Massacre by the Book: Amritsar and the Rules of Public-Order Policing in Britain and India

Abstract

In the immediate aftermath of the 1919 killings at Amritsar, where British forces commanded by Reginald Dyer gunned down hundreds of unarmed Indians at an illegal demonstration, debate centered on whether Dyer's actions were typical or atypical of British behavior in India. While British commentators generally regarded this violence as aberrant and ‘un-British,’ Indian nationalists and some British observers saw the killings as merely an unusually naked manifestation of the generalized violence of British imperialism. This article offers a re-examination of the Amritsar killings by placing Dyer's behaviour within the context of the rules governing public-order policing in both India and Britain. While broadly agreeing that the killings were part of a pattern of state violence in British India, it argues that the killings were not carried out in opposition to the rule of law but were, in fact, authorized by the law. In both Britain and India, the rules of public-order policing gave police and military commanders the power to use deadly force in dispersing crowds and by remaining deliberately vague about when such force should be used. The restraint of state violence in Britain came about through the vigilance of the press and Parliament, but in India state violence against large crowds was much more common due to fewer external checks. The killings at Amritsar did not violate the rule of law, therefore, but they did expose a profound difference between Britain and India in how that law was enacted.