee or resist arrest and was immediately taken into custody.
• Singh was hanged for the murder on 31 July 1940. At that time, many, including Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi, condemned the action of Udham as “senseless but courageous”. During his trial, Udham Singh gave his name as Mohammad Singh Azad, which was tattooed on his arm, as a symbol that all religions in India were united in their opposition against British rule.

How did the British made the inquiry to the Massacre? 

• On 14 October 1919, after orders issued by the Secretary of State for India, Edwin Montagu, the Government of India announced the formation of a committee of inquiry into the events in Punjab. Referred to as the Disorders Inquiry Commission, it was later more widely known as the Hunter Commission.
• Halfway through its proceedings, the Hunter Commission suffered the setback of being boycotted by Indian nationalists, represented by the Congress, because of the government’s refusal to release Punjab leaders on bail. Of the eight members in all, the Commission had three Indian members. The conduct of these Indian members is a study in principled independence and courage.
• All three Indian members of the Hunter Commission displayed a remarkable degree of independence faced with sharp differences with the British members. The differences arose over the recording of conclusions.
• The Hunter Commission ended up submitting two reports – the majority report by the five British members and the minority report by three Indian members.
• Both reports indicted Dyer, in no uncertain terms. The differences were in in the degree of condemnation, in so far as Jallianwala Bagh was concerned.
• The majority report concluded that
• Lack of notice to disperse from the Bagh in the beginning was an error.
• The length of firing showed a grave error.
• Dyer's motive of producing a sufficient moral effect was to be condemned.
• Dyer had overstepped the bounds of his authority.
• There had been no conspiracy to overthrow British rule in the Punjab.
• The minority report of the Indian members further added that Proclamations banning public meetings were insufficiently distributed.
• Innocent people were in the crowd, and there had been no violence in the Bagh beforehand.
• Dyer should have either ordered his troops to help the wounded or instructed the civil authorities to do so
• Dyer's actions had been "inhuman and un-British" and had greatly injured the image of British rule in India.
• Viceroy Chelmsford conceded that Dyer "acted beyond the necessity of the case, beyond what any reasonable man could have thought to be necessary, and that he did not act with as much “humanity as the case permitted".
• Dyer had no option but to resign and return to England in disgrace. The apologists for the Raj in Britain however, bought into Dyer’s claim that it was this bloody firing by Dyer that had saved the Raj in India. This not only reduced the punishment meted out to Dyer, he was also treated as some sort of a hero on his return.
• Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on April 12 termed as "inadequate" the expression of regret by British Prime Minister Theresa May on Jallianwala Bagh massacre and said that nothing short of a formal apology from Britain will do.
• The Punjab Assembly had passed a resolution in this regard, he pointed out, adding that the tragedy was one of the most horrific examples of colonial excesses and a moral blot on the face of Britain. Theresa May had on April 10 described the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar as a "shameful scar" on British Indian history as she marked the 100th anniversary of the tragic incident, but she stopped short of a formal apology.
• The Jallianwala Bagh massacre was no act of insane frenzy but a conscious, deliberate imposition of colonial will.
• Dyer was an efficient killer rather than a crazed maniac; his was merely the evil of the unimaginative, the brutality of the military bureaucrat. But his action that Baisakhi day came to symbolize the evil of the system on whose behalf, and in whose defence, he was acting.
• Everything about the incident – the betrayal of promises made to India, the cruelty of the killings, the brutality and racism that followed, the self-justification, exoneration and reward – collectively symbolized everything that was wrong about the Raj.
• Neither the Queen nor Theresa May were alive when the atrocity was committed, and certainly no British government of 2019 bears a shred of responsibility for that tragedy, but the nation that once allowed it to happen should compensate for its past sins.