Jallianwala Bagh massacre: 100 years later

A scene from the 2006 film, ‘Rang De Basanti’, depicting the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

It has often been said that Britain lost its empire the day when, a hundred years ago, Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer(55) commanding a regiment of 50 Gurkha and Baluchi riflemen, ordered firing without warning upon an unarmed crowd of over 15,000 Indians gathered at an enclosure called the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, a stone’s throw from the Golden Temple. Dyer had brought two armoured cars with mounted machine guns as well, but the entrance to the Bagh was too narrow to let them in. Perhaps to compensate for this shortcoming, Dyer directed his troops to fire wherever the crowd was densest. 

The firing ended only when the troops ran out of ammunition; most of the 1,650 rounds met their target, judging from the official tally of 379 dead and some 1,200 wounded.