Kesari 2: Britain is yet to apologise for the horrors of Jallianwala Bagh while ‘Hitler’ General Dyer’s family remembers him as an ‘honourable man’ | Bollywood News

Six years ago, Channel 4 decided to put together the great-granddaughter of Reginal Dyer, Caroline Dyer, in the same room as the grandson of one of the survivors of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Dyer was the man responsible for killing thousands of men, women and children when he ordered his troops to shoot at a peaceful gathering on April 13, 1919. Caroline called Dyer an “honourable man” who was liked the Indians and spoke many Indian languages, as if that absolved him of his crimes against humanity. Throughout the conversation, she laughed off the matter as she called one of the peaceful protestors a “looter”. She repeated that even though she isn’t well-read on the subject, she doesn’t need to be so to defend her great-grandfather.
This conversation between the descendants of two people who were on sharply opposing sides wasn’t a debate. If anything, this was a chance for Dyer’s family to apologise for his actions but instead, Caroline came across as someone who couldn’t see beyond the myth of her great-grandfather. But unlike Caroline, who simply said that one shouldn’t “wallow” in hory, Indians have been mourning the loss of their countrymen who died in this massacre over 105 years ago. On April 13, 1919, General Dyer ordered the British Indian Army to shoot at thousands of Indians who had gathered at the Jallianwala Bagh to peacefully protest against the Rowlatt Act. The inhumane act changed the course of the struggle of independence as the events in Amritsar on this dark day showed that the British could be as brutal as they wanted, without worrying about consequences. Michael O’Dwyer, who was the Lieutenant Governor of the state of Punjab, gave Dyer free reign to ‘control’ the situation in the city as he saw fit and their decisions from this point on, scarred generations of Indians.
Akshay Kumar-starrer Kesari 2 follows the aftermath of the incident when C Sankaran Nair was sued Michael O’Dwyer as the Britisher felt that his writings in ‘Gandhi and Anarchy’ blamed him for the massacre. “My case was that Michael O’Dwyer had authorised the atrocious act at Jallianwala Bagh,” Nair wrote in his autobiography, after the Hunter Commission declared Dyer’s actions as a “grave error” but did not punish O’Dwyer for his involvement. Nair was of the view that since O’Dwyer was responsible for Dyer’s actions, he was just as guilty.
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Vicky Kaushal in Sardar Udham.
In the last few years, Indian films, and a few British ones too, have revisited the tragedy and all of them have uniformly maintained that the events that took place that day were inhumane, ruthless and evil. While the British continue to stay the villains of the story, and rightly so, none of the films have ever examined that while it was Dyer who gave the orders, the ones executing the heinous orders were soldiers from the Sikh and Gorkha regiments, who shot at their fellow countrymen.
Shoojit Sircar’s Sardar Udham, where Vicky Kaushal played the titular role, was the story of one man on a mission who lived through the tragedy. It is telling that the first time that he gets to London, he visits the grave of Dyer and eventually assassinates O’Dwyer in broad daylight. The last act of the film shows the massacre not just as an act of violence, but as an incident that altered his thought process. As he runs from the site of the massacre to the hospital carrying one injured person after another, loads them up on a haath-gaadi so he can save more people, you feel the consequences of one man’s bad decisions. He is running breathlessly as he holds a little child in his arms, who is pronounced dead upon arrival. He tumbles and falls as the ground has no space left to walk, but has dead bodies piled on top of one another. The haunting images can induce nightmares and the assassination starts to feel justified.
The 2000 film Shaheed Uddham Singh, starring Raj Babbar, also chronicles the events that took place in the days before the massacre. In a significant scene in the film, it is directly indicated that the Britishers were trying to escalate communal tension in Amritsar as they planted a dead calf inside a temple. It is also hinted here that Dyer wanted to bomb the city, and actually wanted machine guns inside the Bagh so he could fire thousands of bullets at once. A similar sentiment is echoed in the 1982 film Gandhi as well, which was made the British director Richard Attenborough. Here, the massacre of the Jallianwala Bagh is criticised in a scene where Dyer is presented in front of the Hunter Commission. The events of the massacre are presented in a more clinical fashion here but the brutality still comes across.Story continues below this ad
Akshay Kumar plays C Sankaran Nair in Kesari 2.
The 1977 film Jallianwala Bagh, where Parikshit Sahni played Udham Singh, also discusses the events that happened in Amritsar days before the massacre as violence erupted in various pockets of the city. While this portion of the film is presented largely as an ideological battle between those who see violence as a form of rebellion vs those preaching non-violence, this remains one of the very few films where a common man refuses to serve the British for he can see that no job in the world is worth selling one’s soul.
It has been over 100 years and Britishers are yet to apologise for the unforgiving decisions made those responsible for this massacre. In 1997, when Queen Elizabeth II visited the site of the massacre, she addressed it as a “difficult episode” between the shared hory of the two countries. “But hory cannot be rewritten, however much we might sometimes wish otherwise. It has its moments of sadness, as well as gladness. We must learn from the sadness and build on the gladness,” she said. In the years since, British Prime Minsiters, David Cameron and Theresa May, have addressed the massacre but haven’t apologised for it.

Sampada Sharma has been the Copy Editor in the entertainment section at Indian Express Online since 2017. … Read More