{"id":285259,"date":"2025-04-19T01:33:11","date_gmt":"2025-04-19T01:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/19\/kesari-2-britain-is-yet-to-apologise-for-the-horrors-of-jallianwala-bagh-while-hitler-general-dyers-family-remembers-him-as-an-honourable-man\/"},"modified":"2025-04-19T01:33:11","modified_gmt":"2025-04-19T01:33:11","slug":"kesari-2-britain-is-yet-to-apologise-for-the-horrors-of-jallianwala-bagh-while-hitler-general-dyers-family-remembers-him-as-an-honourable-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/19\/kesari-2-britain-is-yet-to-apologise-for-the-horrors-of-jallianwala-bagh-while-hitler-general-dyers-family-remembers-him-as-an-honourable-man\/","title":{"rendered":"Kesari 2: Britain is yet to apologise for the horrors of Jallianwala Bagh while \u2018Hitler\u2019 General Dyer\u2019s family remembers him as an \u2018honourable man\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Six years ago, Channel 4 decided to put together the great-granddaughter of Reginal Dyer, Caroline Dyer, in the same room as the grandson of one of the survivors of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.<\/a> <\/strong>Dyer was the man responsible for killing thousands of men, women and children when he ordered his troops to shoot at a peaceful gathering on April 13, 1919. Caroline called Dyer an \u201chonourable man\u201d who was liked by the Indians and spoke many Indian languages, as if that absolved him of his crimes against humanity. Throughout the conversation, she laughed off the matter as she called one of the peaceful protestors a \u201clooter\u201d. She repeated that even though she isn\u2019t well-read on the subject, she doesn\u2019t need to be so to defend her great-grandfather.<\/p>\n

This conversation between the descendants of two people who were on sharply opposing sides wasn\u2019t a debate. If anything, this was a chance for Dyer\u2019s family to apologise for his actions but instead, Caroline came across as someone who couldn\u2019t see beyond the myth of her great-grandfather. But unlike Caroline, who simply said that one shouldn\u2019t \u201cwallow\u201d in history, Indians have been mourning the loss of their countrymen who died in this massacre over 105 years ago. On April 13, 1919, General Dyer ordered the British Indian Army to shoot at thousands of Indians who had gathered at the Jallianwala Bagh to peacefully protest against the Rowlatt Act. The inhumane act changed the course of the struggle of independence<\/a><\/strong> as the events in Amritsar on this dark day showed that the British could be as brutal as they wanted, without worrying about consequences. Michael O\u2019Dwyer, who was the Lieutenant Governor of the state of Punjab, gave Dyer free reign to \u2018control\u2019 the situation in the city as he saw fit and their decisions from this point on, scarred generations of Indians.<\/p>\n

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Akshay Kumar<\/a>-starrer Kesari 2 follows the aftermath of the incident when C Sankaran Nair<\/a> <\/strong>was sued by Michael O\u2019Dwyer as the Britisher felt that his writings in \u2018Gandhi and Anarchy\u2019 blamed him for the massacre. \u201cMy case was that Michael O\u2019Dwyer had authorised the atrocious act at Jallianwala Bagh,\u201d Nair wrote in his autobiography, after the Hunter Commission declared Dyer\u2019s actions as a \u201cgrave error\u201d but did not punish O\u2019Dwyer for his involvement. Nair was of the view that since O\u2019Dwyer was responsible for Dyer\u2019s actions, he was just as guilty.<\/p>\n

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ALSO READ | The fearless Sir Sankaran Nair and the story of the Jallianwala Bagh case<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Vicky Vicky Kaushal in Sardar Udham.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the last few years, Indian films, and a few British ones too, have revisited the tragedy and all of them have uniformly maintained that the events that took place that day were inhumane, ruthless and evil. While the British continue to stay the villains of the story, and rightly so, none of the films have ever examined that while it was Dyer who gave the orders, the ones executing the heinous orders were soldiers from the Sikh and Gorkha regiments, who shot at their fellow countrymen.<\/p>\n

Shoojit Sircar\u2019s Sardar Udham, where Vicky Kaushal played the titular role, was the story of one man on a mission who lived through the tragedy. It is telling that the first time that he gets to London, he visits the grave of Dyer and eventually assassinates O\u2019Dwyer in broad daylight. The last act of the film shows the massacre not just as an act of violence, but as an incident that altered his thought process. As he runs from the site of the massacre to the hospital carrying one injured person after another, loads them up on a haath-gaadi<\/em> so he can save more people, you feel the consequences of one man\u2019s bad decisions. He is running breathlessly as he holds a little child in his arms, who is pronounced dead upon arrival. He tumbles and falls as the ground has no space left to walk, but has dead bodies piled on top of one another. The haunting images can induce nightmares and the assassination starts to feel justified.<\/p>\n

The 2000 film Shaheed Uddham Singh, starring Raj Babbar, also chronicles the events that took place in the days before the massacre. In a significant scene in the film, it is directly indicated that the Britishers were trying to escalate communal tension in Amritsar as they planted a dead calf inside a temple. It is also hinted here that Dyer wanted to bomb the city, and actually wanted machine guns inside the Bagh so he could fire thousands of bullets at once. A similar sentiment is echoed in the 1982 film Gandhi as well, which was made by the British director Richard Attenborough. Here, the massacre of the Jallianwala Bagh is criticised in a scene where Dyer is presented in front of the Hunter Commission. The events of the massacre are presented in a more clinical fashion here but the brutality still comes across.<\/p>\n

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\"Akshay Akshay Kumar plays C Sankaran Nair in Kesari 2.<\/span><\/p>\n

The 1977 film Jallianwala Bagh, where Parikshit Sahni played Udham Singh, also discusses the events that happened in Amritsar days before the massacre as violence erupted in various pockets of the city. While this portion of the film is presented largely as an ideological battle between those who see violence as a form of rebellion vs those preaching non-violence, this remains one of the very few films where a common man refuses to serve the British for he can see that no job in the world is worth selling one\u2019s soul.<\/p>\n

It has been over 100 years and Britishers are yet to apologise for the unforgiving decisions made by those responsible for this massacre. In 1997, when Queen Elizabeth II visited the site of the massacre, she addressed it as a \u201cdifficult episode\u201d between the shared history of the two countries. \u201cBut history cannot be rewritten, however much we might sometimes wish otherwise. It has its moments of sadness, as well as gladness. We must learn from the sadness and build on the gladness,\u201d she said. In the years since, British Prime Minsiters, David Cameron and Theresa May, have addressed the massacre but haven\u2019t apologised for it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sampada Sharma has been the Copy Editor in the entertainment section at Indian Express Online since 2017. … Read More <\/a>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n