Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #375281 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 575 pages

Customer Reviews

An interesting but sad story

This book was recommended to me and I read it and found it interesting but sad, and perhaps shameful. Dyer seemed to like India and was much respected by many of his Indian troops. He had spent most of his life there and spoke most of the languages. He also seemed at first to be a hard working, ambititous and intelligent officer yet he committs one of the worst massacres in the British Empire.

This book goes some way to explain the man and his actions. Dyer seems complex and sadly did not seem to regret his actions in Amritsar, although he was haunted by them. It also explains how the Independe movement was spurred on and heavily influnced by the massacre and I wondered if British India might have lasted longer or ended differently if this hadnt happened. An irony that would have escaped Dyer.

Painstaking Scholarship
There are several events that are seared into Indian memory. One was the massacre at Delhi by Nadir Shah's troops in 1739. The second is the one ordered by General Dyer at Jallianwala Bagh in 180 years later. This book, by a British scholar, is a sort of soul-searching biography of the General.

The story starts with General's family history, and covers his education, his military training, and subsequent career. His career is described in great detail, in nearly 200 closely typed pages. The rest of the 200 odd pages are devoted to the massacre, the investigation and trial, and General Dyer's natural death.

There is a great deal of detail. There are extensive notes as well. There are 28 photographs, apart from some maps. The photographs bring out the horrors of colonial rule clearly - one showing an elderly man having to crawl in the street to get to his own house, because of the dehumanising crawling order. Mr. Collett has done a painstaking job. To my knowledge, this is the most detailed and authentic work on this tragic event.

The British were at the zenith of their power and glory, and this was getting reflected in their behaviour and thinking. This comes through very nicely in Mr. Collett's work. He shows how British opinion about the massacre was divided. There were a large number of people who were horrified, but there was also a determined group which defended his actions. General Dyer himself remained defiant, unrepentant to the end.

Mr. Collett's book is also timely - the curtains have not been drawn on such excesses. They were repeated across Europe during the second world war. They continue to take place today in Iraq. Today's military may have become more accountable, but it has certainly not become more responsible in its use of force than General Dyer was.

There was a post-script to this, which Mr. Collett has not mentioned. On 13-March-1940, an Indian named Udham Singh, who had seen the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, searched out and shot dead Sir Michael O'Dwyer (the then Governor of Punjab, and an untiring defender of General Dyer) at Caxton Hall in London. He surrendered to the Police, giving his name as Ram Mohammed Singh D'Souza, signifying brotherhood among Indians of different faiths. He was hanged by the British on 12-June-1940.

All in all an excellent book for scholars, and those interested in this period of Indian history or in colonialism.

If you read Hindi, you may also be interested in a shorter book 'Jallianwala Kaand ka Sach', Major General Sooraj Bhatia, published by Prabhat Prakashan, Delhi.