Lest we forget: A ‘prelude’ to Jallianwalla Bagh massacre

Rose Hall Martyr’s Memorial at Canje, Berbice: Built by the Government of Guyana and unveiled on March 13, 2013, by President Donald Ramotar.

A long time ago in far away Berbice, British Guiana (modern day Guyana) – some oppressed indentured workers of Indian origin put up a resistance against unjust colonial masters. One hundred and eleven years ago it was – on March 13th 1913 to be precise – this resistance on Rose Hall Plantation ended up in a bloody carnage.

“British colonial police killed fifteen, including a woman they shot in the stomach, and injured another thirty-nine, seriously enough to warrant amputations. It was perhaps the deadliest indenture-era suppression of unrest in the Caribbean”. I quote Gaiutra Bahadur – author of Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture – a Guyanese-American journalist who has devoted much of her career to telling the stories of immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers.

“Never in the history of this South American colony has so much blood shed occurred, and at such a petty excitement to the police”

Dr. R.N Sharma in The Modern Review, Calcutta

“It wasn’t just that the indentured worked more hours than were legal, without being paid the legal minimum. The wrongs exposed by the immigrants weren’t merely economic. There had also been insults to their honour”, explains the author to Guyanese Online.

“The façade of justice was general. The incestuous social life of planters, magistrates and immigration agents utterly undermined any safeguards built into indenture, allowing for widespread abuse of “coolies” by their masters”. 

Shades of Brigadier General R.E.H Dyer

“The colony’s police chief, Colonel G.C. de Rinzy, paraded through with a phalanx of men and a Maxim gun. That weapon of war had been credited with swiftly subduing large swathes of Africa for colonial rule in the 1890s, as much because of the panic inspired by its fearsome appearance in battle as the bullets it discharged rapid-fire”.

“Imagine him with his maxim gun and all his men fully armed, and then imagine the poor, thin-faced, half-starving coolies, armless except for a few sticks and their instruments of agriculture, standing on the opposite side”

Dr. R.N. Sharma in The Modern Review, Calcutta

“Six months after it, in the Viceroy’s Legislative Council in Delhi, a pioneer in India’s nationalist movement posed a question on the record about the shooting…” writes Ms. Bahadur. “And he called for compensation to the wounded and the families of the dead – a call that ultimately went nowhere…”

Also present at the site was the Ms. Bahadur’s great grandmother who came to British Guiana as an indentured labour.

“A month and six years later – on April the 13th 1919, about twenty five thousand unarmed Indians had gathered in Jallianwalla Bagh in Amritsar to mark a protest against the recently imposed Rowlatt Act. Also present were several children – to rest, relax and catchup with friends.

A little after five in the evening, a detachment of soldiers, led by Brigadier General R.E.H. Dyer, entered the Bagh. Without warning the crowd to disperse, Dyer ordered his troops to open fire. Atleast 1,650 rounds were fired. Several hundred died and several hundred more were injured. The massacre was universally condemned by all Indians and even shocked many Britons, who thought it one of the worst outrages in all of British history”. A gripping narrative by Navtej Sarna – in his book – Crimson Spring is unmissable.

“I wonder if the thoughtful people of India will realise the necessity of protesting strongly against the present system of indentured emigration”

Dr. R.N. Sharma in The Modern Review, Calcutta

Colonial compulsions

As a predecessor of fossil fuel, sugar was a compelling driver of colonialism. Abolition of slavery would have scuttled colonial continuity. Indentured was invented as a necessary evil. The theatre thus significantly shifted from Africa to Asia. The biggest brunt was borne by the then Indian empire.

The rebellion of 1857 wasn’t the first ‘mutiny’ as we tend to be fed. Thanks to Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Anand Math, the Sannyasi rebellion remains alive in our collective imagination.

That in a distant West Indies, far away from the motherland, an exploited workforce refused to be cowed down by the coloniser. The ‘master’ chose to brutalise. The Rose Hall playbook had to replay. Rather than be grateful for the blood and sweat of the labour and the soldier, Jallianwalla Bagh was its most unfortunate magnification.

P.S. Dr. Ram Narayan Sharma was a medical practitioner at Berbice, British Guiana (BG). He was reportedly persuaded by Bhai Parmanand and other revolutionaries to locate there and look after the indentured cause. Dr. Sharma was at the location during this event.

Arrived (BG) in 1911. He passed away mysteriously, at a young age, in 1920. His activities and movements were under close and constant surveillance of British intelligence.