Jallianwala Bagh massacre

2. As the Rowlatt act was hurriedly passed by the
imperial Legislative Council, Mahatma Gandhi
wanted non-violent civil disobedience against the
unjust laws, which would start with a hartal on 6
April. On 10 April, the police in Amritsar fired upon
a peaceful processions. As Martial law was imposed
and General Dyer took command. On 13 April the
infamous Jallianwalla Bagh incident took place.
Hundreds were killed and injured. His object, as he
declared later, was to ‘produce a moral effect’, to
create in the minds of satyagrahis a felling of terror
and awe.

4. On April 13, the traditional festival of Baisakhi, thousands of
Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus gathered in the
Jallianwalla Bagh (garden) near the Harmandir Sahib
in Amritsar.
An hour after the meeting began as scheduled at 4:30 pm,
General Dyer--without warning the crowd to disperse--blocked
the main exits. He explained later that this act "was not to
disperse the meeting but to punish the Indians for
disobedience." Dyer ordered his troops to begin shooting toward
the densest sections of the crowd (including women and
children). Firing continued for approximately ten minutes. Many
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 was
declared; and many more died during the night.

7. As the news of Jallianwalla Bagh spread, crowds
took to the streets in many north Indian towns. There
were strikes, clashes with the police and attacks on
government buildings. The government responded
with brutal repression, seeking to humiliate and
terrorise people: satyagrahis were forced to rub their
noses on the ground, crawl on the streets, and do
salaam (salute) to all sahibs; people were flogged an
villages (around Gujranwala in Punjab) were bombed.
Seeing violence spread, Mahatma Gandhi called off
the movement.