The Hunter Committee of Inquiry

The massacre at Jallianwalla Bagh shocked Indians and many British as well. The Secretary of State for India, Edwin Montagu, ordered that a committee of inquiry be formed to investigate the matter. So, on October 14, 1919, the Government of India announced the formation of the Disorders Inquiry Committee, which came to be more widely and variously known as the Hunter Committee/Commission after the name of its chairman, Lord William Hunter, former Solicitor-General for Scotland and Senator of the College of Justice in Scotland. The purpose of the commission was to “investigate the recent disturbances in Bombay, Delhi and Punjab, about their causes, and the measures taken to cope with them”.

There were three Indians among the members, namely, Sir Chimanlal Harilal Setalvad, Vice-Chancellor of Bombay

University and advocate of the Bombay High Court; Pandit Jagat Narayan, lawyer and Member of the Legislative Council of the United Provinces; and Sardar Sahibzada Sultan Ahmad Khan, lawyer from Gwalior State.

After meeting in Delhi on October 29, the committee took statements from witnesses called in from Delhi, Ahmedabad, Bombay and Lahore. In November, the committee reached Lahore and examined the principal witnesses to the events in Amritsar. Dyer was called before the committee. He was confident that what he had done was only his duty. Dyer stated that his intentions had been to strike terror throughout the Punjab and in doing so, reduce the moral stature of the ‘rebels’. Dyer is reported to have explained his sense of honour by saying, “I think it quite possible that I could have dispersed the crowd without firing but they would have come back again and laughed, and I would have made, what I consider, a fool of myself.” He also stated that he did not make any effort to tend to the wounded after the shooting as he did not consider it his job.

Though Dyer’s statement caused racial tensions among the members of the committee, the final report, released in March 1920, unanimously condemned Dyer’s actions. The report stated that the lack of notice to disperse from the Bagh in the beginning was an error; the length of firing showed a grave error; Dyer’s motive of producing a sufficient moral effect was to be condemned; Dyer had overstepped the bounds of his authority; there had been no conspiracy to overthrow British rule in the Punjab. The minority report of the Indian members further added that the proclamations banning public meetings were insufficiently publicised; there were innocent people in the crowd, and there had not been any violence in the Bagh beforehand; Dyer should have either ordered his troops to help the wounded or instructed the civil authorities to do so; Dyer’s actions had been “inhuman and un-British” and had greatly injured the image of British rule in India.

The Hunter Committee did not impose any penal or disciplinary action because Dyer’s actions were condoned by various superiors (later upheld by the Army Council).

Also, before the Hunter Committee began its proceedings, the government had passed an Indemnity Act for the protection of its officers. The “white washing bill” as the Indemnity Act was called, was severely criticised by Motilal Nehru and others.

In England, it fell to the Secretary of State for War at the time, Winston Churchill, to review the report of the commission. In the House of Commons, Churchill (no lover of Indians) condemned what had happened at Amritsar. He called it “monstrous”. A former prime minister of Britain,

H.H. Asquith called it “one of the worst outrages in the whole of our history”. The cabinet agreed with Churchill that Dyer was a dangerous man and could not be allowed to continue in his post. The decision that Dyer should be dismissed was conveyed to the Army Council. In the end, Dyer was found guilty of a mistaken notion of duty and relieved of his command in March 1920. He was recalled to England. No legal action was taken against him; he drew half pay and received his army pension.

Dyer was not, however, universally condemned. In the House of Lords, most of the peers favoured Dyer and the house passed a motion in his support. And the Morning Post is reported to have raised a sum of 26,000 pounds for Dyer; a famous contributor to the fund was Rudyard Kipling.

Strangely enough, the clergy of the Golden Temple, led by Arur Singh, honoured Dyer by declaring him a Sikh. The honouring of Dyer by the priests of Sri Darbar Sahib, Amritsar, was one of the reasons behind the intensification of the demand for reforming the management of Sikh shrines already being voiced by societies such as the Khalsa Diwan Majha and Central Majha Khalsa Diwan. This resulted in the launch of what came to be known as the Gurudwara Reform movement.