Amritsar Massacre Research Paper

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General Dyer ordered his troops to open fire on a group of protesters having a meeting in jallianwala bagh, a garden in Amritsar. There was a massive crowd, consisting of women, children, babies and old men. General Dyer and his men had all the exits covered which lead to everyone scrambling around trying to find somewhere safe. This itself caused deaths by people falling and being trampled on by the hundreds of people running for their lives. General Dyer and his men shot for 15 minutes and they only stopped because they ran out of ammunition. They shot where the crowd was thickest. About 800 people were killed and a lot more were injured. General Dyer estimated there to be about 5,000 Indians but still continued with his shootings in attempt …show more content…

After the British military open fired at a group of 5,000 Indians, Gandhi still believed to answer back with violence was wrong. The Amritsar Massacre lead to Gandhi wanted nothing less than full independence from Britain, but he would achieve this without the use of violence. Gandhi began one of many of his civil disobedient acts. To answer back without violence, Gandhi decided to gather up as many Indians as possible and have them all burn their British made cloth. Many Indian women lost their jobs as spinners, weavers and tailors due to the British machinery. The cloth was mainly coming from Manchester and Leeds. To the Indians, cloth was considered to be a symbol of their country and now British government is taking that away. Gandhi and many more Indians all gathered together to burn all their British cloth and decided to only use homespun cloth. Throughout the film, we constantly see Gandhi spinning his own cloth to create his own clothes. It is these non-violent protests, which really make a difference to …show more content…

He would lead a group to march down to the beach of a town called Dandi. There, he and his followers began to make salt from the sea water. This is an act of civil disobedience because Britain had enacted a salt act, which prohibited the creation of salt. As Gandhi and his followers continued to make salt illegally, the police began to arrive. The police took Gandhi away to jail for this act of resilience. Maulana Azad spoke up for Gandhi after he was taken away and told the rest of his followers that they will not react with violence and instead teach everyone a lesson. This resulted in the men getting beat with sticks by the guards and police and they did not fight back or even attempt to defend themselves, because “An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.” Eventually Gandhi was released from prison and was right back trying to improve India. Gandhi gave everything he had to help India. No matter how many hardships he faced, he never gave

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