On 10 April 1919, the peppery governor of the Punjab, Sir Michael O’Dwyer, ordered the immediate arrest of two leaders of the Indian National Congress in Amritsar. Doctors Satyapal and Kitchlew were both gentle, Cambridge-educated medics who had responded to Gandhi’s call for non-violent resistance to British rule, satyagraha. O’Dwyer took the view that their actions were treacherous and seditious.
William Dalrymple
Bloodbath in the Punjab
Kim Wagner’s scholarly study, setting the massacre in its full historical context, is as close to the truth as we are ever likely to get
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