Jallianwala Bagh Massacre 102nd Anniversary: History, events leading up to it and significance

Mahatma Gandhi, who coined the phrase ‘Dyerism’ to describe general Reginald Dyer’s actions in Amritsar in 1919 which killed 379 innocent lives and injured another 1,200, was not in favour of retaliation. An apostle of non-violence, Gandhi had said, “We do not want to punish Dyer. We have no desire for revenge.

We want to change system that produced Dyer.” Until the Amritsar holocaust, Gandhi had never set foot in Punjab. Having recently returned from South Africa, the successful lawyer was gaining new insights into his homeland as he travelled freely into the Indian interiors. In many ways, the ghastly events of Jallianwala Bagh helped put Gandhi on the political map.

Admitting that Gandhi was an “Empire loyalist,” it was after the massacre, writes Ramachandra Guha in Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, that “his faith in British justice was shaken but not broken.”