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JALLIANWALA BAGH, NATIONALISM, and TAMIL NADU Dr ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 13, 2020 JALLIANWALA BAGH, NATIONALISM, AND TAMIL NADU Dr. Kodhandaraman Chinnathambi Lecturer, English Language Centre,Ibra College of Technology,Post Box: 327,Postal Code: 400, Sultanate of Oman Email: [email protected] Received: 14 March 2020 Revised and Accepted: 8 July 2020 ABSTRACT: The centennial commemoration of the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre of April 1919 provides an opportunity for the present generation, who are at a distance from that era temporally and historically, to gain a better understanding of the Indian Independence movement and Nationalism. It also offers an opportunity to examine how geographical distance played a crucial role in shaping the course of documentation of the event, and the varied ways in which it embedded itself in the memories of that generation in different parts of India, with special focus on what is now Tamil Nadu. At this juncture, it becomes evident that a revisit is possible only through two pathways; (a) the documentation available from the time of the event, and (b) oral history passed down from those who lived during those times and remembered the event. As both these sources are shaped by political and social power factors, a revisit requires one to travel through the trajectories of the making of history and of memory. Indian students of successive generations learn interpretations of history from textbooks and imbibe the fervour of Nationalism. Hence, this paper attempts to examine: (a) how the people of present-day Tamil Nadu reacted and responded to this massacre as compared to North India, both during the time of the event, and again during the observance of its centenary; (b) to what extent the present generation‟s view of the massacre is shaped by history text books in various States; and (c) in what way this revisit can throw light on the limits of nationalist historiography and the differences (documentations and memories) and controversies that underlie the process. KEYWORDS: Jallianwala Bagh, nationalism, memory, documentation, Justice Party, Tamil Nadu, text books I. INTRODUCTION On April 13, 1919, troops of the British India army were ordered by their commanding officer, Brigadier- General Dyer, to open fire on a large crowd of unarmed Indians during a public meeting at Jallianwalla Bagh near Amritsar in the state of Punjab. Several hundreds of people were killed in the massacre. The incident created a ripple effect across the colonial provinces and brought the extremists and moderate nationalists alike on to one platform to launch a Non-cooperation Movement. In order to study the effect of this event on the people of the erstwhile Madras presidency, a revisit through trajectories of historical documents and banned literature is necessary. Apart from throwing light on the reaction of the Madras Presidency and its people to this horrific massacre, such an attempt unravels interesting insights into some other important issues: (a) the rationale for the preservation of banned literature in libraries such as the National Archives of India, the British Museum Library and the India Office Library, (b) the reason for the colonial government‟s approval for preserving them, (c) the status of those banned works in the post-colonial era. II. PROSCRIBED LITERATURE It is important to note the role of British librarians whose persuasion led to the preservation of banned literature. Otherwise, during this revisit, the responses of Madras presidency to the brutal massacre would have been impossible. The colonial government did not want to preserve the banned works; it wanted to preserve only the „safe‟ works. However, the intervention of British librarians reversed the decision of the government. The conviction among British librarians that banned publications constituted a vital element of Indian literary output led to the preservation of two additional sets in London. Proscribed material initially was not included in shipment of Indian books to the copyright depositories, the India Office Library and the British Museum. In April of 1914, however, the Bombay government raised the issue of whether they should receive copies. The Government of India replied negatively, but the British Museum insisted on its legal right to possess all titles, not just those judged “safe” by the bureaucracy. At the same time, the museum‟s trustees offered to lock tip controversial items until their integration into the public library might be unobjectionable. The India Office agreed, and the Secretary of State called for a reconsideration of the question because of the literary and “perhaps pathological" interest of banned writings. The Government of India reversed its decision and instructed local authorities to send proscribed items to London. Most secretariats shipped two copies directly to the India 3082 ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 13, 2020 Office, which kept one and sent the other to the British Museum. The Punjab apparently dispatched copies directly to the museum. These arrangements were constantly disrupted; nevertheless, correspondence suggests that a stream of banned literature reached both depositories between 1914 and 1947. (Barrier, p166) Although the government reversed its decision and allowed the secretariats to ship the copies to the India Office, the works proscribed in the colonial era have yet to be deproscribed due to legal controversies. The British actions against Indian publications produced two final legacies. First, the formerly banned literature remains a source of bureaucratic controversy. According to the Indian Home Department‟s interpretation, the responsibility for deproscription resides with the provincial (now state) government that initially banned the work. The local administrations have not pursued that course, largely because of complicated procedure and lack of information on what actually has been banned and why. The works outlawed for colonial reasons therefore are technically proscribed even today. In addition to inadvertently creating a lingering legal problem, British controls had one beneficial result. Although proscription removed a substantial amount of Indian literature from circulation, the process also led to the preservation of many works that probably would have been scattered and lost. Attempts to meet political challenge thus have produced a cultural heritage that should make possible a reevaluation of many yet uncharted facets of nation building in modern South Asia. (Barrier, p162) The continuity of the banned status of the works proscribed in colonial era into the postcolonial independent nation signals the carryover of colonial-era discrimination, caste hierarchy, and ideological domination. It is important to take into account these points while examining Madras presidency‟s response to Jallianwala Bagh. III. MADRAS PRESIDENCY’S RESPONSES British authorities imposed martial law, press censorship, mass arrests, aerial attacks and shooting and public flogging on unarmed people in Punjab in the wake of the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre incident. That was not the case in Madras province. Was it due to geographical distance or socio-political differences between the two provinces? This important question leads us to carefully analyse the responses from this region and the politics underlying those responses. According to the available data in the Tamil Nadu Archives (TNA), there were only a few printing presses for newspapers, periodicals, pamphlets, books and cartoons. Also, it is important to note from a study of the print media of the time, that starting about a week after the incident and continuing to different time lines, writers in Madras presidency wrote articles condemning the incident as brutal and inhuman. These delayed and relatively mild responses pose important questions in the colonial context of Madras presidency in relation to the ideas of „Nation and Nationalism‟ and „Nationalists and Nation‟. Venkatraman, in his paper titled “The Agony of Punjab: Influence of Jallianwala Bagh Outrage on Seditious Political Literature in the Madras Presidency, 1919-1923”, discusses in detail the publications (reactions) in Madras presidency with regard to the massacre. It was on the 20th of April 1919, a full week after the event, that the newspaper “Nationalist” published an article “The Cult of the Bullet” highlighting the first interview between Gandhi and the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, with a reference to Punjab incident. The Government of Madras found the article offensive and demanded a security deposit of Rs. 2000/- under the Indian Press Act (1910). (14) According to this Act, the government could proscribe any work that it considered to be objectionable or seditious, and the proprietor of the press had to give a financial security and deposit the amount as decided by a judge. This was an important strategy that the colonial government employed to control the vernacular press. In the Nationalist case, the government asked G. Harisavarthama Rao the editor of the newspaper to deposit a security of Rs. 10,000/-. The editor did not deposit the amount, so the publication of Nationalist came to an end (15). “Hindunesan”, a Tamil newspaper, faced a similar fate as its editor, L. Anantha Aiyer, published articles against Rowlatt Bills and condemning the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre. Like the Nationalist, the publication of Hindunesan also came to an end. Swadesamitran, started in April 1882 by G. Subramaniya Iyer, the founder of The Hindu, published an article “The condition of Punjab” on the 25th of April,
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