The 1919 Jallianwala Bagh Massacre
PM Modi, Rahul Gandhi Pay Tribute to Victims of 1919 Jallianwala Bagh Massacre
Sputnik / April 13, 2022
On 13 April 1919, the British Army under the command of Colonel Reginald Dyer, opened fire on a crowd gathered at Jallianwala Bagh, in Amritsar in the Indian state of Punjab.
The people had congregated for the Baisakhi festival and to protest peacefully against the arrest of two key freedom fighters — Dr Satya Pal and Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday led the nation in paying tribute to the victims of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, with 379–381 dead, which took place on this day in 1919 while the country was under British rule.
In his message posted on Twitter, Prime Minister Modi talked of those who died in the event, saying that “their unparalleled courage and sacrifice will motivate future generations.”
He also shared the speech he made when the renovated complex of the Jallianwala Bagh Memorial was inaugurated last year.
At the same time, Rahul Gandhi, leader of the country’s main opposition party, Congress, paid tribute to the martyrs and said “the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh showed the world the cruelty of an autocratic regime.”
Shashi Tharoor, who penned a book ‘An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India’, has accused the British of draining the country of resources.
“The British came to one of the richest countries in the world accounting for 27 percent of global GDP in 1700,” he said, adding that after more than 200 years of exploitation, depredation, and destruction, India was reduced “to a poster child for Third World poverty,” accounting for just above 3 percent of global GDP by the time the country gained independence.
According to Tharoor, 35 million people died under the British Raj from unnecessary famines caused by British policy.
An estimated three million people died in the Bengal famine of 1943, which Tharoor blamed on WInston Churchill’s policies of “deliberately ordering the diversion of food from starving Indian civilians to well-supplied British soldiers and even to top up European stockpiles, meant for yet-to-be-liberated Greeks and Yugoslavs.”
“Bodies began piling up on the sides of roads and in ponds, rivers and ditches. Vultures got too fat to take flight, and jackals feasted on still-living bodies in broad daylight,” writes Professor Janam Mukherjee in his book, ‘Hunger Bengal: War, Famine, Riots and the End of Empire.’
“And the most proud shall stumble and fall, and none shall raise him up; and I will kindle a fire in his cities, and it shall devour all round about him” Jeremiah 50:32.
“In all your dwelling places the cities shall be laid waste, and the high places shall be desolate, that your altars may be laid waste and made desolate, and your idols may be broken and cease, and your images may be cut down, and your works may be abolished” Ezekiel 6:6.
Joel Huan
The Mystery of Ephraim 