Colonel Reginald Edward Harry Dyer, (9 October 1864 – 23 July 1927) was a British military officer in the Bengal Army and later the newly constituted British Indian Army. His military career began in the regular British Army, but he soon transferred to the presidency armies of India.
As a temporary brigadier-general, he was responsible for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre that took place on 13 April 1919 in Amritsar (in the province of Punjab). He has been called "the Butcher of Amritsar", because of his order to fire on a large gathering of people. The official report stated that this resulted in the killing of at least 379 people and the injuring of over a thousand more. Some submissions to the official inquiry suggested a higher number of deaths. After the massacre, he served in the Third Anglo-Afghan war, where he lifted the siege at Thal and inflicted heavy casualties on Afghans.
Dyer later resigned. He was widely condemned for spearheading the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, both in Britain and India, but he became a celebrated hero among some with connections to the British Raj.
Dyer was born on 9 October 1864 in Murree, in the Punjab province of British India, which is now in Pakistan. He was the son of Edward Dyer, a brewer who managed the Murree Brewery, and Mary Passmore. He spent his childhood in Murree and Shimla and received his early education at the Lawrence College Ghora Gali, Murree and Bishop Cotton School in Shimla. From eleven he attended Midleton College in County Cork, Ireland, before briefly studying medicine, at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. Dyer then decided to pursue a military career, and enrolled at the Royal Military College of Sandhurst, from where he graduated in August 1885. He was also fluent in a number of Indian languages as well as Persian.
Following his graduation, Dyer was commissioned into the Queen's Royal Regiment (West Surrey) as a lieutenant, and performed riot control duties in Belfast (1886) and served in the Third Burmese War (1886–87). He transferred to the Bengal Army, initially joining the Bengal Staff Corps as a lieutenant in 1887. He was attached to the 39th Bengal Infantry, later transferring to the 29th Punjabis. Dyer served in the latter in the Black Mountain campaign (1888), the Chitral Relief (1895) (promoted to captain in November 1896) and, after attending the Staff College, Camberley from 1896 to 1897, the Mahsud blockade (1901–02).
In 1901 he was appointed a deputy assistant adjutant general. In August 1903, Dyer was promoted to major, and served with the Landi Kotal Expedition (1908). He commanded the 25th Punjabis in India and Hong Kong and was promoted to lieutenant colonel in May 1910.
During the First World War (1914–18), he commanded the Seistan Force, for which he was mentioned in dispatches and made a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB). He was promoted to colonel in March 1915, and was promoted to temporary brigadier-general in February 1916, when he took command of a brigade, and again in March 1918. In 1919, about a month after the Jallianwala Bagh killing, Dyer served in the Third Anglo-Afghan War. His brigade relieved the garrison of Thal, and inflicted heavy casualties on Afghans, for which he was again mentioned in dispatches. For a few months in 1919 he was posted to the 5th Brigade at Jamrud. He retired on 17 July 1920, retaining the rank of colonel.
In 1888 Dyer married Frances Anne Trevor Ommaney, the daughter of Edmund Piper Ommaney, on 4 April 1888, in St Martin's Church, Jhansi, India. The first of their three children, Gladys, was born in Shimla, India, in 1889. They also had two sons, Ivon Reginald, born 1895 and Geoffrey Edward MacLeod, born 1896.
In 1919, the European population in Punjab feared the locals would overthrow British rule. A nationwide hartal (strike action), which was called on 30 March (later changed to 6 April) by Mahatma Gandhi, had turned violent in some areas. Authorities were also becoming concerned by displays of Hindu-Muslim unity. Michael O'Dwyer, the Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab, decided to deport major agitators from the province. One of those targeted was Dr. Satyapal, a Hindu who had served with the Royal Army Medical Corps during the First World War. He advocated non-violent civil disobedience and was forbidden by the authorities to speak publicly. Another agitator was Dr. Saifuddin Kitchlew, a Muslim barrister who wanted political change and also preached non-violence. The district magistrate, acting on orders from the Punjab government, had the two leaders arrested.
In protest at this action, demonstrators headed for the residence of Miles Irving, the Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar. The deputy commissioner had given orders that protestors were not to be allowed to pass into the civil lines (the civilian administrative area, effectively the "British area" of town). Army pickets fired on the crowd, killing at least eight protesters and wounding others. As a result, angry mobs formed, returning to Amritsar's city centre, setting fire to government buildings and attacking Europeans in the city. Three British bank employees were beaten to death, and Marcella Sherwood, who supervised the Mission Day School for Girls, was cycling around the city to close her schools when she was assaulted by a mob in a narrow street called the Kucha Kurrichhan. Sherwood was rescued from the mob by (Indian) locals. They hid the teacher, who was injured in the beating, before moving her to the fort. Dyer, who was the commandant of the infantry brigade in Jalandhar, was incensed that a European woman had been attacked and decided to take action. He arrived on 11 April to assume command.
The event known historically as the Amritsar massacre occurred on 13 April 1919 in Amritsar. The date coincided with that of the annual Baisakhi celebrations which are both a religious and a cultural festival of the Punjabis, and would have attracted visitors from outside the city. On the morning of 13 April, Dyer issued a proclamation in English, Urdu and Punjabi at 19 locations around the city, and had handbills distributed, to the effect that a curfew was imposed, no processions were to take place, and that meetings of more than four individuals could be fired upon. By 12:30pm that day, Dyer was informed that, in defiance of his orders, a meeting was to be held in the Jallianwala Bagh.
Dyer was determined to suppress disobedience in Amritsar. The proposed meeting was to take place in the Jallianwala Bagh, in defiance of the proclamation; Dyer saw this as an opportunity to, in his view, suppress rebels, and, as he claimed, do so in isolation from the general populace. The meeting assembled at Jallianwala Bagh, a walled space of 6 to 7 acres (2 to 3 ha) with five entrances, four of which were narrow, admitting only a few people at a time. The fifth entrance was that used by Dyer and his troops. The organiser of the meeting was Dr Mohammed Bashir, who was later found guilty of inciting the attack on the National Bank. Seven people had addressed the meeting before Dyer arrived, including Brij Gopi Nath who read a poem inciting people to fight against the British crimes.
Dyer had at his command 50 troops, including 25 Gurkhas of 1/9 Gurkha Rifles (1st battalion, 9th Gurkha Rifles), 25 Pathans and Baluch from 59th Sindh Rifles, armed with .303 Lee–Enfield rifles, plus a further 40 Gurkhas armed only with kukris. He also had two armoured cars with machine guns, which were unable to pass through the entrance, and Dyer made no attempt to dismount their Vickers Machine Guns and deploy them in the Bagh. Upon entering the Bagh, the general ordered the troops to shoot directly into the gathering. The shooting continued unabated for about 10 minutes, and the soldiers fired a total of 1,650 rounds of ammunition, roughly a third of the rounds carried.
Dyer is reported to have, from time to time, "checked his fire and directed it upon places where the crowd was thickest", not because the crowd was slow to disperse, but because he "had made up his mind to punish them for having assembled there." Some of the soldiers initially shot into the air, at which Dyer shouted: "Fire low. What have you been brought here for?" Later, Dyer's own testimony revealed that the crowd was not given any warning to disperse and he was not remorseful for having ordered his troops to shoot.