The Patient Assassin

by Anita Anand

  Amritsar was filled with innocent civilians, yet Sir Michael and Dyer regarded them as complicit. They were either rebels or rebel sympathisers. It made the idea of collective punishment so much easier to peddle if lawyers and law breakers were painted with the same brush.

  Though it would never have occurred to an innocent street vendor in the Hall bazaar to apologise for the actions of the mob, Sir Michael and his Brigadier General Dyer expected nothing less. Amritsar was the author of its own developing misfortune according to Sir Michael, and he wanted contrition: ‘Amritsar City, far from showing any signs of repentance, was still on the 13th in a state of tumult and revolt . . . The rebels had practically isolated General Dyer.’8

  It was an odd way to characterise the situation. Dyer was surrounded by Amritsaris, it was true, but where else were they meant to go? This was their city, and the day after Dyer’s arrival they were as grateful as anyone that the trouble appeared to have burned itself out.

  Almost all the dead had been buried or cremated. None had taken up arms against Dyer’s men since their arrival. His troops might have been spat at, but despite the hurt of the past forty-eight hours, nobody on the Indian side had fired a shot.

  As if to reinforce the feeling of normalcy, Punjabis from neighbouring areas were even starting to trickle in to the city again. A big festival was about to break over Amritsar, the most important in all Punjab. How could they know that the lieutenant governor and brigadier general saw these visitors as reinforcements for a rebel army in an imminent battle?

  Ishwar Das Anand’s journey to Amritsar had been long and convoluted. The nineteen-year-old had been travelling for a week and was tired and covered in dust by the time he arrived in the city, late in the afternoon of 12 April. The only inkling he had of trouble came when the trains to Amritsar stopped running two days earlier. He did not think much of it at the time. Trains stopped without warning in India all the time. It was a fact of life and Ishwar Das did what most poor Indians did: pocketed his ticket and started to walk. He had come such a long way, turning back was not an option.

  Ishwar Das’s whole family was counting on him, and this propelled him forward even though it was hot and the journey was long. He felt blessed whenever a bullock cart heading his way let him jump on the back: ‘I always felt as if God had one hand on my shoulder,’ he would later tell his sons. ‘If he wanted me to be somewhere he would show me a way.’9

  Kala Bagh, Ishwar Das’s home, lay just over a hundred miles north in the newly created administrative area of the North-West Frontier Province. On the border with Afghanistan, it was a place filled with spaces and silence. Slopes covered in densely packed evergreen foliage gave the place its name – Kala Bagh, ‘the Black Garden’.

  Ishwar Das’s family were traders and he had been raised around the sparse conversation of the Pathans: tall, fair-skinned men who had perfected the language of the nod and hand gesture. Though ethnically Punjabi himself, Ishwar Das felt more kinship with the Pathans of the mountains than noisy Amritsaris or proud Lahoris.

  He and his mother had watched the camel trains since his childhood, passing by in a constant stream as the snow of the Khyber Pass melted away. The Pathans made their way towards the cities, beasts laden with rolled-up carpets and shawls – goods to sell in the busy city markets. Ishwar Das’s mother would always leave a mutka (a traditional clay pot) of buffalo milk or cold water outside her boundary wall, knowing the camel drivers would be thirsty. The rules of hospitality meant one should never wait to be asked.

  Ishwar Das’s mother was a quiet woman, one who could convey meaning with just an ishaara – a look, or tilt of the head. He had grown up saying everything he needed in the fewest words possible. Amritsaris, in contrast, never seemed to stop talking, or so Ishwar Das thought when he finally arrived after two days of walking. The city thrummed with chatter, grunting livestock and rattling carts. He was witnessing a city coming back to life after forty-eight hours of enforced hibernation, but for all he knew, these people were always like this.

  One of Ishwar Das’s uncles had given him the names of two Frontier families who had recently relocated to the city, and he was looking forward to meeting some familiar faces in this foreign and intimidating place. Finding them was almost as challenging as his journey from Kala Bagh had been: the city was a maze; Ishwar Das got horribly lost, walking and walking only to find himself back where he started. Confused and exhausted, he cursed Amritsar and everyone in it.

  Finally, one of the addresses on his battered piece of paper was in front of him, and behind the door he found the warmest of Punjabi welcomes. The family had received his uncle’s letter and knew he was coming. He shared a meal with them, heard something of the recent troubles, though he failed to understand the scale and importance of what his friends had just lived through. In return he gave them news from back home, told them about his family and the births and deaths they had missed. The afternoon slipped into evening and he was shown to a good guest house nearby. There were unmarried girls in the family’s home; it would have been disrespectful to stay and he did not expect an invitation.

  The sons of the household arranged to meet him the next day. They had played together as children in Kala Bagh and Ishwar Das was relieved that they still had some connection.10 However, city life had changed them a lot. They were ‘smarter’ than he remembered, and very proud. Amritsar seemed to have seeped through their skins.

  Excited by the timing of Ishwar Das’s visit, on the eve of Baisakhi, the harvest festival, the boys had promised him a day of ‘musti’ (irresponsible fun) as they dropped him and his bags at the guest house. Come tomorrow they would show their country cousin how to have a good time in Punjab’s ‘best city’. He might never want to go back.

  Baisakhi was a time of feasting and thanksgiving after months of hard labour. The most important festival in the region, it celebrated the fertility of the land as men brought their wheat, corn and sugarcane to market. For Sikhs, the day had added religious significance. It marked the foundation of the Khalsa, the brotherhood of orthodox Sikhs upon whom the religion was built.

  Ishwar Das had grown up hearing so much about Baisakhi in the big city. He had only left his home and attached ‘factory’ – his father’s fanciful name for the corrugated metal shed where he and his uncles repaired and refurbished European sewing machines – twice before. Previous trips had been minor local errands where he was expected to collect late payments and make deliveries to nearby Frontier towns. Tall and strong, with a good head for figures, Ishwar Das was good at prying payments out of reluctant hands. Now the teen had been sent on his first important business trip. The harvest festival might have been a good time to pray, but it was also the best time of the year for a man to make a deal. The place would be teeming with visitors. Men would have money in their pockets.

  He had repeated his father’s instructions so often they were ingrained. Ishwar Das was to buy a consignment of second-hand, largely broken German Pfaff sewing machines from a merchant in the bazaar, but not before he checked them thoroughly, ensuring none were beyond repair. He was then to sort out transportation to the ‘factory’ in Kala Bagh, ideally using Pathans travelling back home to the mountains. Pathans never liked to travel with empty paniers and they would be cheaper and less likely to chisel for more money at the end of the trip. A Pathan’s word was his bond.

  Ishwar Das had touched his pocket so many times, checking to see if the bulge of cash was still where he had put it, that he looked forward to the moment he could hand it over to the merchant. If he did this job well, his father might trust him to come back again. The second time was bound to be much easier than the first.

  * * *

  * The traditional salute of respect – a hand is raised to the forehead, with the head slightly bowed.

  CHAPTER 9

  NO WARNING, NO WAY OUT

  BAISAKHI MORNING, 13 APRIL 1919

  The sun rose just before 6 a.m. with the promise of a bright Baisakh
i day. Rays of sunlight cutting through the mist prodded the sleepy city, nudging it gently to its senses. The threat of violence, like the haze of a typical Punjabi morning, promised to lift completely. Although there were rumours of continuing clashes elsewhere in the province, Amritsar had been peaceful for more than two days. The worst was over. The city unclenched.

  In contrast, after three nights of poor sleep, with thoughts of mutiny never far from his mind and people entering the city all the time, Dyer’s nerves, in contrast, were stretched taut. He was on the streets again that morning with an armed force at his heels. Summary floggings, handed out to the insolent, had discouraged disrespect, nevertheless Rex had a new set of edicts for the city. They were to be obeyed immediately and without question: ‘It is hereby proclaimed to all whom it may concern that no person residing in the city is permitted or allowed to leave the city in his own private or hired conveyance or on foot, without a pass from one of the following officers.’1 A long list of names and locations where such documents could be applied for followed. Then came news of a rolling curfew: ‘Any person found in the streets after 8 p.m. is liable to be shot.’2

  Dyer also banned groups of more than four people congregating on the streets: ‘No procession of any kind is permitted to parade the streets in the city or any part of the city or outside of it at any time. Any such processions or any gathering of four men will be looked upon and treated as an unlawful assembly and dispersed by force of arms if necessary.’3

  From its birth in the seventeenth century, the old walled city of Amritsar had spread, untroubled by town planning. Two centuries of growth saw its web of alleys and winding streets reaching into the surrounding fields. Dyer’s new rules were read out at nineteen different locations by town criers, accompanied by the beat of a military drum. The ‘drum proclamation’ was repeated in English, Urdu and Punjabi; nevertheless, in a place of noise, high walls and general convolution, a drum proclamation was the worst way imaginable to spread the word of such far-reaching changes.

  Relying on maps to identify the most important locations where they could read out their drum proclamation, Dyer’s men missed many of the city’s key congregation points. The day was also far hotter than usual. Dyer had told them that Amritsar was infested with rebels, and with the combination of blistering sunshine and trepidation, it comes as no surprise that Dyer’s men were in a hurry to read out their proclamations and get back to the shady safety of their headquarters at the Ram Bagh.

  With his scattered drum proclamations, Dyer dropped pebbles into a vast and choppy pool. The expectation that his message would ripple out and reach every nook and cranny of the city was wholly unreasonable. At 12:40 p.m., news reached Dyer that confirmed his view that collective defiance bubbled just under the surface of the city. Despite his new edicts, a political meeting, he was told, was going to take place at a nearby garden called Jallianwala Bagh.

  He could have acted to stop it, posted guards at the site, plastered prohibition posters on the walls in the neighbourhood, but Dyer did nothing. If he was going to teach the natives a lesson, Jallianwala Bagh might as well be the classroom.

  Jallianwala Bagh, or ‘the garden of the Jallah-man’*, had a name that suggested greenery and flowers, and perhaps it had been that way once. The well at the centre of his eponymous garden certainly gave every indication that things once grew, were tended and watered here. Those days were long gone.

  Over the years, Jallianwala Bagh had dried up and become run down. Amritsaris used its dusty seven acres as a recreation ground. The garden was tightly bound by high tenement buildings on its perimeter, and apart from a handful of tiny, tapering gullies where the buildings did not quite touch, there was only one real entrance/exit to the Bagh. It was so narrow that three men walking shoulder to shoulder could just about pass through.

  Pilgrims on their way to or from the Golden Temple, a mere ten minutes’ walk away, would often use Jallianwala Bagh for respite, and though nobody could accuse the place of being beautiful, the garden was undeniably popular, well-placed and well-used, so much so that grass struggled to grow under the constant footfall. Dust swirled under sandaled feet, as children played and adults escaped the noise of the streets.

  The meeting at Jallianwala Bagh which so irritated Dyer that afternoon had been arranged the day before by a man named Hans Raj. It promised much: the chance to respond to the Mahatma’s exclusion; the deportation of Satya Pal and Kitchlew; and the Rowlatt Act.

  The organisers had called the meeting in the name of a respected and aged High Court lawyer. Lala Kanhyalal Bhatia had put together an agenda and its four resolutions read more like dull minutes of a meeting than a call to arms. He also openly and unequivocally condemned violence:

  This grand meeting of the inhabitants of Amritsar looks with extreme indignation and disapproval on all those revolutionary actions which are the inevitable result of the inappropriate and inequitable attitude on the part of the Government and entertains apprehension that this despotic conduct of the Government might prove deleterious to the British Government.4

  If Rex Dyer even saw the agenda for the meeting, he was reading something very different between the lines.

  The Golden Temple had been welcoming a steady flow of worshipers since daybreak. By midday, the heat thinned the lines and the skies filled instead. Children took advantage of the hot breeze above the city, flying their brightly coloured paper kites. Baisakhi filled the earth and the sky with colour.

  Ishwar Das Anand lay on his back watching the kites duel with each other from a string cot he had pulled out into the courtyard of his guest house. He had allowed himself a late and lazy morning, well-deserved after the wearing journey of the day before. After a rich breakfast, he had fallen asleep again, all good intentions of visiting the Golden Temple evaporating in the heat. He had nowhere to be and nobody to tell him what to do and savoured the time he had stolen for himself, a bit of peace in this crazy city.

  Ishwar Das’s musti friends had arranged to have a late lunch with him at Jallianwala Bagh just after three. It was not far to walk to the Bagh from his guest house, so it left him plenty of time to doze, wash, dress, meet his friends, and still get to the market in time to do his deal. The scrap dealer with his sewing machines had agreed to meet him between four and five. He would conclude his business and the evening would be his, free to do whatever his friends had in mind – the perfect plan.

  When Ishwar Das reached the Bagh later that afternoon, he could seehe satyagrahi* volunteers were out in force. A makeshift platform of cobbled-together planks, surrounded by busy-looking men in white khadi† greeted him as soon as he passed through the narrow alleyway. They bustled with such a sense of self-importance he half expected Gandhi to turn up. When it became clear that would not be happening, Ishwar Das drifted, bored and hungry, towards the shade of the perimeter wall, where his friends and his lunch were waiting.

  Many had come to Jallianwala Bagh that afternoon in response to the political handbills, but others, families with children, worshippers from the Golden Temple, people taking a break from the city, had come to the garden with the same idea as Ishwar Das. They wanted to meet and eat. The food vendors had been particularly exuberant that day, anxious to make up for the lack of sales during recent disturbances and curfews. Ishwar Das would remember years later that the ground was covered in greasy translucent paper, discarded wrappings from the food that made Amritsar famous throughout the province.

  Baisakhi in Amritsar usually involved an enormous livestock fair, but after the recent trouble the British had cancelled both the horse and cattle market. News had not managed to reach everyone, however, and some poor souls had travelled miles, dragging unwilling animals behind them. Left with no place to sell them, several brought their bullocks into the Bagh, resigned to the fact that the hulking beasts would be returning with them at the end of the day.

  Amid the feet and hooves, some still managed to stretch out and sleep, worn out by heat and heavy lunches
. Ishwar Das marvelled at their ability to doze in the filth, as he irritably pulled yet another piece of sticky paper from his freshly polished shoes. Laughing at his discomfort, his friends dragged him to sit down in the dust with them. Nobody would be starched and clean on Baisakhi day, they assured him, least of all a scrap-metal dealer. Who exactly was he trying to impress? Ishwar Das relaxed into their laughter, kicked off his uncomfortable shoes and ate. The food really was as good as he’d heard. It was almost good enough to make him forget why he had come to the city in the first place.

  At 4 p.m., Brigadier General Dyer was on the move. It had taken him all of fifteen minutes to summon his men and muster them behind his two machine-gun-mounted cars. The soldiers carried Lee–Enfield rifles and around thirty-three rounds of ammunition each. The Gurkhas, who made up half of his force, were also armed with traditional kukris, curve-bladed machetes. Amritsaris jumped out of their way, making space for the convoy to pass through the crowded Baisakhi streets.

  As a distant clock struck four, Ishwar Das realised with a start that he was going to be late. Brushing dust from his clothes, spitting on a handkerchief and trying to clean his now-detested shoes, he did his best to smarten himself up again. Shouting over his shoulder, he told his friends to save his place and get him something sweet to eat. Hopefully he would not be long and he was sure to be hungry again soon. Pushing his way through the crowds to the narrow exit, he was barely aware that the speeches were about to start.

  Desperately trying to remember the way, Ishwar Das ran past a column of soldiers coming towards him. He flattened himself against a wall to let them pass.

  Ishwar Das had become accustomed to the massive presence of soldiers since his arrival. He believed this was just how it was in the big city and thought nothing more about the soldiers as he pushed his way into the bazaar, thinking only of broken sewing machines. He was going to make his father proud.