literature

The Gardens In Amritsar

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Literature Text

The Gardens In Amritsar, April 13th, 1919.

The Imperialists were always outnumbered. The teeming populations
of the ancient cities could only be contained, so they believed, by determined acts of cruelty. In their three centuries of Empire the British remained blind
to the ancient culture around them, always convinced that India had to be subjected by their brutal technology of telegraphs, steam engines and guns.
They believed themselves the future in India if India had any future at all.

But now the Indians were resisting the Imperial paranoia. As they grew
restive the British imposed draconian laws. Ghandi, the lawyer from South Africa, was learning to speak with the people’s voice. His turbulent words stirred the people on the streets. When their protests met nothing but resistance, they fought pitched battles with the army and the police. Their fellow citizens wore the Imperial uniform, and obeyed the foreign officers. They wielded clubs,
                  they fired rounds, they forced the city to a bruising peace.

Two days later, a peaceful crowd of thousands, men, women and children, gathered festively to celebrate the beginning of the Sikh New Year, in the walled gardens called Jallianwala, close by the Sikhs’ Golden Temple. Though
                          the gardens were large, the entrances were few and narrow.

This forced General Dyer to dispense with the armoured cars that had escorted his troops. He would have turned their machine guns on the crowd if he could. Instead he ordered his ninety riflemen to form up in the garden, and then to fire sixteen hundred rounds of bullets at point blank range into the helpless crowd.

He gave no one any chance to escape, claiming that he was facing a
revolutionary army. The slaughter lasted ten minutes. The soldiers marched away
                  from the  carnage, leaving blood and screams behind, their duty done.


The storm of bullets
tore apart unprotected flesh,
order was restored.
This was a defining moment in the relationship between India and Great Britain. The massacre fuelled the growth of the Congress Party, and the thirty year campaign that eventually resulted in India's independence.

I have been thinking about writing about Ghandi for some time, but I began to realise that some outline of the last days of the British Empire would be useful.

This must stand as the most dreadful atrocity in the Empire's three centuries in India.

As to the form, this is Haibun, devised by the great Japanese poet Basho in the seventeenth century. For an example of one of his compositions, see: [link]
© 2009 - 2024 AlecBell
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ladha's avatar
As an Indian, I appreciate you writing this.