David Cameron's recent visit to India and comment on the massacre at Amritsar reminded me of something I read in one of the UK national newspapers some time after the release of "Dickie Darling" Attenborough's film about Ghandi. It took the form of a letter written by (I think) a descendant of one of General Dyer's staff, and included the following:
1) After the incident, Dyer was feted as a hero by the elders of the Hindu community in Amritsar, as sections of the crowd fired on had been extremely belligerent in the hours leading up to the incident and had attacked shops and individuals in the Hindu quarter of what was (unusually) a predominantly Muslim city.
2) Dyer was also given the right to enter the Sikh holy place, the Golden Temple – one of the few Europeans to ever be given that right in the entire history of the Raj.
3) During the 3rd Afghan War, the Hindu community offered to raise a brigade of 3,000 volunteers to serve the Raj, on one condition – that Dyer was brought back from disgrace in England to command it.
Whilst I cannot find any support for these facts on line, these details are so specific that I cannot believe I have imagined them, or conflated them with some other matter. Has anyone else ever come across them (or anything like them)?
rebases some old soldiers.
