Marking the Amritsar Massacre.

On April 13, 1919, around 10,000 unarmed men, women and children had gathered in the Jallianwala Bagh walled public garden in Amritsar angry about the recent extension of repressive measures and the arrest of two local leaders that had sparked violent protests three days before.

The 13th of April was also a big Vaisakhi spring festival, and the crowd — estimated by some at 20,000 — included pilgrims visiting the nearby Golden Temple sacred to Sikhs. All  meetings had been banned. The ban had not  however, been well publicised.

Brigadier General Reginald Edward Harry Dyer arrived with dozens of troops, sealed off the exit and without ordering  the crowd to disperse or giving any warning ordered the soldiers to open fire.

The crowd . started screaming  and panicking as Dyer ordered his men to keep firing until all their ammunition was exhausted.

Many tried to escape by scaling the high walls surrounding the area. Others jumped into a deep, open well at the site as the troops continued to fire..

One of several eyewitness accounts compiled by two historians and published in the Indian Express newspaper this week described the horror. "Heaps of dead bodies lay there, some on their backs and some with their faces upturned. A number of them were poor innocent children. I shall never forget the sight," said Ratan Devi, whose husband was killed..

This event is now known as the Amritsar Massacre, and it was a turning point in Indian history.The massacre galvanised the Indian independence movement and helped to create a united front against British colonialism.The Amritsar Massacre was a watershed moment in Indian history. It occurred at a time when the British Empire was facing increasing unrest from its colonies around the world. In India, the massacre served as a rallying point for the independence movement. Indians of all religions and castes came together to demand an end to British rule. The incident also helped to create a united front against British colonialism.

The British had been in control of India for nearly two centuries when the Amritsar Massacre occurred. In that time, the British had managed to amass a large amount of wealth and control over the country. They were not content with simply ruling India; they also sought to remake it in their own image. They did this by imposing Western values and ideas on the Indian people. This was particularly evident in the education system, which was designed to produce good citizens of the British Empire.

The Indians chafed under this heavy-handed rule. There were many uprisings against British rule, but none were successful in overthrowing the colonial power. The most serious challenge to British rule came from the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. This revolt was started by Hindu and Muslim soldiers in the British army who were upset about being forced to use cartridges that were greased with pork and beef fat. The mutiny was quickly put down, but it showed the potential for resistance to British rule.

After the completion of World War One in 1918, the British Empire was in a weak position. The war had drained the resources of the Empire, and there was widespread discontent among the colonised peoples.

In 1919, the British colonial authorities in India attempted to "reward" Indians for their participation in World War I by allowing them more representation. However, wartime restrictions on civil liberties were not immediately lifted.

The key events leading up to the massacre began in 1918, when the British implemented a series of repressive measures in India in response to rising nationalist sentiment. These measures included banning public meetings, censoring the press, and jailing political leaders without trial.

In India, this discontent manifested itself in the form of protests against the Rowlatt Acts. These were a set of laws that allowed the government to arrest and imprison people without trial. In several cases, the government curtailed freedom of speech and assembly to prevent violence or other disruptions.

The Rowlattt Acts outraged the Indian National Congress, which was the leading nationalist party at the time and included the leaders Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Motilal Nehru, and Mahatma Ghandi. The Congress called for a nationwide protest against the Acts on April 13, 1919.

The British authorities in India were concerned about the possibility of violence and sought to prevent the protest from taking place. They did this by declaring a curfew and banning public meetings. When these measures failed to stop the protests, they dispatched troops to disperse the crowds. Second, the British were facing increasing unrest from their colonies around the world. This made them nervous about potential uprisings in India. The Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab, Michael O'Dwyer, felt that the British were the true rulers of India. He was also extremely concerned about the increasing cooperation between Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs in Punjab at the time.

In an attempt to minimise civil unrest in the Punjab region, the British authorities banned nationalist leaders from travelling there, including Gandhi himself.In March 1919, two Indian nationalists, Satya Pal and Saifuddin Kitchlew, were arrested for publishing articles critical of the British government. This event sparked protests across the country. The arrest of these leaders led to a peaceful protest at Jallianwala Bagh, a public square in Amritsar.

On April  13, 1919, a large crowd of unarmed civilians gathered in Jallianwala Bagh to protest against the Rowlatt Acts. The protest was peaceful and there was no violence. However, the British authorities saw it as a potential threat to their control over India.

Colonel Reginald Dyer, who was born and raised in India, led a contingent of soldiers toward the plaza. When their armored car, which was armed with a machine gun, could not fit into the little passageway leading to the plaza, they left it behind.

The decision was made to break up the crowd by force. On orders from Colonel Reginald Dyer, troops opened fire on the crowd. The protesters were unarmed and posed no threat to the British troops. However, General Reginald Dyer ordered the troops to continue firing for ten minutes.

People began to leap into a water well, and push through the limited gates that provided exits, to save themselves, and they were crushed by others who followed. The majority of them suffocated or perished when they were overcome with people running over them.

The exact number of people wounded or killed is unknown. Early estimates ranged from 291 dead (stated by British officials) to 1000 (stated by the Indian National Congress report). Reports suggest that 1650 rounds of ammunition had been fired, and others put the death toll of Panjabi citizens at over 1,000, with countless more injured. This number included men, women and children; with bodies infamously piling up in the nearby water well as victims desperately attempted to escape the carnage. A 6-week old baby was even recorded as one of the fatalities.

News of the barbarism was shamefully  suppressed by the British for wic months. and only when outrage of the atrocity mounted did Winston  Churchiill  describe  the attack as “monstrous” and Asquith as “one of the worst outrages in the whole of our history".

Following the bloodshed,  Dyer, became known as the "Butcher of  Amritsar" but to add insult to injury,  Dyer came home to a hero’s welcome. Rudyard Kipling named him the “the man who saved India” and donated £50 to his £26,000 tribute awarded on his triumphant return home and Dyer simply retired to live out his life without any consequence

However the  consequences of the massacre were far-reaching. The incident caused widespread outrage among Indians and increased support for the independence movement.

In 1920, the British government appointed a commission, called the 'Hunter Commission', to investigate the incident. The commission's report acknowledged that the shootings were unjustified and led to several reforms, including an end to martial law in India and the introduction of trial by jury bur only found Dwyer of committing a 'grave error." .

For many  these reforms were too little too late, and the damage had been done. The Amritsar Massacre remained a rallying point for Indian independence until the country finally achieved freedom in 1947.

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 had himself been wounded, shot and killed O'Dwyer, the Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab at the time of the massacre, who had approved Dyer's action and was believed to have been the main planner.

The common people and revolutionaries glorified the action of Udham Singh. Much of the press worldwide recalled the story of Jallianwala Bagh, and alleged O'Dwyer to have been responsible for the massacre. Singh was termed a "fighter for freedom" and his action was referred to in The Times newspaper as "an expression of the pent-up fury of the down-trodden Indian People". Reporter and historian Wlliam L Shiver wrote the next day, "Most of the other Indians I know [other than Gandhi] will feel this is divine retribution. O'Dwyer bore a share of responsibility in the 1919 Amritsar massacre, in which Gen. Dyer shot 1,500 Indians in cold blood. When I was at Amritsar eleven years after [the massacre] in 1930, the bitterness still stuck in the people there."

The memory of the Amritsar Massacre is kept alive by the Jallianwala Bagh National Memorial Act of 1951. The act established a trust to build a memorial on the site of the massacre. The memorial was finally completed in 1961 and opened to the public on 13 April 1961, exactly 42 years after the massacre took place. It now stands as a reminder of one of the darkest moments in British colonial rule in India.

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre, it is still an emotive subject with many demanding a British apology -- which so far has been unforthcoming.This massacre illustrated the raw brutality of British imperialism in India and showed the furthest extremes that the British were willing to go to to maintain Indian resources which were so valuable to them.

More recently, the Queen, during a visit to Amritsar in 1997, described the massacre as a “shameful scar on British-Indian history”,but her gaffe-prone husband Prince Philip stole the headlines by reportedly saying that the Indian estimates for the death count were "vastly exaggerated". An apology is not enough for an entire colonial legacy, but it is a crucial start. we should not forgive and most importantly. we must never forget. this cold , callous display of colonial evil.