Jallianwala Bagh Massacre: The First Wave of Mass Struggle and Its Aftermath, 1919–26

The First World War (1914–18) came to an end when, in November 1918, Germany signed the Armistice with the victorious Allies (Britain, France and the United States); Germany’s own allies, Turkey and Austria–Hungary, had already done so. In this war India had at stake no interests of its own. Yet it was made to raise an army of 1.2 million, of whom as many as 74,000 died on battlefields outside India – in France, Iraq, Palestine and elsewhere – mainly for the sake of aggrandizement of the British Empire. Poor as India was, it was made to gift to Britain £100 million, then equal to Rs 150 crore – an enormous sum at the time – along with an annual expenditure of £20 to 30 million (Rs 30 to 45 crore) over India’s own military effort in the war. Prices nearly doubled (rising 1.9 times) between 1914 and 1919. Returning soldiers brought fatal infection from abroad: the resultant influenza that raged in the country in 1918–19 carried away 20 million people or 6.6 per cent of India’s total population!