Jallianwala Bagh Massacre

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Hanson. I thank the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for securing this afternoon’s debate. He set out the background very well. It is clear from the Hansard transcripts of the time that there was uncertainty about the events as they happened, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned. As the truth emerged, some of the things that people had said at the time did not reflect what had actually happened on the ground.

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre is a particularly awful event to read about, because it was a methodical and disturbing mass murder of innocent people who were peacefully protesting in a public square. Many of them had come on their way back from worship at the Golden Temple, and there were also children there. The exits were blocked and unarmed people were shot at over and over, as we heard, until the ammunition was all but exhausted.

The incident changed the course of history, but as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) said, it certainly was not an isolated crime by the British empire. The massacre came in the context of the repressive Rowlatt Act 1919, which permitted political cases in India to be tried without juries and included internment of suspects without trial. That in turn led to protests and an escalation of violence, to martial law and the forbidding of gatherings. The massacre was followed by other events, such as public floggings and forcing people to crawl in the streets just to humiliate them. Mahatma Gandhi said that he had no doubt that

“the shooting was ‘frightful’, the loss of innocent life deplorable. But the slow torture, degradation and emasculation that followed was much worse, more calculated, malicious and soul-killing, and the actors who performed the deeds deserve greater condemnation than General Dyer for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. The latter merely destroyed a few bodies but the others tried to kill the soul of a nation.”

India is a country that has contributed greatly to the world in culture and faith, despite enduring such horrific events in its formation. The Indian diaspora, of all faiths and none, who I have known in my constituency show compassion and kindness to others. The Scottish Sikhs who I marched alongside in Saturday’s Vaisakhi celebrations have made a huge impact on their community, providing free meals, running soup kitchens and providing education services for people both at home and abroad. They stand up for human rights abuses and show solidarity for persecuted people around the world. They have invested time, energy and money in Scotland—they are Scottish. They are building in Glasgow two purpose-built and beautiful gurdwaras. We owe it to them to ensure that their legacy is acknowledged and this is not just swept under the carpet.

Of course, it was not just Sikhs who were killed that day; there were Hindus and Muslims, as we have heard, and a peaceful gathering of a cross-section of India’s peoples, who were indiscriminately murdered. A poster featured in a book about the atrocity by London historians Amandeep Singh Madra and Parmjit Singh reads:

“Those who sacrificed their lives for their country, live forever. Brutality crossed all limits at Jallianwala Bagh, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh—everyone cried in grief.”

The Minister knows, as we all do, that there is no justification for what happened. Even 100 years on, that flame of injustice still burns brightly in people’s minds.

Burns said:

“O wad some Power the giftie gie us

To see oursels as ithers see us!”

At this particular time in history, with the UK leaving the EU, amid the radicalisation of right-wing extremists and the pompous rhetoric about the rebuilding of the British empire, we need a meaningful acknowledgement of the horrific legacy that that empire left behind. It must be for schools everywhere to learn of that legacy, not just for gurdwaras to teach it when people choose to come and visit. Everybody should learn in school of how the peoples of the empire were treated.

[Martyn Day]

I find myself in full agreement with everything that has been said today, and I echo the calls for a formal apology. It has been said that if we do not learn from history, we are destined to repeat the mistakes of the past. We cannot allow those mistakes to ever be repeated, so we need a clear and unequivocal apology from the Government on behalf of us all.

[Alison Thewliss]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. As elected Members of this Parliament, if we allow notions of empire to go unchecked and unchallenged, we fail to acknowledge the pain of that past—the pain for countries all around the world, but particularly in this case for the people of India. It is beyond time for Her Majesty’s Government to apologise and take responsibility for one of the worst crimes of colonialism. An apology for those events is a very good place to start.

Opportunities for apologies or acknowledgements of the events at Jallianwala Bagh have been missed in recent times. As hon. Members have said, David Cameron visited the site and described the incident as “deeply shameful”, but did not use that ample opportunity to make a formal apology. A visit from Her Majesty and Prince Philip in the 1990s managed to create even more ill-feeling, when Prince Philip said that the Indian Government’s figure for the death toll at the site was over-exaggerated. William and Kate chose not to visit the site on their official tour of India. Those are all opportunities missed, adding to that sense of pain.

It is well beyond time to stop side-stepping the issue and to show some humility and regret for the horrors of the past. I ask the Minister to go back to the Foreign Secretary and encourage him to take the steps that successive Governments have not been brave enough to take.