Review | The true story of Indian assassin who avenged massacre by British at Amritsar in 1919 – after a 21-year wait
- British soldiers gunned down 400 to 600 unarmed protesters in Amritsar, India, in 1919. Udham Singh survived the massacre
- 21 years later in London, he shot dead an East India Association official. His thrilling story is told in The Patient Assassin, by BBC journalist Anita Anand
The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge and India’s Quest for Independence, by Anita Anand, Simon & Schuster/Scribner, 3.5/5 stars
On April 13, 1919, British and imperial troops under the command of General Reginald “Rex” Dyer gunned down between 400 and 600 Indian protesters at Jallianwala Bagh, a garden near the Golden Temple in the city of Amritsar in India’s Punjab state. Many more protesters were wounded.
The shooting lasted for 10 minutes. Many were shot as they ran for cover. Some were killed as they tried to scale high walls. The Amritsar Massacre, Winston Churchill told the House of Commons, was a “slaughter”, a “monstrous event”, “an episode … without precedent or parallel in the modern history of the British Empire”. British historian AJP Taylor wrote that the massacre was “the decisive moment when Indians were alienated from British rule.”
In her new book The Patient Assassin, long-time BBC journalist Anita Anand uses the Amritsar Massacre as the backdrop to tell the fascinating story of Udham Singh, a low-caste Punjabi orphan who spent the next 21 years planning to avenge those who were killed at Amritsar by assassinating British officials he believed were responsible for the massacre.
On March 13, 1940, at a meeting of the East India Association at Caxton Hall in London, Udham Singh murdered Sir Michael O’Dwyer, who was Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab at the time of the massacre and who endorsed and defended the British action. Three other British officials were wounded in the attack.