Meanwhile, events in the Punjab had moved to a tragic climax. At Amritsar, two local leaders were arrested on April 10. A crowd which had gathered to demand their release ran amuck, attacked two banks and murdered five Europeans. On the day of the Baisakhi festival, Amritsar’s Jallianwala Bagh, where a public meeting was held, became the scene of a holocaust. Under the orders of General Dyer, 1,650 rounds were fired in ten minutes: nearly 400 persons were killed, and 1,200 injured. The governor, Sir Michael O’Dwyer and his advisers made themselves believe that British rule was in danger. Martial Law was imposed on several districts in the Punjab. A draconian regime followed. The Government appointed a Committee of Inquiry headed by Lord Hunter to enquire into the genesis of the Punjab disturbances. The Indian National Congress decided to boycott the Hunter Committee and appointed a non-official committee consisting of eminent lawyers, such as C.R. Das, M.R. Jayakar, Abbas Tyabji and Gandhi. It was as a member of this non-official committee that Gandhi learnt the truth about the martial law regime in the Punjab. He discovered shocking instances of high-handedness based on incontrovertible evidence which he himself scrupulously sifted. The fanciful image of the British Empire as a merciful dispensation of Providence that he had cherished seemed to crumble to the ground.
Gandhi’s alienation from the Raj was not yet complete. He argued that the Punjab had been wronged by a few erratic officers and hoped that the government would, when it knew the truth, make amends. In this hope he was disappointed. The British officers responsible for misrule in the Punjab were not recalled immediately; indeed they were lionized by the European community. The report of the Hunter Committee, when it came out, struck Gandhi as little better than “thinly disguised whitewash’. After hearing the debate on the Punjab tragedy in the British Parliament, one Indian correspondent, wrote to Gandhi: “Our friends revealed their ignorance, our enemies their insolence.”
