The Butcher of Amritsar: General Reginald Dyer
by Nigel Collett
Hambledon & London $375
On the evening of April 1919, General Reginald Dyer ordered a squad of Indian soldiers to open fire on a mostly peaceful crowd of 25,000 men, women and children attending a political rally in the Jallianwala Bagh, a large enclosed public square in the Sikh holy city of Amritsar. After 10-15 minutes of continuous fire, more than 300 lay dead and countless others were wounded. With ammunition running low, Dyer called a ceasefire and led his troops back to barracks, leaving the wounded untended.
Nigel Collett traces the life and military career of Dyer, examining the circumstances leading up to the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh, one of the worst atrocities ever committed by the British on a civilian population. The Butcher of Amritsar also relates the history of British imperialism and the growth of Indian nationalism.
Born in India in 1864, Dyer received his early education at Simla, in the foothills of the Himalaya. The son of a wealthy British brewing family, Dyer and others in trade were scorned as boxwallahs by the class-obsessed British society. He was badly bullied at school, leaving him shy and unable to get along with other people.
At the age of eight, he was sent to school in Ireland, then in the throes of famine and rebellion against the British. After officer training at Sandhurst, Dyer had to spend two years with a home regiment before joining the Indian Army. He first saw action and civil unrest in Belfast in 1886, before being sent to fight in the third Burma war. Burma was an eye-opener for Dyer, where the brutal suppression of the natives by the British imperialists gave him a 'lifelong taste for acting on his own and for avoiding close supervision' that would end in disaster. After a 12-year exile, Dyer returned to India and was reunited with his family. En route, he revealed a darker side to his character when he became involved in a violent brawl with the native crew of a riverboat. The incident indicated 'an inability to prevent his temper turning to violence against native Indians'.
