Jallianwala Bagh & Wagah Border

Nov 2018

The JallianwalaBagh massacre, also known as the Amritsar massacre, took place on 13 April 1919, when Acting Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer ordered troops of the British Indian Army to fire their rifles into a crowd of unarmed Indian civilians in JallianwalaBagh, Amritsar, Punjab, killing at least 379 people. It has been a century since the massacre at JallianwalaBagh, but Punjab is still to recover from the shock of it. The British Empire never did either—the impact of those bullets fired for ten minutes at an unarmed, peaceful crowd inside a community park with one narrow exit rang through its remaining years in India. Yet, the true horror of the event itself has been forgotten, as also the volatile atmosphere in Punjab at the time.

The Wagah Border Ceremony is a military practice carried out by the Indian Border Security Force and Pakistan Rangers. This ceremony is organised every day since 1959. But when the warlike situation or border dispute between two countries intensifies this ceremony is postponed for some days.