Jallianwala Bagh

CHAPTER 1 - The River

Ari raced down the streets, hooting with joy, not a care in the world. At his side was his little brother, Arjun, whose short legs laboured to keep up with his eagerness to run abreast Ari. Today was Bhaisaki! The whole town was gearing up to celebrate this festival and pomp and grandeur were the norm. The sikhs were going to bathe in the river, a familiar cascade of general chaos was witnessed by the pair when they ran alongside the community fair site, the culprits being the happy people celebrating the spring harvest festival by setting up their stalls and enjoying a general merriment. With a twinge of guilt, Ari remembered that he had promised to help his parents set up their stall in the fair, but dismissed the unwelcome feeling, reasoning out that since his friends didn't have to help their parents, it was unfair of his own to expect him to help them set up theirs. Content with his reasoning, he convinced himself to keep running and hooting. 'Where are we going, Bhaiya?' asked Arjun, his breath already starting to come out in short gasps, his skin glistening with sweat. Ari stopped, noticing that his brother probably needed some rest or he might as well collapse.

He sighed, a mix of affection and pity for his younger brother. Arjun did not know, but he was found by Ari, floating along a river while Ari was playing. It looked as though the baby Arjun was abandoned. Ari swam into the river and dragged the baby back to dry land and immediately took it back home. His parents decided to raise Arjun too in their household.

Ari pointed to a motley gathering of kids, their friends. 'We're going to have fun', he said, grinning. The kids spotted the two brothers and waved at them, cawing and whooping with glee. Arjun started in recognition and scrambled towards them, while Ari walked towards them along the river bank, whistling nonchalantly, his hands in his pockets. By the time he had got there, his two friends and Arjun had already taken off their clothes and jumped into the river, taking advantage of the relatively slow current to splash around in the water, washing away their worries and troubles as easily as onion layers were peeled. 'And what troubles those are!' Ari ruminated, sitting down with his feet in the water, gloomily looking back at his reflection in the rippling river water. He glanced along the river edge and noticed that the sikhs were bathing in the river. He smiled ruefully, looked back down at his feet trailing in the water, dirtying it, and thought about how much had changed in the span of a year.

It all started early last year, in 1919. There was a relatively calm stretch before that fateful year. Ari knew that some kind of report, called the Montague-Chelmsford report, which the grownups referred to as 'Mont-Ford report', much to his amusement. What kind of name was 'Montford', he chuckled to himself at the time.

The Montague-Chelmsford Report was a set of recommendations made to the British Parliament in 1918 that became the theoretical basis for the Government of India Act of 1919. The report was the result of lengthy deliberations between Edwin Samuel Montague, secretary of state for India (1917–22), and Lord Chelmsford, viceroy of India (1916–21). In August 1917 Montague had informed the House of Commons that the policy of the British government toward India was thereafter to be one of increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration, with a view to the progressive realization of responsible government in India as an integral part of the empire. Soon afterward Montague headed a delegation that spent the winter of 1917–18 in India, during which he held his discussions with Chelmsford. The main element of the report was the recommendation that control over some aspects of provincial government be passed to Indian ministers responsible to an Indian electorate. However, the government was concerned that this would lead to radical and militant anti-colonialist movements. In lieu with this mindset, the Rowlatt Act was enforced on the people of India, in March,1919.

The Rowlatt Act was a cruel, harsh set of rules that the British parliament imposed on the Indian people. It allowed the Government to arrest anyone suspected of terrorist or anti colonialist activities, even without evidence or concrete reason. It also authorized the government to detain the Indian citizens for upto 2 years without trial.