‘Disney-fied’ revamp of India’s Jallianwala Bagh memorial sparks stormy debate

Embellishments such as disco-style strobe lights at the site of one of the bloodiest massacres in British colonial history have prompted outrage

But defenders of the refurbishment say there are now better views and new galleries to commemorate a turning point that led to the end of Britain’s rule

4-MIN READ4-MIN

The renovated Jallianwala Bagh memorial in Amritsar is illuminated at night on August 28. Photo: AFP

Published: 8:00pm, 2 Sep 2021Updated: 10:15pm, 2 Sep 2021

A stormy debate has broken out in India over the restoration of a memorial for one of the bloodiest massacres in British colonial history, with critics lamenting the addition of garish embellishments and historians complaining that history has been erased.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the revamped memorial on Saturday, but the backlash began when pictures emerged on social media. Indians were outraged at what they felt was a desecration of a sombre remembrance site – the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, in the northern Indian state of Punjab, where British soldiers fired into a crowd of unarmed protesters in April 1919.

The British government at the time put the death toll at 379, while Indian freedom fighters said nearly 1,000 people died, in what historians call a turning point that culminated in the end of British rule.

The memorial was once austere and unadorned, a stark reminder of the men, women, and children killed when Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer ordered his men to shoot. Bullet holes were left as they were, and the walls of the narrow path leading to the memorial – which was blocked by soldiers to prevent the crowd escaping – were bare.

Much of the criticism has been levelled at the refurbishment of this passage, which now has murals and smiling bronze figures along its length, while the stone path has been replaced with shiny tiles.

Author Kishwar Desai, who has published a book on the massacre, wrote in a Thursday column for The Indian Express that the refurbished memorial does not “reflect the grim reality of that day in April a century ago”.