An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India

by Shashi Tharoor

No doubt some good Englishmen will say that Brigadier General Reginald Dyer was an aberration, one of those military sadists that every army throws up from time to time, and not typical of the enlightened men in uniform who normally served the Raj. The excuse will not wash. Not only was Dyer given a free hand to do as he pleased, but news of his barbarism was suppressed by the British for six months, and when outrage at reports of his excesses mounted, an attempt was made to whitewash his sins by the official commission of enquiry, Hunter Commission, which only found him guilty of ‘grave error’. It was only when a thoroughly documented report was prepared by the investigative team of the Indian National Congress that the British admitted what had happened. Dyer was relieved of his command and censured by the House of Commons, but promptly exonerated by the House of Lords and allowed to retire on a handsome pension. Rudyard Kipling, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and the poetic voice of British imperialism, hailed him as ‘The Man Who Saved India’.