By Sunil Kumar
Frankly, to compare an event that happened in 1919- British India and 1989 Communist China is a bit of a stretch. My gut response to this question is this, similarities are struggle against a brutal empire. But given the current kowtowing and thwarting of free speech even on social media, I would say that we have entered into a new ‘Dark Age’.
Jallianwala Bagh was a brutal bloody slap on the fledgling Indian freedom movement by the Irish servants of the British empire- Reginald Dyer and the Irish governor of the Punjab.
India’s Amritsar massacre bore the ‘made in Ireland’ mark
The Punjab was remarkably secular at the time with Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims all taking up cudgels against the Empire. The Empire was always on the lookout for threats to the Crown and its prize jewel. State policy was to ‘discourage’ any sort of ‘unity’ in the natives. The 1905 Partition of Bengal was only the beginning of ‘Divide and Rule’ officially adopted as a carefully thought out strategy.
This is a fact described even by the leftist ‘historical’ romance writer Dalrymple whose outsize fascination with the Mughals and reverence from a fawning Indian reading public has turned him into another one of the long line of privileged propogandists foisted on an unsuspecting, uncritical Indian readership. Enough of the digression into the present day.
The fact that Indians were massacred by their fellow countrymen who were ‘loyal Gungadins’ of the British empire is a shocking fact. Current Anglophile Indians who like Kipling may be shocked to know that he raised a fund for Dyer after he was sacked.
Coming to the 1989 incident in Communist China, 49 years after the dictatorship of the proletariat. The fledgling democracy movement was brutally suppressed by the Peking/Beijing CPC. But, apart from great discussions in academia and Western sources, I dare say it did not have as great an impact on the future course of the nation as say as the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Tagore returned his knighthood, and Gandhi got the ‘moral’ impetus and a compass to lead the freedom movement.
This statement is of course debatable because of the importance of China in world affairs and the West kowtowing before it like way back in the 1700s. But, the Chinese have mostly ignored it and proceeded to build a country of gleaming skyscrapers from a cycle-infested People’s Republic. ‘Communism in name with capitalist characteristics’. The 1989 event has possibly had more of an impact on ‘world history’ because of the possible repercussions if China had become a democracy.
Their country did not fracture after this, and salami slicing now has reached its zenith. China claims everything in the world except the Covid virus. I am being absolutely nice and respectful here, o Great dark lords of moderation. This is only rehashing of news reported everywhere. Pray do not read anything dark and insidious in this.
America was also probably involved in funding the research lab in China(again- news sources), but since this is a social network headquartered there, I have to censor myself at this point.
India on the other hand was brutally partitioned as you know in 1947. Britain and America’s only interest in the subcontinent was the power game against the Soviet Union, nothing new there. Jallianwala Bagh was more of a power play aimed at quashing an already subjugated to the core Indian populace by a loyal servant of the King-Emperor.
China with its Great Leap Forwards and Cultural Revolutions was nevertheless governed by its own people and the ‘Red Book’. Deng Xiaoping had only been in power for a relatively short time till then, and the later economic renaissance all but negated the impact of this ‘important’ event in Beijing. That is all I can think of at the moment. Thanks.
