Jallianwala Bagh massacre: Britain owes India an apology?

Decades after the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre, India gained freedom from British rule in 1947. However, the lack of a formal apology remained an open wound throughout the decades between Independent India's relations with Great Britain.

Jallianwala Bagh massacre still remains the ''darkest day'' in the history of India even after more than 103 years of this horrific incident. Also known as the Amritsar massacre, the bloodshed took place on April 13, 1919, during the festival of Baisakhi.

British General Reginald Dyer ordered his troops to open fire on thousands of unarmed men, women, and children who had gathered in Amritsar on April 13, 1919, killing 379 people, according to colonial-era records. However, according to Indians who stood witness to the most unfortunate incident of their time, several hundred were killed.

The 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre eventually became a key moment in the history of India’s independence movement, helping to consolidate the support and the push needed to break free from British rule.

Winston Churchill, one of Britain's most famous prime ministers, called the 1919 massacre of Indian protesters “monstrous,” while Queen Elizabeth said it was “distressing.” Prime Minister David Cameron described it as “deeply shameful.”

General Dyer, the man behind the bloodshed, too defended his actions and wrote in a letter that he had attacked the crowd because they had gathered “in open rebellion against the British crown.” In response, PM Churchill expressed some sympathy for General Dyer, highlighting the “danger to Europeans throughout that province” during an address in Parliament.

More tragically, General Dyer was accorded a warm welcome upon his return to Britain and was presented with a jewelled sword with the inscription, “Saviour of Punjab.” He also never went to jail for his ''unpardonable'' crimes. Back in India, top figures, including 'Gurudev' Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi, strongly condemned the attack and renounced their British Knighthood and Kaiser-i-Hind medal respectively.

But the British leaders never actually apologised for it and always stopped short of tending a formal apology for the bloodshed at the Jallianwala Bagh, a walled garden in the northern Indian city of Amritsar where hundreds of innocent civilians peacefully protesting colonial rule were shot dead on the orders of a tyrant British general.

Decades later, India gained freedom from British rule which came with the price of a violent partition of the subcontinent in 1947. However, the lack of a formal apology remained an open wound throughout the decades between Independent India's relations with Great Britain.

Though in 1997, Queen Elizabeth paid 30 seconds of silent homage at the Jallianwala Bagh, removing her shoes and laying marigolds at a pink granite memorial. Later, British PM David Cameron visited the Jallianwala Bagh in 2013 and voiced his regret over the incident, which is largely seen as a ''shameful scar on British India history.''

More than a century has passed since and no words or regrets can actually heal the wounds and sufferings of those who were killed in the incident and their generations which lived with a heavy heart but still a formal expression of remorse and sincere remembrance of all those who died can still somewhat heal the festering wounds.

So, do you think it is high time for Britain to take responsibility for Gen dyer's unmindful actions in 1919 and apologise for the bloodshed?