The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, also known as the Amritsar Massacre, was a tragic incident that took place on April 13, 1919, in Amritsar, Punjab, during the British rule in India.

Here is a summary of the Jallianwala Bagh incident:

On April 13, 1919, which was the day of Baisakhi, a major Sikh festival, a large crowd had gathered in the Jallianwala Bagh, a public garden in Amritsar. The crowd consisted of Indian civilians, including women and children, who had assembled to celebrate the festival and to also participate in a peaceful protest against the recently enacted Rowlatt Act, which had given the British government extensive powers to quell public dissent.

The gathering was deemed illegal by the British authorities, and the military commander of Amritsar, Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, ordered his troops to fire on the unarmed crowd without warning. The troops, comprised of Gurkha and Baluchi soldiers, fired over 1,600 rounds of ammunition into the densely packed crowd, killing hundreds and injuring thousands.

Eyewitness accounts describe the horrific scene, with people trapped in the narrow exits of the garden and unable to escape the hail of bullets. The official death toll was put at around 400, but many historians believe the actual number of casualties was much higher, perhaps as many as 1,000 or more.

The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre was a pivotal event in the Indian independence movement, eliciting widespread outrage and condemnation of the British government’s brutality. It marked a turning point in the growing resentment against the colonial rule and further galvanized the Indian people’s resolve to achieve self-governance and freedom from the British Empire.

The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre is remembered as one of the most infamous and tragic incidents in the history of the Indian independence struggle, a grim reminder of the violence and repression that the Indian people faced under British rule.