Researched by: Sara Varghese

First, a quick history lesson

• On April 13, 1919, Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer marched his soldiers to Jallianwala Bagh—where they blocked the single, narrow lane that led to the ground. 
• Gathered inside the Bagh were 15,000-20,000 people protesting the draconian Rowlatt Act—which allowed the colonial government to indiscriminately arrest people as “terrorists.” 
• Authorities had imposed martial rule but news of the order banning the assembly of more than four people had not reached Amritsar yet.
• At 5 pm, Dyer’s 50 soldiers—armed with .303, Lee Enfield and bolt action rifles—opened fire on the crowd without any warning. 
• They fired all the 1,650 rounds, and the firing lasted ten minutes.
• The official death toll according to the British was 379, but the Indian National Congress insisted at least 1,000 were killed and 500 injured. 
• At least 120 bodies were recovered from the well inside in the Bagh—where people jumped in a panic to save themselves.
• After an inquiry into the tragedy, Dyer was removed from his post—but he was treated as a hero by the British public. 
• It also marked a turning point in the freedom struggle—convincing Gandhi-ji that cooperation with the colonial government was not possible after this “wanton cruelty and inhumanity almost unparalleled in modern times.”

The latest scholarship: has failed to establish the exact number of dead—which range from 200 to 2,000. The recently republished ‘Jallianwala Bagh’ by historian VN Datta puts the number at 700—but insists there were no women and children at the gathering. More intriguingly, Datta lays out evidence of a plan to deliberately engineer a massacre—arguing that a government agent named Hans Raj made efforts to ensure that the meeting at the Bagh would take place. Also this:

“As the gathering panicked on seeing the military, Hans Raj mounted the stage to say that the military will not fire, and that the meeting should proceed with its work. He then signalled Dyer by dropping his handkerchief, walked towards the General and vanished forever.”

Ok, tell me about the memorial…

The original Jallianwala Bagh memorial was first inaugurated back in 1961 by President Rajendra Prasad—exactly 42 years after the tragedy. The most notable part of the memorial was the ‘Flame of Liberty’ monument designed by American sculptor Benjamin Polk:

In 2015, the entire area around the next-door Golden Temple was renovated—but the Bagh was left out. And it was gently going to seed over the years. The government made up for this omission in 2019—allocating Rs 200 million (20 crore) for its restoration to mark the 100 year anniversary of the tragedy. The project was supervised by the Archaeological Survey of India and developed by Ahmedabad-based Vama Communications—which had previously worked on the National Police Museum in Delhi and Mahatma Gandhi Museum in Rajkot. The Bagh was shut to the public until Saturday—when the Prime Minister unveiled its new look, sparking all the furore. 

Here’s a bird’s eye view of the new look:

Side note: Even before its unveiling, the renovation briefly ran into trouble due to an image of two “semi-naked” women (in the style of classical paintings)—which was placed in the gallery alongside the likes of Guru Nanak and Maharaja Ranjit Singh. It was removed after angry objections from local activists. See the offending image below (tap to zoom):

So what’s wrong with it?

Professor of Global and Imperial History Kim Wagner kicked it all of with this tweet: 

“Devastated to hear that Jallianwala Bagh, site of the Amritsar Massacre of 1919, has been revamped –which means that the last traces of the event have effectively been erased...This is sadly just part of the general Disneyfication of the old city of Amritsar.”

And these are the key changes that have sparked outrage.

One, the well: Now named the ‘Shaheedi Khu’ (Martyrs’ Well), the well’s mouth had been left uncovered, allowing visitors to make offerings of money and flowers. Thanks to the renovation, the well has been plastered and painted from the inside. And the original brick and concrete canopy has been replaced by a fiberglass version that now encases it. The well, therefore, is no longer accessible to visitors. This is the original:

And while we couldn’t find images of the new version, here is a picture of the dismantled version:

Two, the entrance: This change has evoked the sharpest reaction. The narrow lane that leads to the Bagh—and through which Dyer led his men—has been paved and the walls covered with murals. The sculptures are supposed to “represent ordinary Punjabis from different walks of life, who walked into the park on that fateful day, but never returned.” This is what it looked like before:

And this is what it looks like after:

Historian S Irfan Habib raged: 

“It is absolutely gaudy...Why should there be murals on the wall? Changes the whole idea of the place from where Dyer entered to kill. Adding glamour to the little corridor changes the whole visual history. History itself is being re-written and renovated. This is the corporatisation of monuments.”

Three, the big show: Part of the revamp is a daily 28-minute sound and light show re-enacting the events of that fateful day. Here’s a snippet of what it looks like: 

Just the existence of the show seemed to irk many: “A light and sound show at Jallianwala Wala Bagh? When did mass murder become entertainment?” Though to be fair, a similar show—narrated by Amitabh Bachchan—was screened at Jallianwala Bagh for many years, and it was one of its most popular attractions. It fell by the wayside as the Bagh declined due to neglect and lack of funds.

Point to note: Staging shows at sites that mark great tragedy isn’t unique to Jallianwala Bagh. Every year, the 9/11 site of the twin towers in New York features a ‘Tribute in Light’—where two twin beams shooting up four miles into the sky replicate the two towers (see it here). And the colonial penal colony Kala Pani in the Andamans offers a sound and light show on the history of the island (see it here).

Not helping matters at all: This bizarre jazzed-up promo for the revamped memorial shared by PM Modi himself:

So this is about turning tragedy into tourism?

Essentially. As Harnidh Kaur tweeted: “Jallianwala Bagh isn’t a place of celebration. It’s a place of mourning and of deep, abiding grief. The starkness of the Bagh itself is a reminder of what happened there. what a mockery of everything it once represented.”

That said, ‘grief tourism’ isn’t something new. From Auschwitz to Chernobyl, Gettysburg, the site of the Kennedy assassination and the 9/11 Memorial, people make the sites of terrible atrocities and deaths part of their vacation plan. As the Washington Post explains: 

“Dark tourism refers to visiting places where some of the darkest events of human history have unfolded. That can include genocide, assassination, incarceration, ethnic cleansing, war or disaster — either natural or accidental. Some might associate the idea with ghost stories and scares, but those who study the practice say it’s unrelated to fear or supernatural elements… ‘It’s not a new phenomenon,’ says J. John Lennon, a professor of tourism at Glasgow Caledonian University, in Scotland, who coined the term with a colleague in 1996. ‘There’s evidence that dark tourism goes back to the Battle of Waterloo where people watched from their carriages the battle taking place.’”

The bottomline: There is a thin but very important line between restoration and renovation. And the government appears to have crossed it.

Reading list

There isn’t much more to this. There are plenty more photos of the revamped memorial here. Indian Express has more details on the renovation. Scroll and The Telegraph cover the outraged reactions to the changes. This older Print story on the neglect suffered by Jallianwala Bagh is eye-opening. Washington Post has a very deep dive into ‘grief tourism.’