Jallianwala Bagh: An Empire of Fear and the Making of the Amritsar Massacre

Kim A Wagner

A hundred years after the event, Kim A Wagner, a renowned scholar of empire, takes a close look at the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919. He analyses the event and its enormous impact on the dynamic between India and Britain, using research and the accounts of citizens, and suggests that Reginald Dyer’s instructions to the British army to fire their rifles at a crowd of Indians was propelled by fear.

Viking, 304 pages, Rs 599