Why Dyer was felicitated at Golden Temple days after Jallianwala Bagh massacre

Days after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919, Golden Temple managers invited Brigadier General Reginald Dyer and honoured him with a siropa and kirpan. The priests even urged the 'Butcher of Amritsar' to become a Sikh and agreed to waive the requirement of unshorn hair when he said he could not follow it as a serving British officer.

Reginald Dyer led roughly 50 soldiers into Jallianwala Bagh. At least 1,650 rounds were fired at a crowd of thousands. (Image: India Today)

It was July 1920, a year after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, that the 'Butcher of Amritsar', Reginald Dyer, was presented with a golden sword in London. The engraving on it read, "Defender of the Empire". Simultaneously, a public campaign by the conservative newspaper, Morning Post, raised 26,317 pounds for the military officer who had ordered troops to fire on a trapped crowd at Amritsar's Jallianwala Bagh, killing thousands of Indians. Yet perhaps the most controversial honour Dyer received came much earlier — and just days after the massacre, when he was welcomed and honoured at the Golden Temple in Amritsar with a siropa and kirpan .

Even as Winston Churchill (then the British Secretary of State for War and Air) condemned the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919 as a "monstrous event", Dyer's admirers in the British Parliament hailed him as the man who had "saved the Raj from collapse".

While sections in Britain hailed and honoured Dyer for the massacre, a baffling tribute had already been bestowed upon him at Amritsar's Golden Temple, just days after his troops opened fire on an unarmed crowd at the nearby Jallianwala Bagh.

The priests even proposed that Dyer be inducted as a Sikh and agreed to overlook the requirement of unshorn hair when he said he could not grow it as a serving British officer.

Days after ordering troops to fire on unarmed civilians at Jallianwala Bagh, Dyer was invited to the Golden Temple and honoured with a siropa (the highest robe of honour in Sikhism) and a kirpan (religious blade) by the shrine's management. To many Indians, including Sikhs, it remains one of the most mind-boggling and controversial anecdotes of Indian colonial history.

We are reminded of the incident from more than a century ago because of the Sikh religious authority taking political leaders to task. Earlier this week, the Akal Takht, Sikhism's highest temporal authority, declared Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann " Guru dokhi (anti-Guru)" and " Panth virodhi (anti-community)." The religious authority, which is located within the Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple) complex, accused Maan of lying about an objectionable video.

Mann rejected the charges, saying two forensic reports showed that he was not the person seen in the video .

Last year, former Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) chief Sukhbir Singh Badal was declared tankhaiya by the Akal Takht. Along with Badal, several other Akali Dal leaders, who were part of Punjab's SAD government (between 2007 and 2017), were "found guilty of religious misconduct". Sukhbir Singh Badal, the former Punjab Deputy CM, was made to put on a plaque around his neck with a note saying "his confession of sins" as he performed duties of atonement.

While the recent declaration of Bhagwant Mann as "anti-Guru" and "anti-community" highlights the enormous authority exercised by the religious institution, this week's History of It is about why Reginald Dyer, the 'Butcher of Amritsar', was honoured at the very seat of power in the city where he had presided over a bloodbath just days earlier.

So, did Sikhs support General Dyer? Who invited Dyer to the Golden Temple? Why was Dyer facilitated? That's all we would be looking at.

SO, WHO HONOURED DYER IN GOLDEN TEMPLE?

Here, the first thing to understand is that the Golden Temple or the Akal Takht of 1919 was very different from that of today. The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), which today manages the Harmandir Sahib and many historic Sikh shrines, did not exist then. Although the Akal Takht was already Sikhism's most-revered institution, it was yet to acquire the panth-wide support and authority that it would gain during and after the Gurdwara Reform Movement and the establishment of the SGPC in the 1920s. Because then, it were the hereditary elite priests who controlled the gurdwaras, their management and the religious edicts.

Back then, the control of major Sikh shrines rested with hereditary mahant , priests and Colonial British Raj-backed managers. And, many enjoyed patronage from the British administration. Historian Mohinder Singh in his seminal work, The Akali Movement, wrote that these managers, mahant and priests were frequently used by the administration's officials to honour British officials and condemn nationalist forces.

Author Khushwant Singh, in his book, A History of the Sikhs, recorded that after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and the imposition of martial law, Dyer actively sought to retain Sikh support. The British government's Hunter Co…