Amritsar massacre

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Amritsar massacre, 1919. On 13 April 1919 at Jallianwalla Bagh in Amritsar, General R. E. H. Dyer ordered his soldiers to fire on a protesting though unarmed crowd, killing 400 people. The shootings were for defiance of a martial law ban on assembly imposed under the Rowlatt Act, passed against sedition at the end of the First World War. The Act and the massacre became symbols of British oppression to the Indian freedom struggle, then developing a mass political following. Mahatma Gandhi led nation-wide demonstrations, which brought him to leadership of the Indian national movement.

David Anthony Washbrook

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