Sir Michael O’ Dwyer from Barronstown, Limerick Junction was assassinated in London on this day in 1940 by Indian nationalist Udham Singh.
O’ Dwyer was lieutenant-governor of the Punjab in British India and the man responsible for the troops who perpetrated the Amritsar massacre in 1919.
On the afternoon of 13th April 1919, a crowd of at least 10,000 men, women, and children gathered in the Jallianwala Bagh (Bagh means garden) in the holy city of Amritsar. The garden was nearly completely enclosed by walls and had only one exit. Some were there to protest a ban on public meetings and others were there to celebrate Baisakhi, a spring festival.
Local military commander Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer and his soldiers arrived and sealed off the exit. Without warning, the troops opened fire on the crowd, reportedly shooting hundreds of rounds until they ran out of ammunition. It is not certain how many died in the bloodbath, but according to one British report, an estimated 379 people were killed (Indian accounts reported up to 1,500 deaths). Immediately after the troops ceased firing, they withdrew, leaving behind the dead and wounded.
Michael O'Dwyer didn't order the shootings, but he achieved infamy as a belligerent apologist for Reginald Dyer, the Cork-educated general who did. O’ Dwyer’s support of Dyer’s actions was forthright and immediate- on receiving Dyer's initial report, O'Dwyer telegraphed back: ‘Your action correct and the lieutenant-governor approves’. He maintained this backing even after word had gradually spread outside India of Dyer’s brutal actions and a commission of investigation had been set up, the Hunter Commission. Its findings were damning but it did not impose any penal or disciplinary action on Dyer because of the support of his superiors, like O’Dwyer. O ’Dwyer’s culpability was confirmed by his ordering of the aerial bombing and machine-gunning of men, women, and children “to restore order” at nearby Gujranwala two days later.
Michael O’Dwyer was born on 28 April 1864 at Barronstown. He was the sixth son among 14 children of John and Margaret O’ Dwyer, prosperous Catholic landowners. O’ Dwyer passed the India Civil Service exam in 1884 and travelled to India in 1885. He worked his way up to the lieutenant governorship of the Punjab and did not retire until 1925, six years after the massacre at Amritsar.
O‘ Dwyer’s career in India was ultimately overshadowed by the events at Amritsar in April 1919. In 1925 he published ‘India as I knew it, 1885–1925’, in which he gave his own account of events at Amritsar and he continued to champion General Dyer.
His actions made him the focus of attention of a young Indian nationalist, Udham Singh, who had been present as a child at Amritsar, and arrived in England in 1933. When O'Dwyer attended a combined meeting of the East India Association and the Royal Central Asia Society at Caxton Hall in London (13 March 1940), Singh was present and shot him dead. His assassination caused widespread shock, and Singh was convicted and hanged; his remains were returned to Amritsar in 1974 and he became an honoured Sikh martyr.
Writing in the Irish Times, Seamus Nevin claimed that O’Dwyer ‘was a hate figure whose 1940 assassination is still celebrated by some in India today’.
Sources:
https://www.dib.ie/biography/odwyer-sir-michael-francis-a6732
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/sir-michael-o-dwyer-apologist-for-the-amritsar-massacre-was-also-an-irish-nationalist-1.4476044
https://www.rte.ie/centuryireland/articles/feature-the-amritsar-massacre-13-april-1919
https://www.britannica.com/event/Jallianwala-Bagh-Massacre
